SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — At least one United States citizen has died during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and 12 News has learned that the man had a connection to a Valley family.
Serge Zevlever was a dual Ukrainian-US citizen who ran an adoption agency out of the country and also lived in the St. Louis area.
He helped thousands of children find their way from orphanages to loving families around the world. One of those families was the Northup family in Scottsdale.
Dawn and Doug Northup first met Zevlever as they went through the adoption process with their daughter Anastasia.
“He met us at the airport in Kyiv and drove us to an apartment there, and then he drove us from Kyiv to Odessa,” Dawn Northup remembers. “He gave me a booklet and a phone that worked in Ukraine and he said he was available 24/7 to talk us through the process if we needed. He was that kind of guy.”
The Northups remember Zevlever as a gregarious man as well. Their oldest daughter Nicole did not travel to Ukraine for adoption but remembers her parents’ stories when they returned.
“They said Serge was relentless. He would be offended if you didn’t drink vodka with every meal,” Nicole Northup said.
“You’d go into a restaurant with him and he’d order for you and all this food would come. Everybody knew him,” Dawn Northup said.
Anastasia Northup says she doesn’t remember Zevlever or much of her early childhood in Ukraine, but she is grateful to him for the life he helped her have by facilitating her adoption by the Northups.
“I’m very blessed," said Anastasia, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Arizona. “I grew up with a loving family. I got to go to school. I didn’t even know what school was at the orphanage.”
Dawn Northup knows Serge helped thousands of kids, but she also knows he could have helped thousands more had he not been killed in Kyiv on February 26 as the U.S. State Department confirmed to KSDK in St. Louis.
“What’s going on there now, it just makes me really sad, that he’s not going to help more families get these kids out of there,” Dawn said.
The Northup’s youngest biological daughter, Kristen, believes Zevlever’s legacy will live on through the children he helped and through the children they have as a result of getting out of Ukrainian orphanages.
“To say Serge was a guardian angel is putting it lightly. I think he changed a lot of lives for these kids and their families,” Kristen Northup said.
Conflict in Ukraine
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