College Student From New Hampshire Driving Ukrainian Refugees To Safety In Poland
KRAKOW, POLAND (CBS) - From a safe place in Krakow, 21-year-old Rebecca Connelly explains her life over the past week. "It's long nights," she says. "It's long rides and long days where we have driven over 1,000 miles in one single day."
When Connelly saw images on the news of the situation in Ukraine, she grabbed a friend and hopped a plane to Krakow, Poland.
Connelly is a student at St. Louis University in Madrid. The Wolfeboro, New Hampshire native studies political science, and felt she couldn't sit on the sidelines as the crisis in Ukraine unfolded. "We just saw that we had the economic means to fly to Poland from Madrid and we just said 'OK, let's go,'" she explained. Connelly and a friend flew to Krakow, rented a car, and without a plan, found a way to help.
After asking how they could be of most use, the two ended up at makeshift refugee centers inside shopping malls in three Polish towns right on the border of Ukraine. "There are desks there, and you walk up to the person at the desk and they have a microphone," she explained. "And you say 'OK, I have a car and I can take people to Krakow; I can take four of them,' and he announces it into a microphone, and people flood to you."
Each day, Connelly and her friend shuttle several cars of Ukrainian refugees from the border to safety in Krakow.
The hardest part: deciding who gets left behind. "Because you can only take so many people," Connelly said. The rental car has three seats available, but Connelly and her friend regularly drive 4 to 6 people, sometimes from one family, sometimes from multiple, each day, making several hours long trips to and from the border.
"We have seen only probably one adult male between the ages of 18 and 60 the entire time," Connelly said. "The elderly people, you can kind of see on their faces, like 'I am leaving my home and I really might not ever go back.'"
Her trip was originally supposed to last only three days but has been extended to at least two weeks because of the generosity of people back home in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.
"People have just been coming up and giving us money," Rebecca's dad Jamie told WBZ. "When she picks up the refugees at the border and drops them off in Krakow, we try to put about €100 into each family's pocket as they get out of the car. Because they are in a foreign country, and they know nothing."
For days now, Rebecca's parents have wired her all of the donations that have come in in New Hampshire. She then withdraws the cash in Poland and uses it for gas before giving the rest to the Ukrainian refugees she drives.
"Isn't it beautiful?" said Father Robert Cole, the pastor at Saint Katharine Drexel Parish in Alton, New Hampshire, where Rebecca's family attends mass, and where many parishioners have donated. "It's beautiful: the basic goodness of people when you see something like this," he added.
Connelly's parents are equally proud. "When she was younger, she would say, 'why do I have to do this?' And we would say, 'well, Becca, we are giving you the skill sets such that when you grow up you can change the world.' And she must have been listening," her dad said.
While her home community is inspired by Connelly's work, she is disappointed in the response she has seen on the Poland-Ukraine border. "Where is the government? Where are the organizations that said so publicly that they support us? They are not here," she explained. "We have not seen the UN, we have not seen the Red Cross, we have not seen organizations here [on the ground.] We have only seen independent random volunteers."
Because of what she's seen, Connelly implores others to either follow in her footsteps or donate directly to volunteers. "You just have to get up and decide you are going to do something, and that's it," she explained. "The decision is an easy one to make. It's not about you. It's about the people that need your help and if you are in a position of privilege, that's it. Decision made."