By Dennis Romboy, and Lois M. Collins, and Elizabeth Stuart
Deseret News
Peter Meuzelaar's heart is beating 90 miles a minute. He is so completely drained after a two-week-long battle to get his three adopted children out of earthquake-ravished Haiti, that he doesn't dare believe.
Can it be true?
"It's true, Pete," another adoptive parent's voice squawks through the phone. "I am sitting on the plane in Haiti with your three kids and my two girls. They're shutting the door in 10 minutes. We're coming home."
Meuzelaar drops the phone. He's out of his seat, running through the office.
"My kids — my kids are coming home," he tells his boss, the guy in the next cubicle, anyone who will listen.
The whole office in Park City is clapping. Meuzelaar can't stop grinning.
Sixty-six Haitian orphans, including Meuzelaar's three children, arrived in Miami at 7:10 p.m. Friday. Their adoptive parents, most of whom live in Utah and Idaho, spent the evening scrambling to grab last-minute flights to meet them. For many Utah parents, the plane's landing was a joyful ending to a years-long journey to adopt.
"It's just unreal," said Meuzelaar, 39, of Heber City, who has been trying to adopt Jordan, D'Joe and Abigaelle for 21/2 years now. "It's just been so long. It's been one delay after another. I can't believe they're finally here on American soil."
11 p.m. Thursday
The plane she and other parents had painstakingly raised $10,000 to charter, had just 90 minutes on the ground according to Haitian airport regulations. It would no doubt depart without its precious cargo.
Nonetheless, Rosenlof said, "I went to bed with my phone."
And then: good news.
Ninety minutes came and went. The Sun Country 737 was still in Port-au-Prince. The six-person crew, following the lead of pilot Jake Yockers, would not leave Haiti without the children, they said. Period.
"We're all in it for the kids," said First Officer Mike Pappenfus. "It was the right thing to do."
Rosenlof declared her undying love for the plane's pilot when she discovered the development. Another jubilant parent warned, "If he walks off that plane, he's going to have a 300 pound man running right at him cause I'm going to give him love."
Hopeful, Chareyl Moyes, Wasatch International Adoptions program manager for Haiti, loaded the children into tap-taps, Haiti's brightly colored little buses, and took a bouncy ride to the airport.
8:30 a.m. Friday
Stephen Studdert, a former Reagan administration official, who had arrived on the same plane with the Utah Hospital Task Force, took charge of the situation "like a steamroller," witnesses observed.
The children had already been granted humanitarian parole. Armed with a sheaf of letters from U.S. and United Nations officials encouraging a decision to allow the children to leave, Studdert pushed for the needed signature.
As he waited, agitated, outside the Haitian president's temporary office, a semi-standing, former police station, an Irish police chaplain noticed Studdert.
"You're having a hard time, aren't you?" the chaplain observed, then, taking Studdert's hands, he prayed.
It may have worked, parents speculate. "God has had his hands all over this," Rosenlof said.
"The president of Haiti couldn't have been nicer," Studdert told the Deseret News immediately after speaking with President Rene Preval. "We are just waiting for the prime minister to return (he was reportedly in Canada). We have gone through all (the paperwork) and the ambassador has signed all of them."
9 a.m. Friday
Crowded into a red-and-white striped tent in an empty terminal, the children munched on cookies, seemingly oblivious to their plight.
"The papers are signed!" news came.
There was crying. There was screaming. There was laughing.
In Utah, parents safely remained skeptical.
"I'm not holding my breath yet," said David Aitken, an Eagle Mountain businessman who is adopting three children from Haiti. "We've been so close so many times in the past 48 hours. I'm almost afraid to hope. I don't think I can take it any more."
Rosenlof noted, "It seems too good to be true."
And it was — almost.
Once the prime minister signed, Studdert, aided by Moyes, still had to rush to the U.S. embassy to obtain visas and then begin the process of matching children to completed documents.
To their horror, they discovered, several files had been "misplaced."
Sixteen children would not be allowed to leave.
Rosenlof could barely make out Moyes' sobbing phone call.
"This is awful," she said. "My heart is just breaking."
3:30 p.m. Friday
Moyes, of Ogden, stood on the flight line next to Homeland Security and U.S. immigration officials and checked names off a list as they went through the packet prepared for each child. Many of them are being adopted in the Intermountain West, with some headed for Utah families.
The list, which had taken volunteers days to obtain, appeared surprisingly unofficial.
It was a computer printout of names of children cleared to leave. At the bottom, the prime minister drew a line and signed his name. Each manila folder, stamped "Evacuated orphan," bore a child's photo, Haitian name and, on some in parentheses, an American name. Inside are the "humanitarian parole" documents.
4:20 p.m. Friday
Moyes, eyes still wet, ushered 66 of the children onto the plane. Children whose paperwork was not selected stood by, stunned. One 14-year-old girl buried her head in her arm and cried.
