Red Cross Volunteers — Connecting Family Members Across the Globe

There are countless of ways to get involved with the Red Cross. You may see Red Cross volunteers responding to disasters in your neighborhood or across the country. Perhaps you are a blood donor and you’ve been greeted by a blood ambassador, maybe you had a free smoke detector installed in your home through our Sound the Alarm program, or maybe you took a First Aid Training Course. In addition to the more visible volunteer roles at the Red Cross, there is a core group of volunteers that dedicate their time and expertise in the Red Cross Restoring Family Links program and you don’t often hear about their work.

For more than 150 years, the Red Cross’s Restoring Family Links program has helped reconnect separated families and address the issue of missing persons as a result of armed conflict, natural disasters, migration, and other situations. Families suffer greatly when their loved ones remain unaccounted for, and families must learn to live with uncertainty. It is this uncertainty that Red Cross Restoring Family Links caseworkers work ardently to resolve.

The Red Cross of Illinois is proud to have a stellar group of volunteers whose behind-the-scenes work brings joy and closure to families around the world. Meet Restoring Family Links Caseworkers Margo Dudewicz, Susie Mazaheri, Monica Agler and Mallory Smith.

Monica Agler has been a volunteer with the Red Cross for over 12 years. Monica started with the Red Cross Service to the Armed Forces and moved to Restoring Family Links when this program evolved.

“Every role I’ve had with the Red Cross has been gratifying. Through Restoring Family Links, I have had the opportunity to resolve cases by locating loved ones and providing closure to families who’ve lived in anguish over not knowing what happened to their family member. Most currently, I was assigned to a case of a family who fled Iraq and they lost touch with their son who went back to Iraq to retrieve his grandmother. I have 15 years of tracking to follow, but I’m determined to bring this family peace.”

Susie Mazaheri is the Restoring Family Links Regional Lead for the Red Cross of Illinois. Susie has been with the Red Cross since 2008 with the majority of her time as a Disaster Mental Health professional. You can find Susie volunteering locally or across the country aiding those affected by disasters, but her work in Restoring Family Links is always in the back of her mind and part of her days. See more from Susie here.

“Our work through the Restoring Family Links program is so important and can be done from any part of the country. My motivation is knowing that the people we help have been through so much trauma, yet they maintain that glimmer of hope of locating and reuniting with their loved one. Like the mother in Honduras who lost touch with her young son as he migrated and found himself in a detention center. Because of the incredible Red Cross network, we were able to give that mother the closure she had been waiting for, for so long. I put myself in her shoes and can only hope that someone would want to help me find the ending to my story if ever I found myself in a similar situation.”

Margot Dudewicz has been a volunteer with the American Red Cross serving the Quad Cities and West Central Illinois since 2017. Margot, whose husband is a member of the U.S. Army, first joined the Red Cross through its Service to the Armed Forces. Margot’s love for research, genealogy, and helping people connected her to Restoring Family Links.

“The Red Cross is so much more than what people think they are — globally, the Red Cross cares about families — especially families who become separated. Like the Ugandan sister living in DeKalb whose brother was missing for 20 years. After connecting her with her brother who she thought deceased – the emotions and joy I witnessed when they connected is something I will never forget and are my motivation to do everything I can when I get a case to make the connection or find that family more information. The stories and people I get to work with are so powerful and inspire me to give back.”

Mallory Smith has been a Red Cross volunteer since 2019. Mallory is an aerospace engineer and contractor with NASA. During her free time, Mallory works on reconnecting families and uses her engineering and love of data mining to help connect families. Hear more from Mallory here.

“Working in Restoring Family Links takes perseverance—not giving up on a lead because you know that your work, when successful, will have a massive impact on someone’s life.”

“We could absolutely not do this work without our volunteers. The passion and dedication they have for helping families is incredible. The creativity and resourcefulness shown by our entire Restoring Family Links team makes a huge impact in the lives of families all around the world,” shares Crystal Smith, Service to the Armed Forces/International Services Regional Program Director.

