Almaden Resident
Cover Story
Photograph by Vicki Thompson
Family Fun: DeAnna, Jessica, Shirena and Dan Lagasse play Chicken Foot in their Almaden Valley home. The four get together to play games about once a month.
Love and War
Legasse girls find family amid starvation, combat
By Eli Segall
To meet Shirena and Jessica Lagasse is to meet a pair of friendly, self-described "California girls."
But these sisters are not your run-of-the-mill teens. Shirena, a Pioneer High School senior, and Jessica, a Pioneer Family Academy sophomore, are Iraqi Kurdish refugees, abandoned in war and saved from starvation by a loving San Jose couple.
Dan and DeAnna Lagasse were in the Middle East on a humanitarian mission during the Gulf War, 100 yards from the Iraqi-Turkish border, where they fed the hungry, tended to the sick and buried the dead.
Along the way, they met two infant sisters whose mother had been killed in a bombing and whose father had fled the country.
The girls soon became their daughters. The couple adopted them and brought them home to Almaden Valley. The Lagasses will celebrate 15 years together as a family on Dec. 27.
"We are blessed to have so much and to have grown up in a place with everything you could ever want," Jessica, 15, says. "I see myself as an American, but I will always be a Kurd, no matter what."
The sisters came from the Northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan, a region with its own people, language and ethnic identity. Letters from their biological father, Sirdar Muhammed Karem, identify Shirena and Jessica as being born "Firmesk" and "Payman," respectively. Beyond that, no early information is known, including their birthdays, birth weights or pictures of their mother, identified in the letters as "Kurdistana."
"We don't know so many of those normal things, those little blessings everyone takes for granted. But it wouldn't change a thing," Shirena, 17, says. "We ended up with two loving parents, and that's what matters."
Dan and DeAnna's path to their daughters started in 1988 Berlin. The two landed there through a church-sponsored program to help Kurdish refugees find jobs, schools and apartments. At the time, Kurdistan was in rebellion against Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqi dictator responded with a torrent of conventional and chemical attacks, leaving tens of thousands of Kurds dead, maimed or homeless.
When Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the Lagasses were ready. They packed their bags and moved to a United Nations refugee camp in Chukurca, Turkey, a tiny border town within view of Iraq.
"The camps were awful," says Dan, 48, whose family attends Los Gatos Christian Church. "The first one we went to had 100,000 people living in it. Some people didn't even have tents; they were living on the ground with tarps over their heads."
The war officially ended in February 1991, but battles in Northern Iraq raged on. During the war, Kurdish rebels again tried to gain independence from Iraq; thousands of Kurds were killed, and millions more fled.
In March 1991, Kurdistana lost her life to a bombing by Hussein's forces in Kirkuk, her family's village.
"We don't know the exact circumstances of what happened," says Dan, who became pastor of his church a few years ago. "When we met Sirdar, he just said it was too sad for him to talk about it."
Following Kurdistana's death, Sirdar took the girls--Shirena, 21 months old, and Jessica, 3 months old--and, according to the Lagasses, went door to door in nearby Zacho, Iraq, asking random families to watch them for a few days until he could return.
A family agreed to temporarily house the girls. Sirdar maintained correspondence with the husband, Abdul, but he never came back. Instead, he fled to Turkey and wound up at a refugee camp in Silopi, where the Lagasses were working.
The girls never found out why Sirdar left, but they harbor little resentment toward him.
"It's easy for us to say, 'He should have done this,' or 'He could have done that.' But if he truly didn't care for us, he wouldn't have found our parents," Shirena says.
Rescue Work
In December 1991, Sirdar, desperate for help, approached Dan and DeAnna. He had received a letter from Abdul saying his daughters were gravely ill and that he needed to come get them.
"Sirdar begged us to go visit the girls," DeAnna,44, says. "Abdul just couldn't take care of them. He already had six kids, and his 21-year-old wife was pregnant again."
The Lagasses agreed, and what they saw left them speechless.
Shirena's body had swollen from a lack of nutrients, and she couldn't bend her knees; she also had a terrible eye infection and severe head lice. Jessica, the Lagasses said, hadn't eaten for months. At 11 months old, she weighed 11.5 pounds; her hair was falling out, she could barely sit up, and her body mass had atrophied.
"It was famine," DeAnna says. "We never saw anyone who suffered like this."
