"It's so sweet to see how excited Raphe and Cheyenne get when they hear the car pull up — to see the smile on his face when he sees them running to the door yelling, 'Daddy's home!"' says Tania. "There is nothing more important to him than his family, and that is clearly displayed through his actions."

For a time, Glenn and Tania couldn't have children of their own. After much discussion, they decided to adopt. Their adoption agency told them to spread the word, because word of mouth often produced results. Beck did that and then some. He took his search on the air to his millions of listeners.

Predictably, he was deluged by e-mailed responses. For reasons no one can explain, a woman who is hired to sift through the 500 to 1,000 pieces of mail that come to Beck each day was struck by a note from a young woman in Texas and forwarded it to Beck's radio station.

Strangely, the computer at the station crashed, according to Beck, and only one e-mail got through — the one from Texas. After a background check, the Becks flew to Texas and met the mother. They adopted Raphe. Eighteen months later, they were able to have their own child, Cheyenne.

"We were supposed to have this child," says Beck. "I knew as soon as we adopted, Tania would get pregnant."

To spend any time with Beck is to know he is still building the person he set out to build years ago. He is still driven and angst-ridden, and he still finds it difficult to slow down. He turns to painting when he can to find escape. He paints landscapes, and, as he is wont to do, his deep streak of perfectionism makes it sometimes more than a relaxing hobby.

"I am easily frustrated," he says, and most of his paintings wind up on the floor of a closet, unfinished. After discussing this on the air once, Beck received a call from Peter Maxx, a famous pop artist whose psychedelic work was the rage in the 1960s and '70s. Maxx said he was a fan of the show and offered to give Beck painting tips. His advice: "Relax, let go, trust yourself." Which Beck found to be curious since a few days earlier he was given the same advice, almost verbatim, for life in general during a meeting with a church leader.

"After Peter told me the same thing, I thought, 'OK, God, I get the message,"' says Beck.

"I so overanalyze everything. It has changed the way I work."

After that, he produced five paintings in a week and none turned out the way he envisioned them, but he framed them anyway. "I think I had finished five paintings in my whole life," he says. "I stopped trying so hard."

He hopes he can do the same with the rest of his life. He hopes, he says, to see "the miracles in my life and the people who pop up along the way. I need to trust and let go."

---

E-mail: drob@desnews.com