After escaping Ukraine, EWU’s Chris Hansen and his family reflect on a year of American exploration and adjustment

Once safely away from the war zone in Ukraine last March, Chris Hansen had one critical mission on his mind.

“I really wanted to show these girls America,” he said of his Ukrainian wife, Victoria, and her daughter, Sonja. “It’s important for them.”

A year later, they’ve seen plenty of the Western and Southwestern portions of the United States together. Meanwhile, in their homeland, war rages on .

Victoria and Sonja are among 3 million Ukrainian refugees living in other countries since the war started one year ago. And, despite being out of harm’s way in America, there is still a stark reality for Victoria, 41, and Sonja, who turned 20 earlier this month.

“It turns out you need to start life from scratch,” Victoria said via text translation. “It’s very difficult.”

Hansen, a former Eastern Washington University assistant football coach who grew up in Spangle, was in Kharkiv with his new wife and Sonja when Russia invaded their country last February. After an excruciating two-week ordeal, the three of them were able to flee the country via Poland in early March.

Eventually, Hansen helped secure them visas to come to the United States. They even got to visit Disneyland.

But in coming to the United States, they left behind a lot. More than a lot. Victoria’s mother still lives in the same village where Victoria was raised and Sonja was born.

“I really like America, but of course, I miss Ukraine,” Victoria said. “My mom is safe for now, but I’m still worried. I hope we get to visit her this year.”

Hansen said his mother-in-law is “in a fairly safe area,” the village of Teranovka, about 35 miles south of Kharkiv.

“No bombs have been dropped there – yet. But they do lose power,” he said.

Victoria and her mother Facetime a few times a week, Hansen said, “but her mother is not going to leave.”

And Sonja, who should be just starting her life as a young adult in Ukraine, left behind a job and many friends. “She’ll have these nights where she’ll stay up all night just talking to her friends back in Ukraine,” Hansen said.

Sonja has found some Ukrainian friends in America, but her mother still sees how difficult the move has been on her.

“I see how hard it is for her without her friends, work and also without documents, since they are in the process. Sonja misses Ukraine and her friends very much.”

But Hansen said the chances of them returning to Ukraine are remote, at least for now. They were encouraged last fall to hear that Ukraine had pushed the Russians out of territory North of Kharkiv, which is just 30 miles from the border. More captured cities were regained soon after that, but since then, the war is seemingly at a stalemate.

“You could do it – you could get into the country, you could drive across it and you can get into Kharkiv,” Hansen said. “But why would you? If it was to go get Victoria’s mother, I’d do that. But just to visit or see the country, it’s just too dangerous now.”

Hansen said they want to return after the war “in a heartbeat,” if nothing else to claim their possessions. They continue to pay rent, and Victoria has been in contact with the landlord of their apartment there.

Hansen still spends a couple of hours each day keeping up on the war.

“I’m still invested in what’s going on there – it’s still like a home to me.”

Looking back, he said he’s amazed by the “different world” they went through.

“I’m not haunted by it at all,” he said. “It’s kind of the opposite … When I look back on it, I was very calm and didn’t have fear. I always felt we were going to be just fine.”

He admits having the Russians so close made him nervous, especially in the early days of the war.

“And on about Day 3, they got in there – there weren’t many, but they did get in there.”

What he witnessed after that still floors him a year later.

“It’s like they pushed them out of Washington and Idaho – that’s how far back they moved them,” he recalls of last fall’s Ukrainian offensive.

The battles Victoria and Sonja face on a daily basis are many, but unlike other refugees, they have always had Hansen to lean on. Still, there are language barriers and societal challenges galore, and to pay bills, you need to work.

“At the moment, I cannot fully enjoy life in the USA because I have English at an elementary level,” said Victoria, who had worked in a railway passenger transportation company. “My profession, in which I worked all my life in Ukraine, is not in the USA.”

Sonja had never been to a dentist’s office, Hansen said, and Victoria had only been once. When Sonja got a toothache, they paid a $3,500 dental bill for a treatment that Hansen said the two mentioned would cost $20 in Ukraine. Since then, they’ve found services for Ukrainians, including a dental school they can go to and receive free care.

That support is happening worldwide, including by Thrive International in Spokane. The group has turned a hotel on Fourth Street near downtown into a home for refugees, with a large Ukrainian contingent.

“That support in Spokane is so important for those people to be able to live,” Hansen said. “They don’t have $3,500 to spend on a dental bill.”

