WELCOMING IMMIGRANTS TO LIFE IN U.S.
Etleva Bejko’s story begins in the ancient town of Durrës on the Adriatic coast of Albania. Turmoil and unexpected freedoms resulting from the fall of an authoritarian regime in the 1990s allowed her and her family to make their way to the United States, first to Philadelphia and eventually to San Diego.
She now serves as the director of Refugee & Immigration Services at Jewish Family Services of San Diego (JFSSD), helping displaced people fleeing to the United States settle into their new American lives.
Supporting the refugee community was not part of her original plan. Her formal education and training back in Albania was in accounting. But when an influx of Kosovars fleeing ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia were airlifted out and reached San Diego, Bejko (pronounced Bay-co) was one of only a few people in the area able to speak their language. She found herself working as an interpreter with Catholic Charities to welcome and support these families.
Understanding the importance of this work, she joined JFSSD in 2005 and has been with the organization ever since. “In my current role, I help bring culturally appropriate resources to support refugees often fleeing oppression or war. I like to think we are helping these people fulfill their potential here in America.”
Most Americans cannot fathom life under a repressive regime. As a child growing up in Durrës, Bejko could never have imagined applying for a passport or visiting a foreign country, let alone moving to the United States. “As often happens, it was the college students leading the charge for change. Once the government fell, it was my family’s chance to escape to find a better life, though we had to leave everything we knew in our world behind.”
She works with all types of
picture of an young man angry at being dropped from SEAL training and whose romantic overtures had been rebuffed by a female sailor.
Investigators also claimed that evidence from the fire’s origin went missing once cleanup began and that the scene was tampered with, according to the affidavit. Mays had been aboard the ship both the day the crime scene was tampered with and when the fire started, investigators said in the filing.
However, another discrepancy noted in the affidavit that was attributed to potential sabotage — the poor condition of the ship’s firefighting stations near the fire’s starting point — was later found by another Navy investigation to be a problem throughout the ship, not just near the so-called “Lower V.” Eighty-seven percent of the ship’s fire stations were inactive at the time of the fire, the Navy found.
The Navy’s investigation into the fire pointed to failures among 36 service leaders that it said contributed to the loss of the ship. Sailors were slow to react when they first saw smoke, the officer of the deck was slow to sound the alarm and, when the fire was finally called away, responding crews found the ship’s fire stations were out of commission.
The ship was nearing the end of a two-year, $250 million maintenance upgrade to enable it to begin operating Marine Corps F-35B fighters. Being in a maintenance cycle for this long had dulled the crew’s firefighting capabilities and left the ship cluttered with debris and in poor material condition. Being a Sunday, there were also fewer crew members on board that day.
The fire burned for two hours before the first drops of firefighting water touched its flames, Navy investigators found. The blaze burned more than four days before being extinguished. Noxious black smoke choked the San Diego and National City neighborhoods nearest the base and could be seen and smelled for miles.
Crews battled the fire around-the-clock from the air, land and sea, spraying the hull of the ship with water and dropping buckets of seawater from helicopters on its flight deck, all in an effort to cool the steel enough so that firefighters could access the fire to put water on it.
Temperatures on board peaked at more than 1,200 degrees at times, making it all but impossible for fire crews to reach the fire. More than 400 sailors from across the San Diego waterfront joined federal firefighters in the effort.
The fire destroyed most of the ship and, late last year, the Navy decided not to repair the 844-foot warship. It was sold for scrap this spring and towed to Texas for dismantling.