Save a Child: Utah group works to find homes for Ukrainian orphans

The children arrive from Ukraine on a warm October night, 31 orphans bundled in winter jackets. By the time they finally get off the plane in Salt Lake City they have traveled for a day and a half, and some of them have been too excited to sleep for days before that.

Igor is the one in the blue parka, the boy who looks down at the floor and doesn't smile. In the group photos taken at the airport — 31 orphans and 24 American families — Igor is the one who has his hand in front of his face so no one can see he is crying. Behind him is Katie Ross, who wishes she knew the Ukrainian for "everything is going to be fine."

Or at any rate Katie hopes everything will be fine. She has not yet realized that like any love story worth telling, this one will be complicated.

The children have arrived courtesy of Utah-based Save A Child Foundation and will stay in the homes of families in Utah, Idaho and Colorado for 19 days. The program is billed as an educational opportunity, a chance for Ukrainian orphans to experience America. The families are called "hosts."

But there is also an unofficial subtext: the hope that the children will find permanent homes here, if not with the hosts then perhaps with another family. The children range in age from 6 to 15, which means they're not likely to be adopted straight from the orphanages, because most adoptive parents want babies. But it also means that they aren't yet 16, which is the age when orphanages in Ukraine send them off to fend for themselves.

Eighty percent of Ukrainian orphans who age out will at some point end up alcoholics, prostitutes or in jail, says Vern Garrett, who with his wife, Nanette, founded Save A Child. The Garretts view their program as perhaps the children's last chance to find a stable family.

So on a Saturday night in mid-October, an exhausted 9-year-old Igor and his 7-year-old brother, Andrew, move into Katie and Shawn Ross' comfortable house in Draper. There is a bedroom just for them, with a queen-size bed. On the bed are matching pairs of new pajamas. There is a living room and a family room and two playrooms.

It's amazing, Katie thinks, how much Igor looks like her husband. And already Faith, the Rosses' 2-year-old, is calling Igor and Andrew "my boys." The day after his tearful arrival, Igor is eager to wrestle with Shawn in the family room, to jump on the trampoline, to study Faith's alphabet books.