The American Red Cross Restoring Family Links program assists individuals and families who are separated internationally by war, disaster, migration, political events and other humanitarian circumstances in re-establishing contact.

When families are separated internationally by armed conflict, disaster, migration and other humanitarian emergencies the global Red Cross and Red Crescent network can help to do the following:

• Locate missing family members
• Restore and maintain family communications
• Provide war-time documentation of internment and/or documentation on the fate of missing family members

If you live in the United States and are seeking information about someone you’ve been unable to contact due to a recent disaster in the United States, including Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, please visit American Red Cross’s Contact and Locate Loved Ones page. This information is also available in Spanish to search for your loved one.

If you are looking for a family member living abroad who is not a US citizen, please submit your inquiry here.

To all of our dedicated Red Cross Volunteers, thank you. Your dedication, compassion, and willingness to give your time and service upholds the mission of the Red Cross to alleviate human suffering in the face of emergencies.

To volunteer with the Red Cross, visit RedCross.org/volunteer.

Written by Illinois Communications Manager Connie Esparza

Restoring Family Links: Connecting Susan Stevens

Hugh and Susan Stevens are on a mission to preserve part of their family history. A few years ago, the couple visited the Jewish Museum in Berlin and after reading about the people and families impacted, she felt it was time to dig further into her own untold family story.

While cleaning out some items that belonged to her late aunt, Vera Rosenthal, Susan stumbled upon two well-preserved typed letters emblazoned with the American Red Cross logo.

Dated June 14^th and November 30^th of 1943, the letters showed the Chicago Chapter of the American Red Cross was trying to reach Susan’s father, Hans Friedman, to deliver personal messages. These letters would show the lengths family members went to in hopes of reaching loved ones across the sea they feared had forgotten them.

Hans left the city of Berlin as well as his mother, Lotte, and his sister and her husband, Vera and Kurt Rosenthal, in 1938 to begin a new life in America. Hans did not believe Vera nor Lotte had survived the war in Germany.

It wasn’t until a few years later when the Red Cross aided Lotte and Vera in trying to locate Hans that he even knew they were still alive. Susan says her father was so happy to learn his mother and sister had survived, and amazed that the Red Cross was able to track him down.

“It gave them great hope,” said Susan Stevens. “It was very exciting for my parents to receive these letters and then obviously significant since they kept them all these years.”

About 70 years after the letters were delivered to Susan’s father, her husband Hugh noticed another personal connection to the Red Cross. Listed under the Board of Directors was Elmer T. Stevens, a relative of Hugh.

There is much more to this family’s story of survival, but the Red Cross was there to help reconnect them when their fate was uncertain.

The American Red Cross has been working to reconnect families after the chaos and confusion of war and disasters for decades. Whether it has been weeks or years, the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago can help you find and reconnect with loved ones around the world after natural disasters, armed conflict, migration or other humanitarian emergencies. The American Red Cross works with the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent organizations to reconnect nearly 5,000 families each year through tracing, certificates of detention, migration and other forms of documentation.

To learn more about the Red Cross mission to Restore Family Links, please visit our website at redcross.org/familylinks.

 

Spreading the Word: Restoring Family Links

Outreach Mini-Grant volunteer lead, Whitney Trumble, and International Programs Support Manager, Michelle McSweeney, presented on the ‘Restoring Family Links’ (RFL) program at DePaul University’s Law School in April.

The event was hosted by DePaul’s Society for Asylum and Immigration Law (SAIL), a student organization that looks to expose law students to asylum and immigration law through guest speakers, presentations and firsthand experience in the Greater Chicago area.

Students from SAIL gathered during their lunch hour to gain perspective on the American Red Cross Restoring Family Links (RFL) program.

The Restoring Family Links program helps locate and restore communication between families separated internationally by conflict, disaster or other humanitarian emergencies. By using the global Red Cross network the American Red Cross assists more than 5,000 families trying to reconnect with their loved ones in the U.S. and around the world each year.

