COSTA MESA : Three Polish Orphans Get New Home

It’s been a long time since Karon Wells has heard the patter of little feet or the shouts of children playing around her house. These days, however, her abode is the scene of children shouting in Polish--a language Wells doesn’t even know--while they play.

Wells has adopted three siblings from a Polish orphanage. Anna Violetta, 9, Robert, 6, and Paul, 5, arrived last week at Los Angeles International Airport after a 30-hour flight.

Wells said the establishment in January of a Polish cental adoption commission has made it easier for Americans to receive Polish children. But more than 100 children remain at the Lublin orphanage where she found her family, she said. “I spent a lot of time at that orphanage,” Wells said. “There are a lot of kids over there.”

Her children are quickly embracing Southern California, although they have only a sketchy understanding of some of its institutions. Asked if she knew about Disneyland, Anna Violetta told Wells, “A big mouse lives there and they sing songs.”

A suggestion of going to McDonald’s for lunch brought shouts from the three children.

Wells said she will place the children in public schools. Wells, a speech therapist who holds a certificate as an English-as-a-second-language teacher, said she expects them to be competent at English within six months.

Already the children have learned some important words. “Cookies,” Robert shouted at snack time. When he and his siblings blew bubbles in the back yard, they happily repeated the words “bubbles, bubbles.”

The children were accompanied on their trip to America by a Polish judge who was instrumental in completing the adoption process, Wells said.

Though Wells, 40, has a college-age daughter of her own, she wanted to have more children. Perhaps that’s because she had five siblings, she said. So in 1992, she began to investigate adoption. Because she is single, she was told it would be almost impossible to adopt an American baby, she said. Her mother is Polish, and so Wells began to inquire about adopting children from that country.

Eventually, she found three children who had been orphans for four years. Wells said that Polish children are rarely adopted by foreigners, and the process can be difficult. Only children who have not found a Polish home for six months will be up for adoption, according to the American embassy in Warsaw.

“Polish people have a lot of pride,” Wells said.

Wells’ excitement about adoption has spread. The same airplane that carried her children also brought an 11-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy to her sister, Brenda Wells-Brown in Charlotte, N.C. Wells said she met the older children, orphans for eight years, at the same Lublin orphanage where her children stayed.

During three trips to Poland, Wells and the judge, who is named Anna, became close friends. Anna, who asked that her last name not be used, took vacation time to go on a holiday in Poland with Wells and the children and now will spend three weeks in Costa Mesa.

“The adoption would not have occurred had it not been for Anna,” Wells said. Though Anna spoke no English before meeting Wells last September, she has learned quickly and now translates some things to the children.

A bilingual high school student who immigrated from Poland as a child has also come to help Wells and her children communicate.

Wells said she hopes other people who want to adopt internationally will be encouraged by her success. She said the American embassy in Poland helped her and said that’s often the best place to start in any country to learn about adoption policies.

“I know this is very, very good for these children,” said Anna, as she watched them play. “It’s an ideal situation.”