PETALUMA, CALIF. -- — Debra Zapata says she never intended to spark an international uproar. She just wanted the best for the young woman she invited into her home for nine summers in a project to help victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
So last month, when 24 other youths in the program boarded a plane home to Belarus, Zapata followed her motherly instincts and allowed 16-year-old Tanya Kazyra to stay behind.
Reaction was swift, angry and vocal.
Other host families from the Chernobyl Children's Project picketed her house and demanded to speak to the girl. Government officials called from Minsk and Washington. Two Belarus envoys visited the girl, eyeing her sternly across a table and trying to lure her home. They invoked her elderly grandmother, promised her a free house and college education -- and warned that Zapata's gambit could jeopardize the entire humanitarian program.
"The whole scene was like television," Zapata said. "It didn't feel like reality."
In a case reminiscent of Elian Gonzalez -- the 6-year-old boy who after a heated custody battle was returned to his father in Cuba in 2000 -- a foreign-born child now stands at the center of a tense diplomatic controversy.
Everyone, it seems, wants Tanya to adhere to the terms of the program and return to her homeland: project managers, Belarusian officials and the authors of the letters that arrive at the Zapata home every day. Some call Zapata and her husband, Manuel, selfish and shortsighted. A government television and print media campaign in Belarus has labeled them kidnappers.
But the couple, parents of two boys and a girl of their own, aren't backing down. Neither is Tanya. "I want to stay," she said.
Each year, 1,400 children from the Chernobyl region who were affected by the 1986 nuclear accident are offered six-week summer respites with U.S. host families, as well as health, vision and dental care. Tanya was one of 25 youths to visit the Bay Area as part of a local program affiliated with the effort.
Zapata, who works as a nurse, says she's afraid to surrender the girl back to her grim existence in Belarus.
A court long ago removed Tanya from the care of her alcoholic parents, and the grandmother with whom she lives is ill, Zapata said. Tanya insists her grandmother has encouraged her to remain in the U.S.
