Families

Why keep things? They only take up space -- physical, mental, emotional. Einstein may have griped about what an empty desk might signify, but if he was around today, he wouldn't even be able to get a job as an expert on a reality TV show with that attitude. "Clutter is the symptom, but hoarding is the disease," asserts David Tolin, the expert assigned to help Jill, a 60-year-old woman on the verge of eviction from her Milwaukee home on this week's premiere episode of "Hoarders" (A&E, 10 p.m. Monday)

She remembers being about 4 and, as her father worked in his study that doubled as a bedroom, hearing a knock on the front door. She answered and a tearful woman said, "Is the pastor here?" It was one of Sheila Schuller's first realizations that their small house in Garden Grove was also a sanctuary.

On a clear day, the expanse of blue ocean seen from the living room of this San Clemente home seems almost endless. Sometimes, as day gives way to evening, a line of pink stretches like a crayon scrawl in the sky. When night falls, the sea is an abyss of black. Margrit Ucar fell instantly for the panorama. Even before her husband, Manas, had a chance to see the house, she knew it was where they would raise their two young daughters, twins Margo and Grace.

Imagine a horde of children -- 10, actually -- at a local pizzeria. Tomato sauce on faces, clothes and the floor. There's yelping, burping, jumping, and trips to the potty. It's kiddie chaos. Now imagine all these youngsters are yours. For Eric and Betty Hayes, they don't have to try very hard -- it's their life, chronicled in "Table for 12," part of TLC's growing stable of docu-series about big families.

Watching his family's new, two-story home being built in 2001, Ervin Antonio Lupoe appeared to be riding a wave of hope and excitement. He dropped by each week to check the progress, one construction worker recalled. But in what authorities believe was a gruesome burst of anger after he and his wife lost their jobs, the burly 40-year-old X-ray technician turned that same Wilmington home into a family tomb, officials said Tuesday.

When television producer Sibyl Gardner adopted a baby girl in China in 2003, the official story was that the infant had been abandoned on the steps of the salt works in the city of Guangchang, where a worker found the day-old child and took her to a social welfare institution. But after reading with "utter horror" the latest revelations of child trafficking in China in the Los Angeles Times, Gardner found herself contemplating a trip to back to Jiangxi province to investigate how Zoë, now 7, came up for adoption.

On a recent afternoon, 15-year-old Marlon Parras stood on stage in front of 3,000 people and talked about the hardships he and his 13-year-old sister have faced since their parents were deported to Guatemala. He wept as he spoke of his parents' decision to leave them, both American citizens, with relatives and church members so they could continue their education in suburban Atlanta. "This is not a family," Marlon told the crowd. "This is not fair."

The cancer-stricken father of a U.S. Marine serving in Afghanistan was arrested at his Florida home last week and is scheduled for deportation to his native Hungary. The detention of Janos Lutz, 53, has outraged his family, including his son, Pfc. Janos V. "Johnny" Lutz, a machine-gunner serving in Helmand province. "We are out here fighting . . . and I find out the United States of America is deporting my dad?" Lutz, 21, said Thursday in a telephone interview from Afghanistan.

Phoebe Hearst Cooke is a noted horsewoman and philanthropist. She owns two ranches in San Luis Obispo County, and with assets between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, she is a fixture on the Forbes list of America's wealthiest people. She also is at the center of legal actions filed by relatives who contend the 81-year-old granddaughter of publishing legend William Randolph Hearst no longer has the capacity to manage her own affairs.

Accusing his ex-wife of character assassination, Broadcom Corp. founder Henry T. Nicholas III said her attempt to oust him as co-trustee of their family holdings was filled with "outrageous falsehoods," including misrepresenting herself as unable to meet her expenses when she had spent more than $100 million in the last two years. Stacey Nicholas' attorney, Adam Streisand, said he had not seen the filing in Orange County Superior Court and declined to comment. In a filing in probate court Nov.