'It was a big risk': Mom flees Ukraine with daughter and disabled son
Liudmilya Samokhvalova held her son Mark upright on a sunny porch in Nebraska. The 10-year-old is nonverbal and has dystonia – he cannot walk. The serenity around them starkly contrasts with the world they escaped only months ago.
"You feel every second that they can bomb your house," said Samokhvalova, a Ukrainian native and mother of two.
Samohvalova would carry Mark down the stairs to the bomb shelter when the sirens sounded. His 6-year-old sister Yeva was close behind.
"Sometimes I feel like I want to scream. It was so difficult," Samokhvalova said. “It’s difficult to lift Mark all the time.”
Weeks into the war, the young mother lifted Mark again, headed for the Polish border, not the basement.
"I have not a choice,” Samokhvalova said. “I just have not a choice."
They left Poltava, a city between Kyiv and Kharkiv with Samokhvalova’s aging parents. But a different danger followed them.
"[Mark] has epilepsy,” Samokhvalova said. “And I have no medicine. If something happened, it was a big risk."
A risk she felt obligated to take.
They took what they could carry, strapped Mark’s stroller to the roof of the car and drove for five days, with Mark lying across the backseat.
"Just scared for not even you, for kids," Samokhvalova said.
They spent months in Poland, wondering when, and if, they'd return home.
"I can't find any words to describe how difficult it was," said Samokhvalova’s mother, Tamara.
The family dared to hope that they might find a new home, at least for now, in America.
“I still don't believe I'm here, it's still shock," Samokhvalova said.
One Omaha man made the journey possible.
"It's amazing step, what he did to us," a tearful Samokhvalova said.
While Andrew DeFonzo is away on business, his Millard house is usually empty. Now, however, it is a refuge filled with toys and medicine.
"It worked out perfectly so they could come over to the house, stay there, get some much-needed comfort and sense of safety," DeFonzo said.
DeFonzo met Samokhvalova online while working abroad a few years ago. They didn't meet in person until the family stepped foot on U.S. soil.
"When this came along the stars just kind of aligned," said DeFonzo, who is serving as the family’s sponsor — anyone coming to the U.S. under the Biden administration's ‘Uniting for Ukraine’ program needs one. "It's a much bigger thing than just getting them over here and finding a place to live for them."
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