A Promise Kept

Portland's Police Chief Fulfills A Vow To Help An Ailing Bosnian Girl

By Tom Hallman Jr.

of The Oregonian staff

The experts warned Mark Kroeker that he was foolish to get so involved. They were right, of course. More than anyone, Kroeker knew that. But then he looked into the girl's eyes.

At that moment he made a silent pledge to himself, vowing to help. He carried his promise from Bosnia to Los Angeles and then to Portland, where he moved in 1999 to serve as chief of police. Along the way, Kroeker pestered and cajoled anyone he pegged for a soft heart and a thick wallet.

He'd tell them the girl's story, slap her picture down and dare them to turn him down after they, too, looked into her eyes.

But most did.

One year passed. He made more telephone calls.

Two years passed. He twisted more arms.

Three years passed.

It was only Wednesday night when the girl's plane touched down that Kroeker was finally at peace.

He'd kept his promise.

It began in 1997 when he met an 11-year-old Bosnian girl named Amela Kovacevic.

Kroeker, retired after a 32-year career with the Los Angeles Police Department, was serving as a deputy commissioner with the U.N. International Police Task Force. He supervised U.N. police stations in Bosnia.

An American working to help Bosnian children told Kroeker over lunch one day that he had met a girl he could not help. Her name was Amela, and she had degenerating cirrhosis, a disease destined to kill her unless she had a liver transplant, something impossible in Bosnia. Kroeker, well versed in the issue of children and transplants, asked to see her.

"They took me to the hospital," Kroeker recalls, "which was bombed and a mess, and I saw her sitting in a chair in her room. I looked at her and thought that she could be my own daughter."

The family, which included 11 children, was destitute. Amela was the youngest. One of her brothers had died in the war.

"In this world, many children are dying," says Kroeker, who grew up in Africa and Europe as the son of Mennonite missionary parents. "You can't save every one of them. But now and then someone appears in front of you, and you say you are going to help one way or the other.

"What you do," Kroeker explains, "is follow your heart."

Once before, Kroeker had followed his heart. It led him on a personal mission that has given hope to hundreds of children.

In 1987, Kroeker, then with the LAPD, flew to Argentina to explore educational exchanges with officers from the province of Cordoba. When he returned to Los Angeles, Kroeker was invited to a reception to honor Cordoba's governor.

At the reception he learned about a girl, Veronica Arguello, who desperately needed a liver transplant. There was no medical hope for her in Argentina. "So," says Kroeker, "I decided to help."

He launched a massive fund-raising effort and eventually collected enough to fly Veronica to Toronto for a transplant. But she suffered a series of complications and died.

"You have to understand that this girl was like family to me," he says. "I had flown with her to Toronto. My thoughts were that someday I would get an invitation to her wedding, that I would return to Argentina and stand in the back of the church and know that I had a small part in all of it.

"She died, and I was stunned and devastated. Her mother called me and made me promise that I'd continue to help other children."

Kroeker asked experts for advice and was warned to never again take on individual cases. They were emotionally draining, and he'd burn himself out. So he found a way to help many foreign children who shared Veronica's plight.

In 1988, he started the World Children's Transplant Fund, made himself chairman and recruited others to serve as his board and to help carry out his vision. Since then the fund has raised money to train doctors and nurses and to get the technology, equipment and drugs to perform transplants. The nonprofit fund, which has a Web site at www.wctf.org, now supports two pediatric organ-transplant centers in Costa Rica and Argentina, where hundreds of children have received transplants.

Over the years, Kroeker has talked celebrities such as Halle Berry, Dennis Rodman and James Belushi into raising money. In 1995, Kroeker, who hopes to establish transplant centers around the world, received the prestigious Raoul Wallenberg "Save the Children Award" for creating the fund.

But the fund's bylaws specifically prevent raising money targeted to individual children. So how, Kroeker wondered when he met Amela, could he help her?

"I was hooked when I met her," he says. "I told myself that this girl was not going to die."

When he returned to Los Angeles, he met with his board. They agreed the fund could not get involved. The best they could do was offer the services of their Argentine transplant center. Someone else would have to pay for the surgery, the travel and the after-surgery care. Estimates put the cost at $120,000.

"So I started looking for ways to raise money as an individual," Kroeker says. "I couldn't have any affiliation with the fund. I never told Amela what I was doing because I didn't want to get her hopes up and then tell her that I had failed."

When Kroeker moved to Portland, he continued to work the phones, eventually enlisting the support of a California businessman, who wants to remain anonymous, and a Greek publisher.

"If people told me 'no,' I'd wait a few months and ask again," he says with a laugh. "I think I became known as a pest. I called some people more than a dozen times."

Slowly, Kroeker collected commitments from his Los Angeles connections. He contacted Nohad Toulan, dean of the college of Urban and Public Affairs at Portland State University. Toulan is a Muslim, as is Amela.

"The chief told me about this girl's life being in the balance," Toulan says. "He told me he needed money to help. I found it commendable what he was doing, but I didn't know if I could raise any money.

"But when someone gives you the picture of a little girl, you do what you can," he says. "You see a real person, and you know that if you do nothing, that child will not be around much longer."

Toulan took Amela's story into Portland's Muslim community and raised $50,000.

"This girl," Toulan says, "has someone looking over her."

For more than three years, Kroeker had no contact with Amela. Then, last month, he sent word to Amela and her family that they at last could hope she would survive to grow up and become a woman.

On Wednesday night, Kroeker drove himself to Portland International Airport, where Amela, her mother, brother and an interpreter were scheduled to arrive. Amela and her brother will be evaluated by doctors today at Oregon Health Sciences University and will leave Saturday for Argentina. The plan is to take a portion of her brother's liver and to transplant it into Amela.

Kroeker stood in a concourse waiting for an airplane carrying a slender, dark-haired 14-year-old girl.

He carried a bundle of flowers and a balloon, and as the passengers filed off the plane he searched the faces of each one.

"That's her," he said. He said "hello" as he pulled her into his arms. He gave her a kiss on her cheek.

"Welcome," he said. "Welcome." Tom Hallman Jr. covers people facing the challenges of everyday life. He can be reached at 503-221-8224 or tomhallman@news.oregonian.com.

Copyright © 2001 Oregon Live.

This article posted February 17, 2001.