SAN ANTONIO — The Barnett’s swelling love for their six Ukrainian children goes back more than a decade, beginning with one adoption agency and one man whose heart to help orphans touched the lives of hundreds of families around the globe.
Serge Zevlever, 62, carried on his mission of helping others until he was killed two days after the Russian invasion. The 62-year-old humanitarian was a father, grandfather and a husband.
“Serge was very well known and very well respected in the Ukrainian adoption community because his heart is with the orphans and he wanted the children of his homeland to find homes,” said Stephanie Barnett of San Antonio.
Barnett recalls learning of Serge’s death initially through her husband, David. Then came the flood of emails and text messages from several other people who’ve been impacted by Serge.
“It was devastating, it was gut-wrenching. We were completely numb, and our first thought was, 'Not Serge, this man is invincible,'” Barnett said.
Stephanie and David’s worst fears were confirmed as they reviewed Serge’s Facebook page, where family members and his adoption team explained he had been shot and killed in Kyiv.
“As he was on his way to check out this bomb shelter to secure the location, make sure that it was safe. One of the snipers shot him in the chest and killed him,” Barnett said.
She noted family was informed that Ukrainian fighters captured the pro-Russian assailants responsible for Serge’s death.
The Barnett’s journey with the international adoption group Reece’s Rainbow and introduction to Serge, goes back more than a decade.
Reece’s Rainbow specializes in assisting with global adoptions of orphans with special needs.
“Ukraine is very much, very much woven into the fabric of our family,” Barnett said. “Our heart is with orphans with special needs and these are the children who are vulnerable.”
Serge served as the lead adoption facilitator in Ukraine for the Barnett’s between 2010 and 2015.
“He knew that time was of the essence. There was no time to mess around because these kids needed to be in families,” Barnett said. “He needed to make sure all the paperwork, that the steps that we were going through were absolutely perfect so that these adoptions would be approved.”
Serge was a big protector with an even bigger heart. He possessed an unwavering devotion to nurturing children across Ukraine, even through the dark period of Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014.
“These kids would just come out to him and they would call him papa, papa, papa. And he would just hug them, and he would bring candy to them. That’s who Serge is because you can genuinely see the compassion and the love and the care for these children,” Barnett said.
Serge fled Ukraine before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, eventually resettling in St. Louis, Missouri, where he raised a family and enjoyed an American life, as he obtained dual U.S.-Ukraine citizenship.
But his developed passion for aiding orphans secure better lives led him to splitting time between St. Louis and Ukraine.
“He wanted to get as many as children out and into their forever homes as he could,” Barnett said.
Despite urges by friends and loved ones to leave Ukraine as the Russian military amassed, he decided to stay until the end, embracing his deep-rooted love for the nation in which he grew up.
“Just because Serge heroically was killed, his work does not stop,” Barnett said.
She emphasized the importance of keeping Serge’s legacy alive and to advocate for adoption of special-needs children not just in Ukraine but around the world.
“If it was not for Serge and his team, these six children that you see in the background playing, they would not be here. They would not be Barnett’s, they would not be here in San Antonio, Texas, they would not be thriving, they would not have a future,” Barnett said.
The Barnett's also have two children they adopted from Texas. It's one big happy family of eight children.
The Jagge family, also from San Antonio, adopted their 6-year-old boy, Ruslan, just a couple weeks before the Russian invasion commenced. Serge was there every step up of the way as they experienced multiple challenges with Ukraine's border security.
A GoFundMe has been setup to honor Serge and aid his family during this tragic time. To learn more, go here.