Adopted daughter inspires woman's entrepreneurship
By MARGO HARAKAS
PEMBROKE PINES, Fla.
Yassin Young was in the grocery store with her sons and her Cambodian-born
daughter Yamisha when a woman, a stranger, asked if the girl was adopted. A
conversation on adoption followed and then the woman inquired, "Would you have
another child?"
Before Yassin could answer, her 9-year-old son A.J. piped up. "No," he said.
"That's it for us. No more. Our family is complete."
And so it is.
Yamisha, with her assertive personality and giggly nature, balances and
enriches a household heavy on the male side. That, of course, was the intent.
What was unexpected is that Yamisha, now 2 1/2, would be the catalyst for
Yassin becoming an entrepreneur, selling culture-inspired handmade clothing and
other items online.
No one could have anticipated that. Not Yassin, a former systems analyst for
Broward County, nor her husband, Mark, management information systems director
for two Broward drug rehab centers.
Still reeling from the swiftness of it all, Yassin, 32, sits in her sunny
Pembroke Pines living room trying to figure out just where to begin.
Maybe with Yassin as an only child living with her maternal grandmother and
paternal uncle in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and yearning for a sister.
When she grew up, Yassin told herself she'd have a daughter and provide for her
the picture-perfect family of two loving parents and a number of siblings.
Yassin moved to the United States in 1994 to attend college. She earned a
bachelor's degree in computer sciences, married and began a family. Through
three pregnancies, the girl chromosome remained elusive.
Yassin, while delighted with her sons - "I love them with all my heart," she
says - yearned still for a girl. Even her sons noticed the tears when Mom
passed by the girl's department on their shopping expeditions.
It was after one such outing that Mark, 35, heard his wife crying.
"She was on the phone talking to her grandmother," he said. With doctors
advising against another pregnancy, she knew she would never mother a daughter.
"I went to her and said we could always adopt," Mark said.
With that the journey began. Their idea was to adopt domestically. "We went to
four agencies," said Yassin. "We were quoted the price of $36,000 for a
newborn." And that's if one could be found.
Even more off-putting was the attitude toward adopting "outside our race." On
their application, the couple indicated that race didn't matter. Yet, said
Yassin, race was the first thing all four agencies brought up.
"Why wouldn't you just want an African-American child?" they were asked.
Then they were hit with a speech about how it was better, healthier,
emotionally for the child to be in a household of the same race.
"We didn't like that," said Yassin, who would counter with, "Do you know what
race I am?"
Yassin is proud to call herself multiracial. Her mother is black. Her father is
white and black Hispanic.
As the couple explored all possibilities, Yassin concluded that as needy as the
parentless children in this country are, even more desperate are children
orphaned abroad.
"At least kids in the system here wake up to food, clothing, shelter and
schooling. They may not wake up to loving parents, but they do have the basic
necessities," she said. Which is a far cry from the plight of orphans in many
countries abroad, she said.
She went online searching for agencies that handled international adoptions. On
the Web site for A New Arrival was an announcement about the availability of
children from Cambodia.
"Where is Cambodia?" she asked her husband.
When A.J., Roumell and little Marik accompanied their mom to the library to
help research Cambodia, they had no idea what she and Dad were up to.
In their research, they learned of the terrible poverty and the scarcity of
schools in that village nation in Southeast Asia.
"If you could help an orphan in Cambodia, what would you do?" Yassin asked her
sons. Without hesitation Roumell, now 16, and A.J., now 9, responded in unison,
"We'd bring that child here to live with us."
That was it.
"On March 19, 2001, we decided to adopt," said Yassin. "May 19 we got our
referral, and Aug. 19 we picked up our baby."
March 19 was the day Yamisha was born.
While not an overriding factor, the couple discovered that adopting from
Cambodia would cost, with travel and all additional expenses, about $18,000.
During the five-month wait, Yassin began designing and sewing clothes for her
daughter. "That's what kept me sane," she said.
