From Latvia with love

When Brenda Baker said she wanted to adopt Latvian children, her friends thought she was nuts. Mrs. Baker and her husband, Bob, own a successful office supply business. They live in a spacious home complete wit an in-ground swimming pool. And with Mrs. Baker's two daughters grown and out of the house, it would seem that the couple would have the best years of their life still ahead of them to live carefree.

"You have the best lifestyle, you have the best social life, you have two daughters. Why are you doing this?" the 43-year-old Davidsonville woman recalled her friends asking.

They are natural questions, perhaps - except caring for others has been a hard habit for Mrs. Baker to break.

Over the past three years, the Bakers have adopted three Latvian children ranging from 11 months to 16 years old. Since her initial visit to the Baltic nation in 1995, Mrs. Baker has visited its ramshackle orphanages 18 times.

Mrs. Baker's daughters, Sunshine 23, and Tiffany, 19, are from an earlier marriage. When her two daughters began bringing home boyfriends, Mrs. Baker said she realized that she had also always wanted a son.

With a television documentary on Russian adoptions providing the initial impetus, Mrs. Baker attended a seminar on the subject. Soon after that responding to a "wild whim" she discovered opportunities in Latvia and acted on them.

After a trip to plan the adoption of Sasha, an 11-month-old flaxen-haired boy, Mrs. Baker found she couldn't forget the image of a 7-year-old girl whose adoption had suddenly fallen through - Anastasija.

"When I got back I couldn't sleep. I couldn't rest with it," she said, remembering the devastated expression on the child's face. "So I went back six weeks later and asked 'How can I help?'"

The immediate answer was to donate $400 a month so Anastasija could attend a smaller, private orphanage. Six months later, Anastasija came to America to become a Baker.

"When you get to the orphanage and you see all these children who are saying 'Mommy! Daddy!' and they are 3, 4, 5 years and up, we began feeling a little guilty for takeing a baby, because anybody will take a baby, you know? Who's going to take the older kids?" Mrs. Baker said.

During another visit, the Bakers met Ugis, now 16, Whose mother had died of cancer. About a year later, he joined the growing Baker clan.

He soon changed his name to "Thomas" - a choice Mrs. Baker said he made on his own. Thomas had coincidentally been the name of Mrs. Baker's father, who died when she was 7 years old. After her own experiences, Mrs. Baker has worked with several licensed adoption agencies to help bring more then 270 Latvian children to American families.

With the help of generous donations and loads of volunteers, Mrs. Baker said she has sent about 1,500 gifts over the past 2 1/2 years to Latvian orphanages, through a program she founded known as Latvian Connections. Among those gifts are thousands of shoes and sneakers the Bakers have been collecting. Postage and handling charges alone for a shipment last month cost about $ 5,000 she said.

In every adoption case, the Bakers have had to endure the standard criminal, health and financial background checks required by state regulations.

With expenses such as $2,000 telephone bills, Mrs. Baker said that her family has been lucky that they can afford such substantial financial costs.

"It's risky and you really have to have the desire and the ability to do a lot of research," she said. "(Having) the means to do it is a major factor."

The Bakers have frequently had other Latvian youngsters make long visits, staying for entire summers.

One such case is Raimonds Silinskis, 15, who is living with the family on a 10-year visa.

The transition for Latvian kids from their native Baltic home to America is sometimes difficult.

"Everything in U.S. is so fast, bright, big, different than that which these children are used to," said Leva Bolsteins, executive director of American Latvian Association in Rockville.

During a recent visit to the house Thomas and Raimonds sat together dressed in identical blue polo-shirts, uniforms from the Benjamin Franklin Learning Center in Annapolis, blue jeans and sneakers.

Asked if he has a girlfriend Thomas replied somewhat sheepishly that he's "working on it."

"He's working on it a little bit faster than I have," he cracked thumbing at Raimonds.

As she sat watching her two boys it was obvious that Mrs. Baker - a mom once again - was enjoying herself.

"There's life in our house, where it was so quiet before," she said.