A few years ago, I became involved with Big Brothers Big
Sisters. My little sister was a young Russian girl named
Darla (not her real name). Her grandmother rescued Darla
and her sister from horrendous conditions in a Russian orphanage
where their parents placed them after her father was sentenced to
prison and their mother could not control her addictive behavior.
My mother survived extreme poverty. Her coal miner father died
when she was 2 years old and her mother passed away from cancer a
couple of years later. She was one of eight children, so the
oldest tried to take care of the younger children. But the war
came, and the oldest boys were drafted. Her oldest sister took
the three youngest and moved to California because they heard it
was a place of opportunity. But things weren’t easy, and my
mother spent most of her childhood ill due to a lack of food and
proper nutrition.
On August 24 at 3:20 a.m., the 2014 Napa earthquake shook
residents from their beds. The quake measured 6.0 — the
largest in the San Francisco Bay Area since the 1989 Loma Prieta
earthquake. Significant damage and several fires were reported in
the southern Napa Valley area, and there was also damage in the
nearby city of Vallejo, in Solano County.
