A 2016 miscarriage left Jaci Ohayon completely broken. But a chance encounter with a Haitian boy on a beach in the Dominican Republic transformed her grief and changed the boy’s life forever.
The immigration attorney from Colorado recalls sitting on the couch after an ectopic pregnancy, a condition in which a fertilized egg starts growing outside the uterus. Because such a pregnancy is nonviable and life-threatening, her doctors had to administer a chemotherapy drug to induce a miscarriage.
“My hair fell out from the shot that they gave me to terminate the pregnancy,” Ohayon told The Epoch Times. “I was just so heartbroken and so devastated. My hair was coming out in my hands, and I was bleeding heavily. I felt like my whole world was breaking apart. I just didn’t know what to do.”
In a bid to heal and figure it all out, Ohayon planned a family trip to the Dominican Republic with her husband and two children. That’s when they met a Haitian boy named Jonas.
“It was a really incredible experience. I went down grieving the loss of my baby, and I still got to love another child. He’s not my baby, but I get to love him,” she said.
From Darkness to Light
For a long time before the pregnancy, Ohayon had been deeply involved in a significant asylum case.
“There was no doubt in my mind that my client experienced what they said they’d experienced,” she said. “But the trial went sideways. It was really hard to work so hard on a case and to want to help so badly, only to have it all go terribly wrong.”
Feeling as if she’d lost faith in humanity, Ohayon decided to quit legal work. It was a dark period, but at about the same time, she and her husband received joyful, unexpected news: Despite having an IUD fitted, the mother of two had become pregnant.
However, the couple soon went from elation at the unexpected pregnancy to the total devastation of an induced miscarriage.
They closed the restaurant that they owned together in the Colorado mountains, said goodbye to the stormy weather of the “mud season,” and decamped to sunnier climes.
Not long after arriving on an island in the Dominican Republic, the family was having pizza at a beach café when a teenage boy caught their attention.
“He was throwing his flip-flops into the ocean and diving in to chase them,” Ohayon said. “My son—who at the time was 9—was like, ‘What is he doing?’ And I’m like, ‘Maybe he’s trying to do exercise and do laundry at the same time.’ We were just ... laughing and having ... this family lunch.”
When he was done, the boy walked past the family’s table, so they invited him to sit down and share their lunch. He didn’t understand their Spanish, so they tried French, and their new friend understood everything. It turned out that he was from Haiti, and he told them that his name was Jonas.
Over the next month, the family spent time with Jonas and they developed firm friendships.
After deciding to stay in the Dominican Republic for longer than they'd originally planned, the Ohayons bought a restaurant, where Jonas helped out. Ohayon’s husband traveled back and forth between the island and Colorado, while Ohayon enjoyed her new role working in the kitchen and serving food.
“I was so heartbroken over immigration that I didn’t tell anybody I was an immigration attorney,” she said. “I just said I was a waitress.”
One day, Jonas’s mother showed up at the restaurant with a small bag of clothes and a toothbrush, asking if Ohayon and her family would take Jonas in. Aware that the boy already had a mother and several siblings, and doubting that there was any way to bring him to the United States, Ohayon initially declined.
“I just told her we cared about him, and we loved him, but for so many reasons, we couldn’t do this,” she said.
Jonas’s mom’s response was heartbreaking, Ohayon said.
“She basically grabbed my hands and said, ‘Please, could you please just teach him how to have a future? Even if it’s just for a few weeks, just take him in and show him what you can,’“ Ohayon recalled. ”She didn’t think she would be able to.”
Afterward, she talked to her husband about Jonas, and the couple agreed to let him stay with them in the Dominican Republic. For six months, Jonas lived with the family during the week, and they put him in school. On weekends, he would go back and stay with his mom. When the time came for the family to move back to Colorado, the prospect of leaving Jonas behind was heart-wrenching.
“By this time, we’d completely fallen in love with him. He was sobbing, we were sobbing, and I was saying, ‘I’m so sorry, we have to go, and I can’t take you with me, but we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure out how to keep you in school, and if I can figure out how to get you to America, I will.’”
Bringing Jonas to America
Upon her return, full of renewed motivation, the determined attorney started searching for a private school with the necessary accreditation to sponsor student visas lasting longer than a year. There was only one in her area, “a really beautiful, small, very expensive school.”When she called it to ask if it would sponsor the boy from the Dominican Republic, Ohayon thought that she’d face ridicule.
“I thought for sure they’d laugh,” she said, “because he couldn’t speak English, and he couldn’t read or write in any language. And we still didn’t really know how old he was.”
Ohayon explained the situation to the school officials, sharing details about the boy’s circumstances, and asked if they would consider accepting him into their school. She also inquired about the possibility of a scholarship, as his family could not afford the tuition fees.
Incredibly, a week later when she went in to meet the principal and admissions director, the school officials agreed to both requests. Then, aided by a missionary friend with a church in the Dominican Republic that had connections to Haiti, Ohayon began the lengthy process of applying for the boy’s passport and visa.
Initially, Jonas’s visa application was denied, prompting Ohayon to contact her local news outlets and appeal to Congress members. All recognized the opportunity for Jonas to pull not only himself but his whole family out of poverty, and with their strong support, the second visa application was approved.
The very next day, Ohayon bought Jonas’s plane ticket. He arrived in Colorado nervous and scared, having never been away from Hispaniola, the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and still unable to speak English. Jonas’s sister had given him a manicure, a pedicure, and a haircut to get him ready for life in America.
That first weekend, Jonas, unaccustomed to acceptance and often chased away throughout his life, simply chose to hide.
“He would hide behind the curtain; he would hide under the table,” Ohayon said.
Today, after six years in the United States, the once painfully self-conscious teen has blossomed.
From Shy Child to Confident Young Man
Now 20 and in his second year of college, Jonas speaks, reads, and writes English fluently.“He’s working so hard,” Ohayon said, beaming with love and pride. “He’s trying to become a pro soccer player. If he can get this college degree and ends up getting the career he’s going for, then he gets to change his life and his family’s life.”
Describing Jonas as “charismatic,” Ohayon said she marvels when she thinks of the shy boy whom she first welcomed into her home.
“You wouldn’t even recognize him as being that same kid that we had originally met. You know, he went from hiding from everyone to being the most confident person in the room. He can talk to anybody now, and he’s just so very special—a special kid,” she said.
She also credits Jonas with inspiring her to go back to her career in immigration law. Currently, Ohayon has offices in both the United States and Geneva.
The couple hasn’t adopted Jonas, because he remains connected with his family and mom back in his homeland. However, as his guardians in the United States, they feel blessed with the opportunity to help Jonas build a brighter future, Ohayon said.
She said: “We knew what to do, and we got people involved that cared. It was so powerful to see the community come together to try to get this Haitian child to school.
“It’s the American dream that I automatically get access to because I was born in the United States. I didn’t choose to be born there; I just was.
So I get access to this dream that people in other countries dream about or run toward or flee to, based on where they were born and their circumstances.
“You know, you can’t help everybody, but you can help some people.”
