‘A blessing in a crisis’: Haitian orphans arrive in Pittsburgh

For dozens of American families, the earthquake that killed an estimated 200,000 people last… For dozens of American families, the earthquake that killed an estimated 200,000 people last week brought stress first.

And then, bittersweet happiness.

Fifty-three Haitian orphans arrived in Pittsburgh late yesterday morning, following days of worry, late-night phone calls to American politicians and negotiations with Haitian government officials. A 54th child was scheduled to arrive in the city last night.

Kristin Heaton, a 49-year-old housewife from Roca, Neb., spent the past three years trying to adopt Bettania and Dieunette, Haitian girls who lived in an orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s largest city.

Because American officials wanted to move Bettania, Dieunette and the other orphans at Brébis de Saint-Michel de L’Attalaye orphanage out of the now-devastated city, Heaton might be able to adopt the girls within the next 24 hours.

“Is it a blessing in the middle of a crisis? Yes, it is,” she said.

The arrival of the Haitian orphans in Pittsburgh marks the end of a week overcome with both panic and political activism and the beginning of a larger, national effort to bring aid to Haitian orphans.

Moving the earth, and those on it

Like many movements, the one to bring as many as 900 Haitian orphans to the United States began with individual families, those like Heaton’s.

Heaton and her husband, Scott, decided before they were married that they wanted to adopt children. They adopted their first, Nathaniel, who’s now 20 years old. Their second, 17-year-old Victoria, is a biological child.

Together, the four decided years ago that they wanted to adopt more children. One of the family members “came home with statistics from Haiti, and it was just staggering the number of children that die of malnutrition,” Kristin said.

So three years ago, they began the lengthy process of trying to adopt Bettania, now 7. Shortly after, they began trying to adopt Dieunette, now 2.

Every three months, Kristin would travel to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to take the girls out of their orphanage for 10 days so they could bond with one another. If possible, she’d bring the other Heaton family members with her, as well.

So when Kristin received a call from one of her friends last week asking if she’d heard that a 7.0-magnitude earthquake had pummeled Haiti, she went numb.

“I don’t even think I moved for two minutes,” she said.

To Kristin, Bettania and Dieunette already felt like her daughters.

“I was wondering, ‘Are my children alright? And how am I going to find that out?” she said.

She began making phone calls and eventually reached Doug — the husband of Jamie McMutrie Heckman, who ran the Haitian orphanage with her sister, Alie McMutrie. Doug told Kristin he hadn’t been able to contact Jamie or Alie, who are Pittsburgh natives, but that he’d heard that the women and the children were safe.

Kristin and others began making late-night phone calls to politicians asking them to make sure that the women and orphans had food and water and to find a way to get them out of the country.

And so began a rescue effort that Allegheny County Manager Jim Flynn would later say couldn’t be attributed to one person or group. Instead, he said, it was the result of “so many people people going down multiple, parallel paths.”

Officials at UPMC eventually heard about the effort to bring Haitian orphans to the United States and contacted Gov. Ed Rendell, who liked the idea but hadn’t been able to craft a tangible plan. Rendell received a call shortly after from Leslie McCombs, who would later be credited as one of the rescue operation’s prime organizers. McCombs said she saw the U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, Joseph Raymond, on TV.

Together, they tracked down Raymond, who was able to give them connections with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.

They thought they had a plan, and Monday night Rendell, along with U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire, who represents Allegheny County, and a handful of medical and social work experts flew to Port-au-Prince, taking two-and-a-half-tons of medical supplies with them.

The plan was to drop off the medical supplies and bring the children back.

The McMutrie sisters, who had spent what Alie called a “tough week living in a driveway with hundreds of people,” said they would only leave if they could take all 54 children with them. The Haitian government and the U.S. government debated over which orphans could leave Haiti. Forty-seven of them already had adoptive or foster parents lined up. The others didn’t.

During the debate, the politicians, the orphans and the McMutrie sisters missed their flight.

“It was touch and go,” Rendell said.

