Rob Scheer Carried His Life in a Trash Bag. Comfort Cases Makes Sure Fewer Children Have To

Rob Scheer entered foster care at age 12 after a hard and unsafe home life. Like many children moved into care, he was handed a trash bag to carry what he owned.

He has spoken about how much that bag said to him about his worth. He told CNN in 2018 that he decided he would not let the trash bag define him. He aged out of the system at 18 and, by his own account, went through a period of homelessness as a teenager.

Scheer went on to serve in the U.S. Navy and later became a banking executive. He married Reece Scheer, and the two wanted to become parents. Rob has said he always wanted to be a father.

They opened their home to children in foster care. Four young children came to them in two sibling pairs, a few months apart: Amaya, Makai, Tristan, and Greyson. Rob and Reece adopted all four.

When the children arrived, each one carried belongings in a trash bag. For Scheer, it was a hard discovery. Years after his own time in care, the practice he remembered had not changed.

He told CNN that it is not acceptable for any child to carry their things in something people use for garbage. Seeing it happen to his own children turned an old memory into a problem he wanted to solve.

In 2013 the family began gathering and packing supplies at home and donating them to children entering foster care nearby. That effort became the nonprofit Comfort Cases.

Each case is a backpack or duffel bag of the child's own. According to CNN, a case holds basics like soap, a toothbrush, shampoo, lotion, and deodorant, plus new pajamas, a book, a journal, a blanket, and a stuffed animal. The aim is practical and personal at once: a child should arrive at a new home with clean things and something that tells them they matter.

Comfort Cases grew through volunteers and donors. The organization holds packing events where community members fill cases together. By 2018, CNN reported that more than 20,000 cases had been assembled.

Growth came step by step. Scheer has kept speaking publicly about what children in foster care experience, and the cases became a way for ordinary people to do something concrete about it.

Comfort Cases now describes its mission as eliminating trash bags from the foster care system, and its website marks the 200,000th case packed and distributed. The organization still invites the public to large packing events, including a 24-hour Pack-a-thon.

In 2023 the family grew again. Rob and Reece adopted a fifth child, Alex, whom Rob had met at a high school speaking event when Alex was 18. It was a reminder that young people who age out of foster care still need a family too.

Scheer's own description of what matters most is simple. In the 2023 Comfort Cases article about that adoption, he said his greatest title is dad.