The ‘Papa’ of Ukraine
Meet Serge Zevlever, a 62 year-old adoption facilitator from Ukraine who dedicated 25 years of his life to helping orphans, mostly with special needs, find loving homes in America and Canada.
Serg was born in Ukraine and immigrated to the United States with his wife and children as refugees. They settled in St. Louis and Serg became a US citizen, splitting his his time between America and Ukraine, where he led an adoption team out of Kyiv, connecting American and Canadian families with Ukrainian orphans. His speciality was helping orphans with Down Syndrome, special medical needs, and teenagers.
Serg guided thousands of families; representing them in court, helping translate and providing steady support through the emotional roller-coaster of overseas adoption. He fought tirelessly for them, refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer and was often described as “the equivalent of a mob boss in the adoption world”. Underneath his world-worn exterior was a man who loved his job and his fierce devotion to saving the babies and children that most of the world ignored, resulted in the placement of 3,500 children from orphanages in Ukraine into loving overseas families.
Just over two weeks ago, Serge got the last child adopted out of Ukraine and despite his dual citizenship, remained in his homeland to continue rescuing orphans who he knew would become unadoptable under Russian rule. While seeking cover at a bomb shelter with his wife and stepson near their apartment in Kyiv, Serg was shot and killed.
Many of the families and children he helped still refer to Serg as ‘papa’ and his daughter Alisa Sanda believes his greatest reward was seeing children placed into the arms of loving families. “My dad knew what would happen if those kids were not taken and given a good home. He fought for those kids just like every single one was his own.”
