For generations of kids, St. Petersburg babysitter “was like a second mom”

When babies came into Althea Chin-Neath’s home, she picked them up at her red front door, carried them straight through the living room, past the corner of breakables and framed photos of kids she helped raise, to the bathroom for a quick scrub.

Hours later, they left clean, fed and loved.

For decades, children grew up inside the peach home on Fourth Street in St. Petersburg. They napped in the back room, ate at the table, took walks and fed neighborhood ducks. They learned gentle hands, please and thank yous and sirs and ma’ams. They grew big enough for preschool and left. But they came back — for afternoon snacks and homework, news-filled visits, and little brother and sister pickups.

The babysitter sang along at birthday parties, celebrated accomplishments and sat in the stands at graduations.

Chin-Neath had two boys of her own, but she was a second mother for generations of kids.

She died Oct. 12 due to sleep apnea. She was 60.

Toya, Lamar, Devon

Her first babies were her nieces and nephews.

Chin-Neath was the youngest of eight in Jacks River, Jamaica. So when her brothers and sisters started having children of their own, she cared for them.

She moved to the U.S. in 1970 and finished high school in New Jersey. Work opening restaurants brought her and her husband, Winston Chin, to Florida. Tragedy brought childcare into her life.

The couple had a baby, Toya, a happy girl who was quick to figure out how to play with her nesting toys. Before she was 2, Toya died of leukemia. Without a little one at home to watch, and with time while her husband worked and traveled, Chin-Neath started nannying part time.

The couple had a son, Lamar, and he grew up with the kids his mom cared for through the Nannies That Care program during the late 1980s. Chin-Neath and her husband divorced, and she remarried Devon Neath and had her second son, Devon Neath II.

In the mid-’90s, Chin-Neath went to nursing school and spent a few years watching children during the day and caring for elderly patients at night. Eventually, she registered her business, Tia’s Daycare, as an LLC, charged what she knew she was worth, required families to offer paid time off, and built a word-of-mouth business as an excellent caregiver. Son Lamar Chin figures his mom cared for between 20 and 30 kids. But there were more.

“All my friends, she treated them all like sons,” said son Devon Neath II, 27. “She would cuss us all out. Everybody.”

Chin-Neath spent her Sundays cleaning and loved cooking, but didn’t have any other hobbies or outside passions.

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“It was just kids,” Chin said. “It was all kids.”

Will

The nanny came into Will Main’s life when he was three or four, and she never really left.

She cared for him and his younger brother, Alex, while their mom worked nights. They grew up with Lamar and stayed busy with sleepovers, cookouts and trips to Busch Gardens, Islands of Adventure and Chuck E Cheese. Chin-Neath was always cooking.

In 2015, Main got married, and his nanny and her eldest son traveled to Cincinnati to celebrate, said Main, who’s now 36.

“She was like a second mom.”

Tim

In the early 2000s, Chin-Neath started caring for foster children and adopted several of them.

Tim Howard and his very smelly feet came into her home at 11 or 12 through foster care. She cleaned him up with daily vinegar treatments, made sure he had nice clothes, vacations, a little spending money and boundaries. When Howard got arrested at 15, “I was more scared of her coming to get me than actually staying in there,” he said.

His mom helped him get stabilized.

“When I talk to people about my mom, they all know who I refer to,” said Howard, now 24. “That’s her.”

Sean

At 4 or 5, Sean Pittman sat down with the family’s new nanny to play checkers. He was ready. A champion. A grandmaster in a tiny body. He did not know his parents let him win.

The first time he played with Chin-Neath, he says, “She beat me, because of course she did.”

The 24-year-old law school student knows now that his nanny wanted him to understand how the world works.

But at the time, he was mad.

“Althea, you’re fired!” he shouted and stomped off into his room.

It happened a few more times, and each time, Chin-Neath laughed. Except once — when she started packing her things, pretending she’d leave. Pittman is pretty sure that was his last attempt at termination.

“She really prepared us for going out into the world.”

Catherine

A few years ago, when Catherine Hartney was in the hospital, her old babysitter came to see her. As Chin-Neath often did, she brought food for everyone.

Hartney is 15 now and a high school sophomore. She, her brother and two sisters all grew up with a babysitter who hid vegetables in their spaghetti and meatballs, bought them birthday and holiday gifts and insisted on good manners.

“We were kind of like an extension of her children,” Hartney said. “She loved us so much … She really was a part of our family.”

Juniper

Miss Tia’s had a fish tank with animatronic fish. And a playroom. And a pink spoon Juniper French always used.

She’s 11 now. Her mom isn’t sure how many memories are her own and how many grew from stories she’s heard. But French remembers this:

“She understood me in a toddler way,” she said. “I’m really glad that she started that business.”

Chin-Neath had a few nicknames for the little girl she started caring for who was born extremely premature, weighing just 1 pound 4 ounces.

Junebug.

Short child.

Nosy Parker.

As the little girl grew bigger, Chin-Neath taught her how to use gentle hands around the babies.

French remembers something else.

“I never left the room without giving Althea a hug.”

Poynter news researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this story.

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