Warren County YMCA Executive Director and former Navy SEAL Thad Turner speaks during a January Whole Health meeting. Turner recently returned from a humanitarian mission to Moldova — which borders Ukraine. File photo

WARREN, Pa. — A recent humanitarian trip from Warren to eastern Europe brought some peace to some people on the outskirts of war.

Warren County YMCA Executive Director and former Navy SEAL Thad Turner — who has experience in tracking down and rescuing children who are abducted and taken overseas through the Assocation for the Recovery of Children (ARC) — was contacted by a SEAL buddy who thought that kind of experience would come in handy.

The operators of three Stella’s Voice orphanages in Moldova — on Ukraine’s southwestern border, near the strategic port city Odesa — were concerned about their girls and convinced they had to get them out.

The mission of Stella’s Voice is to protect “the world’s most vulnerable from human traffickers.”

“Those in charge of the orphanages wanted to get their children moved out “in 12 hours,” Turner said.

That was weeks ago. At the time, circumstances were not so dire that that had to happen. “They’re better off staying where they are for now,” Turner told them.

But, it was the right time to be thinking about how to get everyone to a safer location.

“You can’t wait until bullets are flying in your city,” he said. “You need to form a really good evacuation plan.”

He didn’t just tell them to get ready, to know where they were going and what they needed to take with them. “That’s just not their skill-set,” Turner said.

But it is in his skill-set.

Turner went over to work out the logistics personally and to meet face-to-face with key people.

Those in charge of the orphanages — two of which have mostly girls ages 10 to 18 — were very concerned about their children being put into situations where they could become the victims of human trafficking if they had to leave.

They were so concerned about the system in Romania that their proposed evacuation plan involved going north into Ukraine, then heading west, in order to avoid their western neighbor.

“I said, I need to talk to people,” Turner said. “Whether U.S., Ukrainian, Moldovan, or Romanian. You have to meet face-to-face.”

The Romanian foster care system was the main concern. He went to Iasi.

“I went over there, talked to a ton of people, both U.S. and Romanian,” he said. He was given assurances, in person, that “if they came in with the right paperwork, they’re not going to get thrown into the Romanian foster system.”

Being there also allowed Turner to learn details that he could not have known from an office in Warren — tricks that will help the orphans if their departure is rushed.

“I mapped out the best way, drove all the best routes, figured out the best border crossing,” he said. “Talking to people coming in and out, I figured out some of the tricks to get through quicker.”

Initially, Turner was preparing a plan for the kids in the orphanages and the personnel who would need to stay with them — 34 people.

With Ukrainian refugees flooding in, the number of children in the orphanages could go up.

Then the staff thought about it and decided if it was bad enough to move the orphanages out, it would be bad enough to move their families.

“A lot of the Moldova staff said, ‘If I go, I have to take my wife, my kids, and my grandparents,'” he said.

So 34 turned into 60… or 180. “The logistics of getting them out of there really got complicated,” Turner said.

“I met with all kinds of people — Special Operations Command for Moldova, different U.S. Diplomats…” Turner said.

He even received help from one connection right at home in Warren. (U.S. Army Colonel) “Dave Wortman was an incredible resource,” he said. “He’s so unbelievably connected it’s ridiculous.”

Between the diplomats, the military operators, and his own SEAL connections, “I was able to plan three different ways for them to get out,” Turner said.

Still, an American organizing a multinational evacuation just outside a war zone was bound to encounter some snags.

His friend, and leader of ARC, Bazzel Baz, talks about Hand of God incidents — “crazy things happen that work out,” Turner said.

One happened before he could even leave Pennsylvania.

At Pittsburgh International, Turner was informed that Romania required additional time on his passport. The document was not expired, but the country wanted more.

He was told that it would take two to three weeks to make the arrangements.

“I started calling around,” Turner said.

With help from State Rep. Kathy Rapp and Congressman Glenn GT Thompson, Turner learned that there was another possibility.