Victoria is in the process of obtaining a Green Card, which will allow her to work and live in the United States for two years. During that time, she and Hansen will start the process for permanent residency. Sonja is in the United States via a temporary work visa and is also hoping to obtain a Green Card.

Once safely out of Ukraine last year, the trio settled in the Czech Republic where a friend of Hansen’s in the fishing industry in Alaska provided a place to stay for a few months. Paperwork followed in order to allow Victoria and Sonja to come to the U.S.

It wasn’t until May that Hansen returned to his job with Bristol Bay Seafood Co., in the fishing village of False Pass in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.

Victoria and Sonja joined him for the summer fishing season.

The women worked in the company’s processing plant while Hansen continued to recruit and manage fishermen. He said Victoria and Sonja “fell in love with the place,” where whales and an abundance of sea lions were easy to spot from their waterfront apartment, and bear sightings are frequent.

False Pass is normally a town of 38 people, Hansen said, but grows by about 425 during fishing season. The town’s only grocery store, he said, is a “7-11 on steroids.” Once the fishing season ends, Hansen said all but one of the company’s employees leaves.

Hansen, Victoria and Sonja remained there until the end of August, then spent some time in Anchorage before returning to Seattle, where Bristol Bay Seafood is based.

Since then, Hansen has been showing them the sights, starting in Western Washington.

Stops included the Space Needle and a visit to Bellingham and Ferndale, where one of Hansen’s daughters lives. After a quick trip to Houston for an immigration meeting for Sonja, the trio got in Hansen’s 2015 Town and Country minivan and headed south in late September.

The trek started with stops at Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens, then an extended stay in Camas, Washington, to visit Hansen’s brother, Aaron, who also played football at EWU.

Eventually, Chris, Victoria and Sonja made it to California where they visited, among other sites and cities, San Francisco, the Monterey Peninsula and San Luis Obispo.

Eventually, Hansen took Victoria and Sonja to Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood.

“When we walked into Disneyland, I was crying,” Hansen said. “It meant a lot to me to show them that park. Victoria did one roller coaster and was done, but Sonja ate it all up. Everything else was awesome.”

One of Hansen’s daughters lives in San Clemente, so they spent some time there.

The trio then headed East and visited Joshua Tree National Park, the Grand Canyon in Arizona and the Roswell Museum and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.

“When we traveled, I liked San Francisco, Seattle, California and also Texas,” Victoria said of her first taste of America.

They went to Texas, where Hansen’s brother, Eric, lives. They’ve been headquartered since then in Woodlands, just outside of Houston, and have visited Galveston Island and other Texas cities. Recently, they attended the Cirque du Soleil KOOZA show in Houston.

“It was two full months in a minivan, Airbnb’s and hotels,” Hansen said. “We might get in the van and our next overnight stop would be four hours away.” Four hundred or 500 miles might take three days. “We saw every sight we could see.”

Hansen said the visit to San Francisco was particularly noteworthy, because Victoria and Sonja were looking forward to seeing the Golden Gate Bridge . But the bridge was fogged in, and there was also an air show during “Fleet Week” in San Francisco, which closed down a portion of Fisherman’s Wharf, where their hotel was .

Eventually the fog lifted, but not before the trio had flashbacks to Ukraine.

“We couldn’t get within 4 miles of our hotel, and it’s still foggy and the air show is going on,” Hansen recalled. “We’re walking along and we can hear the jets, but you can’t see them. And it’s loud. It absolutely was like being in Ukraine again during the war. You could hear the Russian jets, but you rarely saw them.”

In Los Angeles, Sonja wanted to see the famed Hollywood sign.

“We were in L.A. for three days before she got to see it,” Hansen laughed. “She just drove me crazy asking me, ‘When are we going to see the Hollywood sign?’”

They were the same all-American sites Hansen was excited to see as a kid.

“I really appreciated our trip and what I was able to introduce them to,” he added. “It was absolutely amazing.”

Before Hansen departs to Alaska and Seattle for the fishing season, the trio will attend the Houston Livestock and Rodeo and are hoping to make a trip east, possibly to New Orleans. Depending on the status of their Green Cards, Victoria and Sonja may join him again this summer for the bustling fishing season.

For now, they have settled into an apartment in Woodlands, which they furnished with visits to Goodwill and Craigslist.

“It’s kind of like we’re on vacation all the time,” Hansen said. “It’s the nicest place I’ve ever lived in.”

Victoria said she’s grateful to Hansen and his family for their support.

“We had to go through a lot at the initial stage of our married life, but we are strong,” she said.

“They love it here,” Hansen added. “They really do.”