Altmire contacted the White House, and “All of a sudden, after four or five hours of struggle, we go the go-ahead that all the orphans could come to the U.S.,” Rendell said.

The military arranged to have a C-17 fly the Haitian children and their entourage back to Florida, where they would later catch a connection to Pittsburgh.

To make the flight work, Jamie stayed behind with one child, who was scheduled to arrive in Pittsburgh last night.

McCombs said she was “dumbfounded at this whole thing, how this all worked out.”

“Nothing has gone smoothly,” she said. “We’ve had our lives threatened. We’ve been accused of kidnapping and trafficking children,” she said, referring to the controversy over whether the United States was allowed to remove Haitian orphans who were in the middle of being adopted by American families from the country. “It was horrible, but to see the babies’ faces when we finally got them and to Jamie and Alie, to know that we’ve saved their lives — it’s all been worth it.”

Becoming (legally) family

The children arrived shortly after 9 a.m. yesterday in Pittsburgh, where they were greeted by an entourage of news reporters and photographers. The children divided into groups and boarded three Port Authority buses, where they were joined by volunteers from the Southwest Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Red Cross and Catholic Charities, among other organizations. They drove to Children’s Hospital, in Lawrenceville, escorted by police cars and at least one Port Authority truck.

Dr. Richard Saladino, who oversees Pediatric Emergency Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, was among the people who joined the orphans on their bus ride.

Most of the children were younger than 4 and more than half of them were younger than 2.

“There was a communication issue in that most of us did not know French or Creole, but at the same time, kids are kids,” Saladino said, “and most of them related to us really well.”

“All you need to do is imagine if I put an 18-month-old in your lap. You wouldn’t have an extensive conversation, but you would play with them and interact with facial expressions and with some small toys that they had with them,” he said.

Saladino, like several other officials who spoke at press conferences yesterday, said he was surprised by the children’s resilience. Many of them were clapping or singing on the bus, he said. Some were playing with the volunteers’ cell phones.

The children arrived at Children’s Hospital shortly after 11 a.m. yesterday. Most of them debarked individually, accompanied only by a volunteer who walked, or in some cases carried, them into the hospital’s Emergency Room. The volunteers draped most of the children in blankets or yellow sheets resembling ponchos to shield them from the 40-degree weather, which was about 40 degrees lower than the temperature in Haiti.

Some of the children slept as volunteers carried them in. Others cried or walked straight inside, ignoring the reporters surrounding them. One boy posed for the cameras.

Inside the hospital, a team of nearly 20 doctors, more than a dozen nurses and more than a dozen other workers (mostly technicians and registration staff) evaluated the children. They examined all 53 in about 50 minutes.

“They arrived in quite good shape,” Saladino said, noting that one or two of the children were treated for dehydration, a few children had fevers and “as you would expect in every crowd of kids,” a few had upper respiratory infections.

He said doctors didn’t plan to admit any of the children into the hospital for longer-term care and that any who had a fever had their blood screened to test for infectious diseases, which he doubted they had.

Saladino said he thought the children were relatively healthy because they were able to get clean water and carbohydrates despite the earthquake.

“I’m not an expert at this, but … you have to remember this was not a refugee camp,” he told reporters who continually asked him if any the children had anything other than upper respiratory infections, as if trying to convince themselves that what he said was true.

After their examinations, the children moved to the “Comfort Room,” a conference room in Children’s Hospital that executives had rearranged to move in beds and teddy bears for the children.

The children will stay in the Comfort Room until the county can finalize their adoptions or foster-home arrangements, ideally by the end of the day. Officials said yesterday that they anticipated closing the room around midnight tonight.

For families like the Heaton family, this marked the beginning of a long wait. Kristin said she saw Dieunette in a hallway and “just burst into tears and grabbed her.” Kristin said she saw Bettania a little later and that she was upset because she didn’t understand why she couldn’t see the Heatons, who would comfort her.

The feeling was mutual.

“We would like more time with them,” Kristin Heaton said.

Her son, Nathaniel, agreed.

“We can’t wait until we get them in our arms for good.”