Jose Gomez and Catherine Hutchison pose at their home in Henderson, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. Hutchison holds a composite photo featuring the Ukrainian two-year-old boy that they were in the process of adopting.
Sunday, March 20, 2022 | 2 a.m.
It was a long journey for Catherine Hutchison to travel from Las Vegas to Ukraine last month, with stops in Boston, the Netherlands and Germany leading her, finally, to Kyiv.
But the 20-hour commute was worth the initial visit she had with her soon-to-be adopted son, a young boy in an orphanage about four hours from the capital.
Bashful and shy at first, the child, who turns 2 in June, warmed up to her quickly, giggling and bursting with vim, Hutchison said.
She departed the orphanage the following day and boarded a plane to Amsterdam, where she arrived on the evening of Feb. 23.
“Everything was peaceful,” Hutchison, 40, said of being in Ukraine. “The streets were full of people.”
By the next morning, Hutchison had received multiple texts and calls from her husband, Jose Ramon Gomez.
“Are you OK? Where are you?” she recalled Gomez asking. “Check the news.”
A decades-long conflict exploded: On Feb. 24, Russia invaded its neighbor Ukraine, displacing millions of civilians and upending the lives of those who call it home. Nearly 3 million refugees have since fled Ukraine, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a U.N. refugee agency.
For Hutchison and Gomez, President Vladimir Putin of Russia’s actions also prohibit them from bringing their child to the United States. It disrupts a process they began in December 2020 and leaves them without answers as they await the end of the war.
To make matters worse, they also cannot get regular updates on the child, as communication between the orphanage and Hand of Help, the U.S. advocacy group the couple used, has been limited. They were told recently that the children are safe, and have food and medicine for another month, she said.
“The last time I heard from his orphanage was that they were being attacked, you know, the city was being attacked, and they were in a basement,” Hutchison said. “As far as they know, all the orphanages are OK. But there’s no way for me to find out.”
The requirements and timeline to adopt a child from Ukraine are lengthy, Hutchison said. The U.S. State Department outlines the process, which starts with parents first choosing an accredited or approved adoption service provider to connect with an orphanage in Ukraine.
Related Content
Parents must then apply to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, as well as seek approval from Ukrainian authorities, for review of eligibility to adopt.
Limitations exists on which kind of couples can adopt, as Ukraine does not allow physically or mentally disabled adults; same-sex couples; single parents, unless the individual is related to the child; or couples under 21 to adopt from the country. The child must also be considered an orphan under U.S. immigration law.
Costs leap into the tens of thousands. Hand of Help estimates the amount per child, with travel, is between $30,000 and $35,000.
“We had to talk about it, figure out our finances before we could do anything else,” Hutchison said. “But you know, it’s something that, in order to get there, that’s what you’ve got to do.”
If approved by both countries, the child must then be adopted in Ukraine. Hutchison said she was required to visit the orphanage in person to be matched with her child, while Gomez remained in Las Vegas to continue working.
“Money is not the thing,” Gomez said. “Just having him here and all that, you know, so, in the long run that for what’s going on, you can’t really put a number on that.”
Had the war not erupted quickly after her orphanage visit, Ukraine’s Adoption Authority would have secured Hutchison and Gomez’s adoption, and the couple would have sent an adoption request package for a judge to approve or deny, waited 30 days for the decision to take effect — and then, legally, be the child’s parents.
Hutchison said that after seeing friends in the area who had adopted children from Ukraine, she and Gomez wished to do the same.
“I cry a lot. We pray a lot,” she said. “I’m trying to not think too much of it. Because, you know, there’s not a lot that I can do at this point. So we’re just waiting, hoping.”
After becoming the boy’s legal parents, Hutchison and Gomez would have then applied for an immigrant visa for the boy and brought him to their already-bursting Henderson family, where their six other children, spanning ages seven to 23, would have welcomed a brother into their clan.
“My heart sank,” Gomez said of learning about Russia’s invasion. “Just knowing that she was out of there, it was good, but sad … (we) couldn’t get the baby right out that day.”
The Las Vegas couple worked with Nancy Thornell, stateside liaison for Hand of Help. Thornell has four adopted kids, one each from Belarus and Guatemala and two from Ukraine.
Thornell knew Serge Zevlever, a Ukrainian-American from St. Louis who worked to connect orphaned Ukrainian children to families in the U.S., until his death this month. Zevlever, 62, was killed by a Russian sniper while in Ukraine, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
When Thornell met Zevlever 10 years ago, it was when she was adopting her first child from Ukraine. Then, in 2014, they started Hand of Help to facilitate adoptions for special-needs children in the country.
“We’ve always basically geared ourselves toward getting those children that no one ever sees or, you know, that Ukraine thinks that no one ever wants, and give them a family,” Thornell said. “Nothing made him happier than seeing kids and families."
Las Vegan Bob Peiser also has experience with the Ukrainian adoption system. As a benefactor for Happy Home in Cherkasy, Ukraine — about 117 miles, or three hours south of Kyiv — Peiser said that when looking for service projects, he knew he wanted to go international as well as help connect young children with permanent homes.
He first went to Cherkasy in 2016, where he took the kids, jumping for his attention and excited for their outing, to the movies.
“I never did get to see the movie,” he said. “I was totally in tears, pretty much the whole time. But I tried not to show it. It’s just tough. I mean, as with any orphan, you know, you realize there’s so much of a strike against them, and you just want to provide them the love that they need.”
Why Ukraine? He is not sure, though he said his religion informs his draw to public service.
“I can’t really tell you what pulled me there, but … I think there’s just a lot of love that’s needed in this world,” he said. “So I guess, for me, it just turned out to be Ukraine, and so I’ve kind of stuck with that all along.”
