Adopting a New World

When 5-year-old Vika Vladimirova stepped off an airplane four days ago, she didn’t know what it was like to have parents or a loving home. She came from an orphanage in her native country of Kazakhstan tired, terrified and wearing the only clothes she owned--two sets on top of each other.

By Tuesday, she wore a perfectly matching outfit while she clung to the side of a woman she called mama. She basked in the warmth of a Southern California summer day, giggling and shrieking with delight as she playfully blasted other youngsters with her colorful plastic water gun.

The organizers of Kidsave International call that a summer miracle. The nonprofit group brought 250 Russian orphans to the United States this year to spend the summer with American families with hopes of the children’s adoption into those homes.

Vika, a Kazakh girl of Russian heritage, is one of 15 Russian orphans living with Southern California families as part of the organization’s Summer Miracles program. So far, the group has focused on abandoned children in Russia, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics in central Asia who are housed in institutions without the resources to provide decent food, shelter or clothing.

That Vika doesn’t speak a word of English doesn’t faze Thousand Oaks resident Chris Wendoloski or her husband, John, who hope to adopt her. John has some Russian heritage, and both said they had always wanted to adopt from overseas. They found Kidsave after watching a segment on a local news channel.

“It’s hard to do it as an individual, and this was a way to help someone more unfortunate,” John Wendoloski said.

The children in the program will stay in the United States for six weeks, giving the families ample time to decide if adoption is the right step, said Sarah Stanton of Kidsave. She said the organization placed 97% of the children in homes last summer, the program’s debut year.

Stanton said Kidsave still needs families willing to adopt a child this year.

She called Kidsave “a heartwarming program,” but it’s not an easy process, the Wendoloskis said.

And the most difficult part awaits. When the six-week period ends Aug. 19, they will have to send Vika back to an orphanage in Kazakhstan where she will stay for about three months. If the family decides to adopt her, the process will have to be completed there.

“It’s going to be very difficult to let her go, especially if we get very attached,” Chris Wendoloski said. “But we signed a paper in the beginning saying we would send her back. We have to and we will.”

Right now, language has been the most difficult part of the getting-acquainted process, and even that the family has taken in stride.

“There’s a lot of charades and pantomiming,” Chris Wendoloski said. “My 2-year-old speaks baby talk, and Vika speaks Russian, so we figure, what’s the difference? We can’t understand either of them.”

Kidsave provides translators on call 24 hours a day. But so far, getting Vika to reply to the voice on the other end of the phone has been unsuccessful.

“We don’t know if she’s just being shy or if she’s never actually spoken into a phone before and doesn’t know what to do with it,” John Wendoloski said.

Vika also suffers from separation anxiety--sobbing or pouting any time “Mama” leaves her side. Kidsave requires the children to go to a day camp so they get the “full American experience” and interact with other children, Chris Wendoloski said. But so far, Vika has not wanted to.

“She’s afraid we’re going to leave her there,” Chris Wendoloski said.

Zandy Wells, director of the Little Folks camp sponsored by the city of Thousand Oaks, said the other children have responded to Vika, despite the language difference.

“She’s a very sweet spirit,” Wells said, adding that time will ease Vika’s transition.

Vika’s hesitation presumably stems from her past, which John Wendoloski said he and his wife know little about.

At the orphanage, the children “had little food or stimulation,” he said. That’s why the family showers Vika with love and fun while she’s here. She’s flipping through channels on the television set (she likes cartoons), swimming in the backyard pool (something she’d never done before) and shopping like crazy.

And if Vika can’t verbalize how much she appreciates the experience, she makes it clear in her own way.

When a translator asked Vika over the phone if she liked living with the Wendoloskis, she said nothing. But soon a shy smile crept over her face, her eyes lit up and she reached her arms around Chris Wendoloski for a bear hug.

“I guess that was her way of saying yes,” Wendoloski said.

FYI

For more information about Kidsave, call (310) 559-7995 or log on to https://www.kidsaveinternational.org.