Free Where We Belong by Hoda Kotb Page B

wandering the streets and struggling to survive. By the end of dinner, Kathi was less skeptical and more interested in the idea of traveling to Haiti with Craig. But not just for him.
    “Kath is extremely independent,” Craig says. “There was something there for her, too.”
    Something that had always perplexed her.
    “From the time I was young, I remember driving up the highway in California and watching migrant workers work in the fields,” Kathi says, “and I would ask my parents, ‘How did they get that life and I got my life?’ The disparity in our world has always resonated in me. So, for me, getting to be involved with kids in Haiti? That would be incredible; I’d love to do that. It was just as much for me as it was for Craig and for us as a couple.”
    Over the next few days, Craig researched the country while Kathi looked into flights and hotels. Craig also scheduled an appointment for what he knew was inevitable but was extremely loathsome for his wife: shots.
    “I am not a needle person. To this day, I can’t even get Botox,” she says with a laugh, “because the few times I’ve gotten it, I passed out.”
    Craig had to carry her out afterward, but Kathi toughed out the onslaught of six shots, protection against everything from typhoid to rabies.
    That evening, Craig’s continued fact-finding mission online turned up a shocking and unexpected hurdle. The US embassy in Haiti had issued a high-severity travel warning and urged Americans to leave the country. Reasons for the warning ranged from well-armed gangs operating out of Port-au-Prince to ongoing security concerns, including “frequent kidnappings.” When Craig called Rick for his thoughts, he suggested Craig e-mail the minister working in Haiti. Immediately, Craig took Rick’s advice. The response back from Father Tom was disappointing. He confirmed that the security situation was indeed volatile and that the Juntunens should postpone their trip. Craig asked Kathi to come into his office; he had frustrating news to share, plus an idea to run by her. He told her of the trip-delaying travel warning, and then he dropped back again to throw a long ball.
    “What would you say if I said I might want to adopt a couple of kids?”
    A needle-weary Kathi did not mince words.
    “You hate kids.”
    Craig insisted he did not.
    Kathi began to cite evidence above and beyond the glaring exhibit A, his vasectomy. He refused to go to Disneyland with her. He threw his own tantrum when kids beside them misbehaved at restaurants. He barely survived Thanksgiving dinner with their nieces and nephews. She said she would love to adopt kids but felt it simply wasn’t a fit for him. Craig politely disengaged. He decided he’d put Kathi through enough for now and that a fun trip was in order. He booked a suite at Kathi’s favorite ski lodge in Deer Valley for the week ahead, in January 2006. Days before they left, Craig found a stack of paperwork on his desk with a note from Kathi. Next to a hand-drawn star on the top sheet she’d written: “This one looks good.”
    “It’s typical Kath,” Craig says. “She likes more information. She went and did her own research and then circled back.”
    She had researched international adoption organizations and agencies that specialized in placing children from Haiti.
    “And it just so happened that one of the organizations I had given him was headquartered right outside Salt Lake City near where we were going skiing,” Kathi says. “We both thought, What are the odds of that? ”
    Craig set up a meeting with the agency, which had overseen the construction six months earlier of an orphanage in a small village outside Port-au-Prince called Lamardelle. Twenty-two orphaned kids were housed there and the owners of the nonprofit had just begun matching approved families with children. Due to the months of travel warnings, they had not been to Haiti in more than a year. The owners told the couple that once travel