After receiving a mini-grant through the Red Cross, Whitney, together with a team of both new and experienced RFL members, developed a strategic plan to increase outreach in the Greater Chicago area. By connecting with local student groups, community organizations and public resources they are spreading awareness of RFL services.

DePaul’s Society for Asylum and Immigration Law provided an excellent outreach opportunity, as many of the students in attendance are also involved in DePaul University’s Asylum and Immigration Law Clinic (AILC) that works to assist clients on legal cases relating to asylum, justice or immigration issues. Students expressed that RFL services could be of use to clients they are now working with through the AILC.

Over the next few months, the Restoring Family Links outreach team will be scheduling more events like this one to increase knowledge on RFL services throughout the Greater Chicago region. The RFL team is specifically targeting Chicago neighborhoods with large immigrant and refugee populations such as Rogers Park, Pilsen, Uptown, Bridgeport, Humboldt Park and more. By focusing on these neighborhoods the outreach team hopes to connect with as many community members as possible, always with the ultimate goal of helping others reconnect with their loved ones throughout the world.

The Chicago Restoring Family Links team will be hosting a series of community events in Spring 2014 to share information on this program and how you can connect to the mission. If you are interested in attending one of the three upcoming events, please contact Mini-Grant Lead, Whitney Trumble at Whitney.Trumble@redcross.org.

To learn more about the Restoring Family Links program and to connect with the local program team, please visit us at http://www.redcross.org/il/chicago/local-programs/reconnecting-families.

Written By: Michelle McSweeney

Syrian Conflict Separates Sisters – Red Cross Reconnects Them

I recently had the opportunity to speak to members of the Restoring Family Links Advocate Committee at their annual meeting in DC.  It was an honor to be invited and I was grateful for the opportunity to share about some of my cases.

One of these cases involved a family tracing effort for a woman named Sara (pseudonym) in Chicago who had lost contact with her sister. This scenario is fairly common for the Restoring Family Links program at the American Red Cross, but what was difficult about this case is that my client’s sister was living in war-torn Syria.

Sara came to our office with her daughter, and together they told us the story of their family. Sara’s sister was living with her children in a remote region of Syria. Normally Sara would call her sister daily—just to have a quick conversation and make sure that the family was all right.

One day Sara called and the phone lines were down. This had happened before, but normally the lines would be operating within a few days. However, this time, that did not happen. She started calling more frequently, not just once, but multiple times a day. Every time, the results were the same: the phone lines remained down.

Through Internet research, the family discovered that the area had come under fighting and attacks had destroyed the phone lines. What the family could not find through these searches, however, was any information about potential deaths through these clashes. They simply had no way of knowing the fate of their family members.

Since the start of the civil war, over 2 million refugees have fled Syria for the neighboring countries of Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq with millions more displaced internally.

There was additional concern. Various sides were trying to recruit Sara’s young nephews. Her anxiety had become unbearable. Sara wanted to start a family tracing case, but was worried that efforts to locate the family might bring unwanted attention that could harm the young boys who had thus far avoided joining the fighting.

The story was heartbreaking. The details and levels of concern were very difficult to hear. Despite a desire to help and a sincere compassion for the family, my RFL team and I worried about logistics.

Would National Headquarters be able to accept the case?

Would the Syrian Red Crescent be able to conduct RFL work at this time?

How long would the family have to wait to find other any news?

After a frantic phone call with a caseworker in DC, I was encouraged to submit the case. Not only was it accepted, but it was also marked as high priority and released for tracing work to begin. Within weeks, we received notice that the family was found! Through already established religious networks, we were able to contact the family and confirm that they were ALIVE and well!

I cannot describe to you the relief that Sara expressed when she was told the news! In time, the phone lines were restored, and she was once again able to talk to her sister.

I have checked in with the family, and the story remains the same. Life in Syria is still incredibly hard, but what has changed is that the family now knows that they have an ally. They know that if the phones go down again, someone can help.

There are many instances where I have been unsure if a case can even be accepted, yet, a family reconnection occurs. This is why I do tracing work and love being an RFL caseworker.

Written by: Christa Kuntzelman