WINIFRED - This faint mirage of a town on the central Montana range graduates eight high school seniors tonight, three girls and five boys seated alphabetically in gowns of red and white on a stage in the high school gym.

Dan Wichman, fifth academically in his graduating class, or maybe sixth, will be among the last to rise for his diploma. He is an easygoing kid with a soft smile, the oldest boy of the Wichmans' 14 children, most of them adopted. He has learned that best way to get what you want is to not ask for much and save your biggest favors for the things that matter most.

Needless to say, graduation matters a lot to Wichman. After six years of group homes and foster families, he was less than a shoe-in to be on this stage. So when it came time to call in a favor for graduation, Wichman called in a big one - he contacted to U.S. Sen. Max Baucus and invited him to graduation and, of course, the barbecue beforehand.

"I just wanted him to come, so I called him," Wichman said.

Baucus has been a little busy lately. The sixth-ranking Democrat in the Senate has been at the center of high-level talks to reform the nation's health care system. He has been in a heated battle to pass President Obama's first budget. Baucus is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which means he has a hand in most federal spending matters. He didn't have a single commencement speech penciled in and wasn't likely to until Wichman inquired.

"A lot of requests we get go through a system," Baucus said Friday. "Not that one."

He answered the request personally, saying he'd be there no matter what.

Baucus and Wichman have a history. The two met in Billings in 2005 at an anti-methamphetamine rally at Lewis and Clark Middle School. When he asked the students if they knew someone one who used methamphetamine, roughly 100 kids raised their hands, including Wichman.

"There were a bunch of kids, 10 or 14, who came up after the assembly," Baucus said. "I noticed this one fellow off to the side who was kind of hanging back. He wandered over to me and blurted out, 'My mother's on meth and I've been taken away from her.' He was crying, streaming tears from his eyes. At that point, I decided I will mentor this fellow any way I can."

Wichman was living in a group home where he had limited access to e-mail, but when he could, he would e-mail Baucus and ask the senator if he still remembered him. Baucus did. The two would talk about whatever was going on the young man's life. Sometimes the senator just listened. Mostly, Wichman said, Baucus just told him not to give up.

Wichman wasn't even sure who Baucus was. He didn't know a senator from a city mayor, but he knew Baucus was interested. Living in a group home where the adults in his life clocked in and out like employees, Wichman only cared that Baucus was interested.

"All I knew was that he came and hung out with me. I thought it was cool," Watchman said. "In a group home, you don't get to do things one on one."

Baucus would call on Wichman when the senator got to town. They'd go to Krispy Kreme and get doughnuts, or get ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery.

At Cold Stone Creamery, where the staff sings every time someone drops a tip in the jar beside the cash register, Baucus always brought a few dollar bills.

"Hey, we got a tip," the man at the cash register would sing. Then the crew would start singing some crazy jingle to a familiar tune, like the theme song from "The Flintstones." "Cold Stone! Here at Cold Stone! Making ice cream is our specialty …"

The singing would stop. Baucus would grin and a few minutes later would drop another dollar in the jar. Good times, Wichman said.

'Have faith'

Wichman wound up in Winifred as a foster child of Gordon and Mary Wichman, who adopted him a couple of years ago, not long after his biological mother died from a brain aneurism.

There's nothing ordinary about the Wichmans' household. The family has 14 children, most of whom, like Dan, came through foster care. Over 13 years, the couple has had 47 children in their home. They've adopted 11.

The Wichman home is nothing like the house in North Park Trailer Court, where Dan lived until he was 12. Dan's mother suffered a head injury in a car accident, which left her disabled. Eventually she turned to drugs, which she usually did in her bedroom out of the view of her children.

It was a tough neighborhood, Dan Wichman said, the kind of place where crowbar pry marks left on a window aren't uncommon. Things around the house disappeared often as his mother needed drug money.

The Wichman's 12-bedroom, 6,000-square-foot home is clean, awhirl with children, but orderly. Winifred native and air conditioning millionaire Norman Asbjornson backed to home's construction because he thought the children living there would bolster enrollment at Winifred School, which declined as the town of less than 200 lost population.

Turning the corner

"I think had we not adopted Dan, I don't think he'd feel so secure of himself," Mary Wichman said. "That's true for all our children."

Baucus said he knew Dan Wichman had turned a corner when he met the boy at the Pizza Hut in Lewistown a couple of years ago for dinner. Mary Wichman pulled into the parking lot to drive Dan back 38 miles to Winifred. Dan blurted out, "There's my mom!"

Tonight, Mary and Gordon Wichman will be sitting in folding chairs at the Winifred High School gym. Three of their children will be on stage. Baucus will be on stage with the graduates to make some remarks. All will be thinking about their part in the moment and Dan's next chapter, computer studies in Billings.

"If you have faith in a person and you stick with it, it bears rewards," Baucus said. "You'd like to think it helps them grow into proud young men. I think Dan has turned into great young man."