Chapter Ten
Linda
Wright
That same day, Nov. 7, while Daniel was rambling around the woods, I received an email from a Linda Wright who lived in the Midwest. It would change us forever, though of course neither of us knew it at the time.
Linda wrote and said she had been given our email from Wendy Stamper. She had been told by the agency that her daughter, Yekaterina, was bundled together on her referral video with a little baby boy.
The children were indistinguishable except for their genitalia and their
medicals were exactly the same. Could
she give me a call to compare what we had been told about our children,
especially the medicals?
Certainly, I wrote back, and gave her my telephone number. It was strange because it was a Sunday I actually had off.
Linda called me and we spoke for a few minutes. She was a single businesswoman who had signed up with BBAS to do a Russian adoption in January 1999.
I asked her how she had hooked up with Denise and she told me that she had been watching a segment about Russian adoption on CNN one day. The segment had featured the adoption of twins from Russia, and had touted the Los Niños agency.
She had sent away for information from Los Niños, but never heard back from them. She was on the Internet one day and did the same thing we did, contacting Denise after reading all the glowing references posted about BBAS.
Her court date was Friday, Nov. 26, a week after ours. Curiously, she was to stay at another hotel, the Nichols.
As previously
noted, she had also requested a second video of her baby, but never received
one, whereas we had been cajoled into asking for a second one. She wondered if
we could get together with the babies in Perm and help one another out.
I said that I would be delighted and looked forward to seeing her there.
She said she was excited about adopting Yekaterina, whose name would be
changed to Katelyn, but the trip to Russia seemed daunting.
I would email her a few more times before we were to leave.
Linda Wright, Daniel and I would all meet face to face on Thursday, Nov. 25, 1999
— Thanksgiving night in a hotel lobby in Perm, Russia.
In the interim, we were hit with another barrage of paperwork — updated post
placement statements from Family Focus that had to be N/C/A’ed, all within two
days of us leaving. We ran around
like maniacs packing, contacting Family Focus, calling for our visas (which
arrived with incorrect dates, but we’d only find that out later) and
collecting a measly Christmas care package for Anguel.
BBAS had organized an orphanage Christmas present drive for the kids in Bulgaria. Parents were encouraged to send a gift along to their referrals and Denise would take them along. Denise would be leaving for Bulgaria on Dec. 8.
Poor Anguel was only to receive a
pittance from us — crackers, candy, markers and a coloring book.
We literally sent Anguel’s gifts to BBAS hours before we boarded the
Delta Airlines flight to Moscow from JFK.
It was also during this mad rush that we learned that Denise Hubbard’s
daughter Emily was having surgery on her eyes. I sent Denise a “hang in there, hope everything goes well” letter
because I knew she was very worried about Emily.
We were later informed that the operation went well.
A few days before we left, Daniel received a telephone call from Wendy instructing us to Fed Ex BBAS some more major money — $5,600. The piper was indeed being paid.
This call came seemingly out of the blue — why did we have to send the money so close to traveling? Why had it not been requested sooner?
Dazed and working on autopilot, we sent a check in that amount to BBAS
three days before we left for Moscow. Who
and where did this money go to? We still don’t know.
On Nov. 15, before we left for Daniel’s mothers house in New Jersey, where we would spend the night before she and his stepfather drove us to JFK for our flight to Moscow, we checked our email one last time.
I found it odd that BBAS did not request any contact information from us in case of an emergency; I barely could tell our families which hotel we were staying at. Therefore, I emailed Wendy a few “emergency” contacts just in case anything happened to us while in Perm.
After all that happened, I wonder if Wendy Stamper even bothered to read this email, and why BBAS didn’t request this information of its clients previous to their leaving.