The Lagasses sprang into action. They moved to Zacho and rented a room from a humanitarian group. Dan says he obtained written permission from Sirdar to take the girls from Abdul's house, and soon after that, Sirdar asked the California couple to adopt them.
Dan and DeAnna returned to Silopi to find an attorney. On Dec. 27, 1991, Sirdar signed a contract to relinquish his parental rights and grant such authority to the Lagasses. The Almaden Resident obtained a copy of the document, which remains officially sealed with other court papers surrounding the adoption.
To ensure the adoption would be universally recognized, Dan and DeAnna flew to California, which has some of the world's highest adoption standards. They lived with DeAnna's parents in Almaden Valley, and after six months of observation by a social worker, the adoption was recognized in a Santa Clara County courthouse.
Within a month, Shirena and Jessica obtained their U.S. citizenship and passports, the normally years-long process expedited by their new parents, and the family left for Berlin to continue their humanitarian work.
Shirena enrolled in kindergarten while Jessica, too young for school, stayed at home. After only a few months, they started making friends and speaking German, but the girls remained traumatized by their experiences.
"For two years, every morning Shirena would ask if we'd eat breakfast that day," DeAnna says. "If someone left the house, she'd ask if they were coming back."
Fraud Allegations
In April 1994, the Lagasses received heartbreaking news. Their California attorney, Kelly Walker, informed them that Sirdar--now living in Maastricht, Holland--claimed the adoption contract was forged. Sirdar had traveled to San Jose for a court hearing, where a forgery expert agreed with his allegations.
The family was ordered to return from Germany, with Dan facing a possible felony prosecution for forgery.
The Lagasses say they were never informed of the hearing and only found out about it after the fact. According to Dan and DeAnna, Walker told them he had forgotten about the trial and never showed up in court that day, leaving Sirdar's claims unchallenged.
Several phone messages left at Walker's office seeking comment were not returned to the Almaden Resident by press deadline. Attempts to secure court proceeding transcripts were denied, as cases involving minors are sealed from the public.
"We were devastated," Dan says. "How do you explain to your children that they're going to be unjustly taken away?"
In August 1994, the case went to trial in Santa Clara County Juvenile Court. Judge Nancy Hoffman, now retired, presided over the case and remembers it in great detail.
"It was very out of the ordinary," Hoffman says. "Any cases involving children are emotional, but this was not run of the mill in any way whatsoever."
The Lagasses hired a new lawyer and tracked down the Silopi attorney who oversaw the adoption. They also located the translator present at the signing, and the two men flew in from Turkey for the proceedings. Sirdar relied almost entirely on his own testimony.
On Sept. 1, 1994, Hoffman ruled the signature was genuine, and that the adoption was valid.
The Lagasses can only speculate as to why Sirdar fought to get the girls back. Sirdar was unavailable for comment. The only known phone number for him in Maastricht has been disconnected, and attempts to locate him were unsuccessful.
"His motives seemed pure. They were his children, and he wanted them back," says John Padilla, Sirdar's court-appointed attorney for the case. "He was devastated by the ruling."
Shirena and Jessica were 5 and 3 years old at the time. At a moment's notice, they could have been sent to Holland, yet the girls sat in their grandparents' Almaden Valley home, completely unaware of the situation.
"We had no idea what was going on," says Shirena, who only learned of the trial a few years ago. "It would have been a pretty complicated thing to explain to two little girls."
Following the trial, the family returned to Germany, and a year after that returned to San Jose for good.
As the girls' lives continue forward, a new war has engulfed Iraq and while they're gladdened by Hussein's imprisonment, they wish it hadn't come at the cost of so many lives.
"I always wanted to be Moses for the people of Iraq, to be the one who set them free," Shirena says. "It's just so sad people had to die for that to finally happen."
With each passing year, Shirena and Jessica ask their parents more and more about the past, and Dan and DeAnna openly share the answers with them. The girls are proud of their story, and they don't hesitate to share it with other inquisitive minds.
Konstantin Goldman, 19, lives down the block from the Lagasses. He became friends with Shirena at Pioneer High and remains in awe of what she and Jessica have overcome.
"They're amazing," Goldman says. "The stuff they've been through, you just can't read about it and get the same experience."
These days, the girls spend their time doing normal teen stuff--talking on the phone, filling out college applications, going to soccer practice and music lessons. Shirena is active in Pioneer's drama program, and Jessica has become a regionally competitive singer.
All in all, they're just a couple of California girls.
