Lisa Belgrad has always had a soft spot for happy endings — and in June she got one of her own.
The Evanston resident made arrangements late last year to adopt a 2-month-old Vietnamese girl born near Hanoi. But then allegations of corruption in Vietnamese adoptions had brought everything to a screeching halt.
When the Tribune wrote about Belgrad in May, she had no idea when — or if — she would get to be a parent. Jamie Hoi had to stay put in an orphanage.
On Memorial Day, though, an e-mail arrived with the green light. “I just started screaming,” Belgrad said. “It was surreal.”
Two weeks later, the mom-to-be was en route to Thai Nguyen province.
“It’s all such a blur,” she says now. “But I do remember that the other babies were somber or sleeping … and there was Jamie — just laughing and happy.”
Throughout the process, Belgrad, 42, made a point of insisting that any child obtained fraudulently should be returned to her family. So she was relieved when a State Department investigation confirmed that Jamie was indeed an orphan.
Now the 17-month-old girl is at home, where she’s smothered with affection not just from mom but an extended network of friends and family. She is enamored of books, dogs and spaghetti.