BY ROXANNA ASGARIAN

HOUSTON — By the time Devonte Hart's biological mom saw the viral photo that made him famous, her son was already missing and presumed dead, along with one of her other children. A third was confirmed dead.

And Sherry Davis was devastated.

Friday, in her first interview since her children died, Davis spoke with The Oregonian/OregonLive, describing her heartbreak, how she lost her kids, and how she'd gotten clean with the hope of one day getting them back.

Davis' children Devonte, Sierra and Jeremiah were with their adoptive parents, Jennifer and Sarah Hart, and their three adopted siblings when Jennifer Hart apparently drove the family off a California cliff last month.

Clarence Celestine, father of Jeremiah and Sierra, said he hasn't been able to sleep since he heard the news. He wants to leave every time someone mentions the crash and concerns of abuse that followed the children and their adoptive parents in three states. He wishes his sister, Priscilla Celestine, who fought to keep the kids when Davis lost custody, had been able to keep them.

"I don't understand why they took the kids from my sister," said Clarence Celestine, 66.

"And gave them to monsters," Davis added.

What also tears at Davis and Celestine: Had a local family law attorney who represented the kids' aunt in a failed custody bid not recognized the children in news reports, Davis believes she might never have known their fate.

Cocaine addiction led to Davis losing custody of Devonte in 2006, along with siblings Jeremiah and Sierra, whom she'd named Ciara Rose. She said she's spent the years since getting clean and back on her feet, praying that her children were somewhere happy and that they knew she still loved them. She even hoped to one day regain custody.

Sherry Davis and Clarence Celestine.

Davis said that even while she was using drugs, her children were well fed, well dressed and never neglected. Back then, she said, she was doing live-in care at least two days a week for work and housekeeping on the side to make ends meet.

Once the three children and a fourth older child, Dontay, were taken by Texas' Department of Family and Protective Services, they were temporarily placed with their aunt, Priscilla Celestine. They were put into foster care about five months later when a caseworker arrived at Celestine's home and found Davis there with the children, unsupervised.

Davis said she'd been undergoing a court-ordered drug treatment program when the kids were first placed with the aunt and hoped to one day regain custody. She ultimately feels her past dealings with CPS, which included previously losing custody of three older children, worked against her and led to the four younger kids being immediately removed from their biological family.

When she found out the Harts adopted Devonte, Jeremiah and Sierra in 2009, Davis said, she relapsed. Having her kids taken again took everything out of her, she said, crying. There were days where she felt like she couldn't breathe.

"I gave up," Davis said. It took about a year for her to begin regaining sobriety.

Today, Davis is an in-home care worker. She's married and said she's been clean for eight years. She never gave up hoping she'd one day reunite her family. Learning of her children's deaths -- and of the abuse allegations that preceeded them -- has been devastating.

"They're so quick to snatch [children] from people like us," she said, "but once they're adopted, they don't even check on them?"

Clarence Celestine said he was in prison when the kids were in and out of his sister's custody. He doesn't understand why the children weren't spared in the crash, left somewhere someone could find them and keep them safe, he said.

"They'd be better off with us," said Celestine, who's owned a landscaping business for the last eight years.

Thursday was the first time Davis saw the now-famous viral photo of her son Devonte giving a Portland police officer a teary hug.

Baby D, as she knew him, was always smart, quiet and observant. The photo of him brought her no comfort. In fact, it left her unsettled.

"That should've been a happy moment," Davis, 48, said at her Houston home Friday. "I believe he wanted to speak to the officer but was probably too scared."

She spoke the same day California authorities announced Jennifer Hart was drunk when she drove off the coastal cliff. Jennifer Hart had an alcohol level of .102 percent, according to the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. The agency also said Sarah Hart and two of the children who died in the crash had diphenhydramine, an active ingredient in Benadryl, in their systems.

Benadryl can make people sleepy. Toxicology results for the third child who died in the crash aren't yet complete, the sheriff's office said.

The body of an African American female found in the ocean near the crash scene still hasn't been identified, and Devonte, Hannah and Sierra Hart remain missing.

Lt. Shannon Barney, a sheriff's office spokesman, said Friday that authorities can't rely on dental records to identify the body that was recovered last weekend because authorities haven't been able to find a dentist who treated the children.

He said it will take a couple of weeks to get DNA results back from a lab and positively identify the body.

For Davis, there's one last thing she'd like to do for her babies. She hopes to bring their bodies back to Texas. She'd like to bury them somewhere close to her.

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Roxanna Asgarian is a freelance reporter. Lizzy Acker, Everton Bailey Jr., and Jim Ryan of The Oregonian/OregonLive staff contributed to this report.