"She was so sweet," he told KOMO 4 News as he thumbed through a photo album of those nine months. "She was so pretty. She was so smart. Yeah....she was special."

Gary and his wife wanted to adopt Sirita and end the 3-and-a-half years she'd spent in and out of different foster homes.

"This little girl wanted to know more than anything else where is my place in the world? Where do I belong? That's what she really wanted."

She thought she found that place November of 2003 when she went home with her biological father for the first time.

"When she heard from them that she was gonna get to stay with them forever and ever she was so excited," said Gary. "And she told us so many times she was gonna stay with them forever and ever and ever."

Forever was just weeks shy of her 5th birthday. Sirita died at her biological father's Lake Stevens home Jan 21.

Police say her death is suspicious. The Snohomish County Coroner ruled Thursday that she died of blunt force trauma to the head and chest.

"Part of me doesn't believe it," said Gary. "I mean, it is such a shock."

Her foster dad is left only with the pictures of a little girl who loved to watch figure skating on TV, loved to dance, loved Barbies and Cinderella.

"I still have her Christmas gift," he told us as he retrieved a Cinderella Barbie from his hall closet. "I couldn't bring myself to take it back to the store. I guess I kept hoping that somehow I'd be able to see her again."

The gift he plans to give her, and other foster children in the state of Washington, is a change in state law. He believes there should be a limit, perhaps one year, for a biological parent to get their act together in order to regain custody. If not, he says, children like Sirita should be given to a safe and permanent foster home.

"We've got an Amber law maybe we need a Sirita law. One year that's it. A kid should have a right to permanency. I just want to make sure we solve this problem for other kids out there because she's not alone... she's not the only one!"

As of Thursday night the coroner had ruled on the cause of death but criminal charges had not been filed against anyone.

Sirita's biological mother has since lost all parental rights. She is in prison serving time for drug offenses.