Family Portrait -- The Montzingo Family

The Montzingo Family

-- The family: Darrel Montzingo, 34, is a physical-education teacher at Roosevelt and Ingraham high schools in Seattle. Wife Vicki, 31, volunteers with Adoption Information Service and North Seattle Covenant Church and has had movie parts, including Baby Bigfoot in ``Harry and the Hendersons.'' The children are Jennifer, 8; Andrew, 4, and Peter, 8 months.

-- Little people: The family is used to stares. Everyone but Peter, who they aren't sure about yet, is a dwarf. Genetically, there's a 75 percent chance Peter will be, too. ``If he's going to be a dwarf, he had better start dwarfing soon,'' Darrel says. ``At seven months he's only three pounds behind Andrew, who is about half the size of a normal 4-year-old.'' Or maybe he'll take after the rest of Darrel's family, where the average height of the other four brothers hovers above 6 feet.

-- Dealing with others: ``We encourage people to ask questions, to explain to their children when they see us,'' says Vicki, who is 48 inches tall. ``We are different, but only in the way we look and the way we have to adapt to life in a big people's world.''

-- Being a minority: There are only about 20,000 dwarfs in America and fewer than 50 known dwarfs in the greater Seattle area. ``I joke and say we're the smallest minority group around,'' says Darrel, who met Vicki 11 years ago at a Little People of America convention. They were married in 1981. Using contacts through Little People, they adopted Jennifer, and four years later, Andrew. He arrived healthy, but kept the family busy dealing with health problems for most of the next three years. Then, after the couple worked with geneticists and medical experts, Vicki gave birth to Peter.

-- How they live: ``We live, we laugh a lot, we love a lot. We're like everyone else, really,'' Vicki says. ``We drive a minivan, have a dog, we're active in church, we do lots of family stuff together.'' They did have to adapt their North Seattle home a bit. Darrel shortened all the kitchen and bathroom cabinets by 10 inches, and the gas pedals on their cars had to be modified.

-- Their dream: That minorities of all types be accepted normally. ``There's so much more awareness of handicaps today,'' Darrel says. ``People are more accepting and less discriminatory.'' Jennifer is matter-of-fact and confident when children tease her. ``I just say, `I was born this way, no problem.' I help kids realize I'm different but really the same, too.''

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