A Young Russian Joins the Family, Holding the Secrets of 3 Hard Years

Burbank City Councilman Dave Golonski went to Moscow just before Thanksgiving to bring home an adopted baby.

Instead he brought home an impish 3-year-old who bosses the family dogs around in Russian and won’t let his new mother out of his sight.

Barbara, 32, and Dave, 34, as well as Barbara’s youngsters from a previous marriage--Russell, 10, and Randi, 12--say John Vasily Golonski, who just turned 3, will make this Christmas their busiest ever.

It all started a few years ago, when Barbara and Dave were newlyweds. They talked about having their own child naturally but decided to adopt instead.

“With all the abandoned and needy children in the world, it seemed like a good idea,” says Barbara. Her new husband was enthusiastic and, after initial doubts, the youngsters added their approval.

The couple tried to adopt locally and also tried Romania but those experiences were daunting, to say the least.

“People who tried to bring orphans out of Romania were handed one heartbreak after another,” Barbara says. “They would think they had a child, be ready to board an airplane and then told the rules had changed and that they did not.”

The Golonskis paid an agency in Tustin about $9,000 to help them find a Russian baby. “We were told there were hundreds of children in orphanages in what was then the Soviet Union whose parents simply couldn’t afford to care for them,” Dave Golonski says.

“We in the West tend to think of Russia as being a world military power, but domestically they are a Third World country at best,” Barbara adds.

The Golonskis were told by the agency that they had a 1-year-old ready for adoption. The couple went out and bought a crib and prepared the baby’s room. Then, after receiving the child’s picture and imagining the child as part of the family for months, they were told the baby had been adopted by someone else. Barbara says she will never get over the feeling of loss.

Then, she and Dave were told that another infant was ready for adoption from an orphanage in Rostov-on-Don outside of Moscow.

Dave took a plane to Russia and Barbara didn’t hear from him for more than a week.

When he was finally able to get a call through to her, he said, in effect, there is good news and bad news.

The bad news was that there was no baby. The good news was that Dave was coming home with a 2-year-old boy.

The child’s Russian parents had been unable to care for him or his five brothers and sisters.

Two of the children, including John’s twin, had died. The other brothers and sisters were sent to orphanages and put up for adoption by a state welfare agency.

When he called home, Dave told Barbara that the child had lots of problems but they had to adopt him. “I took one look at John and he just broke my heart,” Dave says.

This story does not have an immediately happy ending.

Little John is having understandable problems adjusting and sobs piteously when Barbara leaves his sight for a moment.

“He doesn’t understand Christmas. He has never seen a television. He doesn’t know what the toys we buy for him are for. He never saw a birthday cake before,” Barbara says.

The child is taking medication to relieve him of parasites and still wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.

Barbara and John sit up with him. He is given to emotional tantrums and, weighing in at 20 pounds sopping wet, he doesn’t understand that he can eat as much as he wants at meals and hides food all over the house.

The child is terrified of all the new things in his life but like any 3-year-old is testing his boundaries. The Golonskis have been patient. The much-beleaguered family dogs, Dog and Helen, are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

“This has been a tremendous commitment for our family, and we know there will be hard times while John continues his adjustment,” Barbara says.

“But we thank God for giving him to us so we can help and love him, and for what he has taught us about caring for one another and what is important in life,” she says.

Making a Return Visit to the Women’s Care Cottage

There will be a special gathering in North Hollywood on Thursday.

An alumnae meeting, of sorts, for a special sorority of women and their children.

The women at one time were living proof of what is currently known in sociological circles as the feminization of poverty.

They are about 80 formerly homeless who have been given a new start by an odd group called the Valley Friends of Homeless Women and Children, odd because it was cobbled together by an assortment of San Fernando Valley activists who simply wanted to help get women and children off the streets.

The organization runs a daytime drop-in center in a modest Van Nuys bungalow with showers and laundry, where women can get a hot meal, clothing and counseling and maybe take a nap.

This year the day center will serve about 6,000 homeless women and children, triple the number of only two years ago, says Carolyn Blashek, the group’s president.

The organization also runs a child care center in the north Valley. Since opening in 1992, it has offered free day care to 46 low-income families. There are about 100 on the center’s waiting list, according to Blashek.

The group’s most amazing accomplishment, however, is the Women’s Care Cottage’s North Hollywood residence, which offers a new start in life to women who have become homeless. This year transitional housing will be provided for more than 100 homeless women and children in a two-story home the organization has paid off, Blashek says.

The party Thursday will bring together the women and children who formerly stayed at the home with those currently in residence.

It will be, according to author and board member Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, an inspirational time for both.

Hailey, who wrote “A Woman of Independent Means,” says there will be a dinner, catered by Along Came Mary, as well as gifts for the children of past and current residents.

She says the best part of the annual gathering, however, is when current residents, trying to get back on their feet, hear about the success stories of former residents. “It really gives them hope,” she says.

Thank You Notes

The holiday season seems like a good time to thank the readers who write in about the Chronicle column.

Many want to suggest people or things for column items. Others want to comment on the column itself. A recent note from Tony Blake of Encino offered some food for thought.

Blake wrote that he has read the paper less and less because “I realized that after I read it, I’d usually feel miserable. Bottom line, the news is depressing. And these days, times are tough enough, so who needs that?”

He went on to say that he happened to read a Chronicle column about all the random acts of kindness that seemed to be proliferating in the Valley. “I suddenly realized I was experiencing good feelings. There you were telling me there actually are people in the world doing good.”

That, as it happens, is what the Chronicle is basically about: Proving that good news is not necessarily an oxymoron.

No one is more aware of how bad the news is than those who report it, but reporters work with what is news, they don’t make it. In good times and bad, that is their job.

This column, on the other hand, is allowed to be relentlessly upbeat, so if you know of people who have nothing better to do than provide a chuckle or help their neighbors, feel free to keep turning them over.

Overheard:

“I think Santa Claus is divorced from his wife because I saw him kissing the girl who takes the pictures.”

--5-year-old to his mother at Sherman Oaks Fashion Square