Active in an online chat room run by the ANA adoption agency, Yassin formed
close friendships with several other women adopting from Cambodia.
When Yassin posted photos of the outfits she'd designed, she was deluged with
requests to purchase the same. Soon, moms were suggesting other items for
Yassin to make, tote bags, vests and picture frames.
Weeks before the Youngs were scheduled to travel to Cambodia, Yassin's friend
Karla Essner, of New York, called to say she was on her way to pick up her
adopted baby daughter, Jade, at the very same orphanage. It was Karla who named
Yassin's business Yammi Wear.
In August 2001, the excited couple flew to Phnom Penh. Little did they realize
how fine was their timing. Less than two weeks later, the State Department
would shut down adoptions from Cambodia amid complaints of child trafficking.
Yassin and Mark knew nothing of that, but they were shocked by the number of
child beggars that crowded the streets. "We bought a case of water and bananas
to hand out to the children," she said. "There was this one little girl about 3
years old, who had this scrawny, lifeless baby tied to her. I'll never forget
that sight. I thought the baby was dead. I told my husband, I couldn't take it.
We had to get out of there."
The scene convinced the couple they had made the right decision.
The orphanage itself was clean, but minimal. "There was one large room, with
two wooden walls, and the other two sides were just chicken wire." Despite the
meager surroundings, the youngsters appeared healthy and well cared for.
Yamisha was brought to them in an outfit Yassin had sent.
Unlike the other children, Yamisha spent her nights at the home of the head
nanny, not in the orphanage.
"Yamisha is special," said Yassin, who learned that her child's Cambodian
mother had walked 45 days from a tent city on the Thai border to Phnom Penh to
deliver her baby. Instead of abandoning the baby on the streets, as was the
norm for orphaned children, she brought her newborn to the head nanny at the
orphanage, saying she wanted her child to have a better life. Yassin believes
the nanny's personal interest in Yamisha stemmed from that contact with the
mother.
The mother cared so much, said Yassin, that she left with the baby a family
picture, on the back she wrote, "I love you."
Once back home, the Youngs exchanged letters with the biological mother, who is
married and has two older children. But the family has since moved, and the
Youngs have lost contact with them. Despite the reports of baby trafficking,
Yassin said she's certain "because of the letters and the photos and all the
information we had," that their baby was legitimately given up by a mother
seeking to improve her child's future.
Yassin assembled a scrapbook detailing her daughter's journey to America. Most
importantly, said Yassin, "We've kept the letters and the photos and Misha," as
the family calls her, "will know her mother loved her."
For now, the outgoing Misha knows only one family.
"She's always been this happy-go-lucky child. She's just glowing. But she's
been that way since she was 5 months old," Yassin said.
After a three-month family leave, Yassin returned to her computer job. But by
noon of that first day, she knew what she needed to do.
She went into the boss, and told him she was resigning to become a work-at-home
mom. "With my sewing I felt I was doing something that meant something," she
said.
She had already begun expanding her product line. When she couldn't find a
Cambodian flag for her daughter, she made her a Cambodian flag blanket. That
sparked a flurry of orders for blankets with flags representing other countries
of adoption.
In addition to the traditional ethnic clothing, Yammi Wear offers
country-shaped cookie cutters, dolls, teddy bears, purses and gift baskets. All
provide tangible reminders of the adopted child's birth culture.
Yassin donates 15 percent of her profits to orphanages in Cambodia. Last year
she split $3,000 among three orphanages.
She also sponsors dance and English literacy programs in the orphanages. And
she donates blankets as raffle items to U.S. adoption groups raising money for
orphans in other countries.
Yassin, who has converted her garage into a workroom, now has three
seamstresses and two adoptive mothers in other states working with her. To help
finance their own adoptions, two additional mothers have made items that Yassin
lists on her Web site.
Where it all will lead is anyone's guess. For the Youngs, the real reward, the
only one that truly matters, is the little girl with the perpetual smile who
has added a new joy and girly dynamic to the family.