In Utah, Aitken, broke down crying, too. One of his little boys, Fabrice, didn't make it onto the plane. How could he be happy two of his children were coming home when one, a kind-hearted little 8-year-old, remained homeless in Haiti, where food and water supplies were already dwindling?
"This has been unbelievably difficult," he said. "I am caught somewhere between devastation and elation."
7:10 p.m. — in Miami
The children, tired after a long, emotional day, were wide-eyed as they stepped onto American soil. One little girl smiled and giggled as she tested the conveyor belt on the moving walkway with her toe.In the airport's hectic customs area, children had their first taste of Americana: Red Cross volunteers handed them plush Mickey Mouse dolls. Workers also provided juice boxes, pudding and fruit snacks. Others changed diapers and escorted children to the bathroom.
Their parents in Utah continued to stress. After going through customs, the children were farmed out to foster homes. They will stay in Miami until the U.S. government has a chance to run background checks and confirm the adoption paperwork — a process that can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days."We have so much to be grateful for," Meuzelaar said, as he and his wife rushed to make travel arrangements to meet the children. "But it's not over yet."
Lindsey Crapo of Pocatello, right, kisses her adopted daughter at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as they prepare Friday to be evacuated to the United States after weeks of work to locate and bring home her adopted children.
Maudline Crapo weeps upon seeing the aircraft that will take her and her adoptive parents to the United States Friday at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Orphans sit on the tarmac at the airport Friday in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as they wait to be evacuated to their adoptive parents in the United States.
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Orphans sit on the tarmac at the airport Friday in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as they wait to be evacuated to their adoptive parents in the United States.
Chareyl Moyes becomes emotional at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday.
Holding onto a rope, children waiting to be evacuated to their adoptive parents in the United States walk along the tarmac at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday
Trevor Crapo gets a hug from an orphan at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday.
Jean-Tony tries on some sunglasses after arriving at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to be evacuated to his adoptive parents in the United States on Friday.
Holding onto a rope, children waiting to be evacuated to their adoptive parents in the United States walk along the tarmac at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday.
Col. Brandon Draper, originally of Midvale, holds a child at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as the group awaits approval for transport to the United States on Friday.
Naika, one of nearly 70 orphan children transported to their adoptive parents in the United States, cries while the children wait for final clearance to be evacuated at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday.
Orphans wait to be transported at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday
Holding onto a rope, children waiting to be evacuated to their adoptive parents in the United States walk along the tarmac at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday.
After hours of waiting for permission to depart, Abigaelle, one of nearly 70 orphan children to transported to their adoptive parents in the United States, waits with tired volunteers at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday.
Maudline Crapo, top right, sits with other children who are waiting to depart at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday.
After hours of waiting for permission, Nathalie, one of nearly 70 orphans awaiting transport to their adoptive parents in the United States, waits anxiously with her ear plugs and name wristband at the airport in Port-au-Prince.
Lindsay Crapo of Pocatello, Idaho, promises Belgarde that she will return for him after he was not cleared to leave Haiti with the other orphans on Friday.
Wisline from the Foyer de Sion Orphanage near Port-au-Prince reacts as she finds out she is not permitted to leave Haiti with the other orphans on Friday
Destine Gordon looks out the window from the aircraft that will transport her and her adoptive father and siblings to the United States from Haiti on Friday.
Henrick from the Foyer de Sion Orphanage peers out the window of an aircraft that will transport him to America from the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Friday.
Corrie McArthur expresses frustration outside the Port-au-Prince airport while waiting for clearance to transport orphans to their adoptive parents in the United States.
Trevor Crapo of Pocatello, Idaho, holds his newly adopted son and breathes easier after finally obtaining permission to transport him from the Foyer de Sion Orphanage in Port-au-Prince to the United States.
Lindsay Crapo of Pocatello, Idaho, kisses a child from her orphanage named Lovely, as she finds out she is not cleared to be transported to the United States.
Hans Mardy comforts Wisline as she finds out in Port-au-Prince she is not cleared to be transported to her adoptive parents in the United States.
Lindsay Crapo of Pocatello, Idaho, comforts Wisline as she finds out she is not cleared to be transported to her adoptive parents in the United States.
Lindsay Crapo of Pocatello, Idaho, holds Lovely, a child from the Foyer de Sion Orphanage, as she finds out that the girl and Belgarde, in red, are not cleared to be transported to their adoptive parents in the United States with the other orphans at the Port-au-Prince airport.
66 orphans from Haiti arrive Friday at Miami International Airport after hours of being held at the airport in Port-au-Prince.
Gordon, formerly of Ogden and now living in Bellingham, Wash., finally steps on U.S. soil with his adopted Haitian children. Sixty-six orphans from several orphanages in Haiti arrive on U.S. soil at Miami International Airport Friday after hours of being held at the airport in Port-au-Prince.
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