“The guy at the orphanage sent me a letter and I got this rare humanitarian exception,” Turner said. “I was able to fly in a day-and-a-half.”

He found more ‘Hand of God’ events in eastern Europe.

“One was stumbling on this guy… I got stuck at a border,” Turner said. “They said I couldn’t cross in the car I was in.”

He thought about ditching the car. “They wouldn’t let me walk across… which wouldn’t have helped anyway,” he said. He was too far from his destination.

It was also a long way back to his starting point.

He saw a Ukrainian aid station and spoke with a woman – whose English was very good. “She went to one of the border guards,” he said.

She turned out to be very persuasive. “He started stopping every car that was going across the border, trying to get me a ride,” Turner said.

After a few rejections, a man named Valentine agreed.

“He spoke French, Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian and English,” he said. “Ended up being a great Christian guy.”

Turner spent four or five days with Valentine, who helped him in negotiations to purchase vans for the orphanages — the first contingency in the evacuation plan.

Valentine also found a trustworthy source for the second contingency.

“I got a charter bus,” Turner said. “The worry was… if it starts getting bad, does the guy just say, ‘I’m not going to do that,’?” Or maybe someone offers more money. Valentine found him someone who would stick to the bargain.

The bus could handle 60 people and more if necessary.

Another SEAL provided the third part of the plan.

“There’s a SEAL buddy of mine that’s connected with a group that’s running 10 vans deep into Ukraine, bringing out 80 people every week,” Turner said. “He’s solid. He goes right by the orphanages.”

“He’s like, ‘if things get bad, you’re good to go,'” he said.

With transportation arranged, Turner helped the orphanages know what they would need to take with them- in addition to the critical paperwork, to have it ready to go at a moment’s notice, and how to know when to leave.

The “trigger points” would be the fall of Odesa, a Russian approach within a certain distance of Moldova, or if utilities were shut off, he said.

Turner knows what things could be like in Odesa or Moldova — which is not a member of NATO — soon. “The Ukrainians I was seeing… it was incredibly heartbreaking,” he said. He met a couple who is having to move out of their home.

“They were 88,” he said. “They’d been through World War, the Soviet Union.”

“They had a nice home in Ukraine,” Turner said. That was before. By the time he saw them “they had a gym bag.”

He said it is important that people who feel strongly and want to help people in Ukraine make sure they check out any entities they plan to fund.

“I saw what happened with a lot of the organizations as far as Afghanistan,” Turner said. “A lot got crazy amounts of money… they couldn’t really spend it.”

He said there are several organizations that are doing good work and are reputable, if people are looking to send dollars to refugees.

“I think the Red Cross is doing good work over there,” he said. “Father Rick (Tomasone, pastor of St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Warren)… they’re doing a dollar-for-dollar. If you give them $10, it’s going to get sent over and handed to a Ukrainian family.”

His friends Chris and Mihaela Guess are the ones running the van into Ukraine every week. They are working through ABWE — Association of Baptists for World Evangelism. “They’re risking everything on a weekly basis to drive 30 hours in a van to get people out,” Turner said. “He’s going places where people are getting killed.”

Turner’s contacts didn’t have much information about the thinking behind the invasion, but he believes part of the motivation is to secure a warm-weather port — a long-standing strategic challenge for Russia.

As ports go, Odesa, in the southwest, is better than Mariupol, in the southeast, he said.

The war is moving in that direction.

“Now, as of this weekend, Odesa was getting bombed and rocketed,” Turner said. “It’s starting to happen in that area.”

In the event that the orphanages need to evacuate, they’re ready.

“Hopefully my plan never becomes executed,” he said.

If it does, he doesn’t expect he will be needed to go over there to lead it, but he is ready for that.

For the time being, the people who run the orphanage and the girls who depend on them, have been able to breathe and sleep and live a little easier.

Turner’s time was well-spent… “Even if it’s all that it does.”