Before her world turned upside down last year, Serkadis Krohm loved the feeling she got when she ran. It brought her a sense of freedom and joy, a lightness of being that was sometimes incomparable.
It's like that for talented runners – an ease and comfort that comes when your body is moving swiftly. No one can catch you.
But Krohm hasn't run in several months. She stopped when she discovered – via Facebook, no less – that her older sister Selam, whom she hadn't seen since they were children in Ethiopia, had been badly injured in a bus accident last August and was in a Turkish hospital.
Now Serkadis is doing her best to help her sister get the care she needs and is hoping she can bring her to the United States for more rehabilitation and therapy.
Her promising career as a long-distance runner at UC Riverside is behind her, set aside for other interests but still on her mind. She stopped competitive running after her sophomore year to pursue her interest in the non-profit Child Leader Project on campus. It was a difficult decision given her talent.
"We didn't want to see her go," said Nate Browne, UC Riverside's assistant track and cross country coach. "We tried to talk her out of it. We were excited about what we thought she could accomplish with our program. She has a lot of talent."
But life doesn't always follow a preferred path. In Serkadis Krohm's case, it has moved in unpredictable directions.
She returned to the U.S. this week after a visit to Ethiopia to spend Christmas with her sisters Selam and Mimi. Selam is home now, but she still may need surgery to restore bowel and bladder control following the accident. She's undergoing physical therapy, but Serkadis wants to find a facility here that can provide help.
She has raised a little more than $12,000 through the Selam Fund, which was started to help with her sister's costs in Ethiopia, but her biggest challenge is finding a facility that will accept Selam at little or no cost.
Some have offered to provide assistance for a couple of weeks, but Selam will need several months of physical therapy.
"I'm not going to bring her out here unless it's for three to six months because what's the point in bringing her here for two weeks and then she has to go right back?" Serkadis said.
"I have to find facilities that are willing to have her for free or for cheap and for a little bit longer period of time."
They haven't lost hope that someone will offer help, but they also know there's a long way to go before Selam can resume a normal life.
Christmas, which was celebrated last weekend in Ethiopia, was both special and sad for the three sisters.
"It was nice to spend Christmas with them because it was my first Christmas in Ethiopia that I can actually remember with my sisters," Serkadis said. "But it was also bittersweet. It was really good, and we did our traditional clothing. But it was sad when everybody was dancing and singing and Selam was the one sleeping on the bed. She got a little bit emotional. Everyone got emotional at one point."
The sisters were reunited after an 11-year gap that resulted from their mother's death in 1998 from tuberculosis. Serkadis and her four sisters grew up outside Addis Ababa in a one-bedroom house that lacked electricity and running water.
While their mother worked as cook, older sister Selam bathed, dressed and fed the clan. When their mother died, Serkadis, 9 at the time, and younger sister Samarwit, 5, were placed in an orphanage. The others were put out on the street.
A family in the U.S. adopted Serkadis and Samarwit, but any dreams they harbored for a new life were soon dashed.
The girls were abused and ignored by their adoptive mother. It wasn't until neighbors reported the abuse that Serkadis and Samarwit were removed by Child Protective Services and placed in foster care.
"At the time, I felt like it was never going to end," Serkadis said. "She never let us talk to anybody, neighbors or anything like that. She didn't put us in school, so she basically isolated us. Had we stayed there longer, I don't know where we would be today."
Given a second chance, Serkadis thrived. Despite the frequent moves involved in foster care, she succeeded in the classroom and on the track. She graduated from Vista del Lago High School in Moreno Valley in 2008 with a 3.76 grade-point average and was named both student of the year and athlete of the year.
Serkadis enrolled at UC Riverside with the help of Guardian Scholars, a program that assists youth who have aged out of foster care. She received financial aid, loans and an athletic scholarship and was a contributor on the track and cross country teams.
But she left running behind after becoming involved with the Child Leader Project, which provides leadership programming to children and youth in South India.
"That was one of the hardest things I had to do," she said of her decision to quit running competitively. "I ran such a long time and I had high hopes for myself, but I just felt like I had something that I loved more than running."
"You could tell she was agonizing over it," Browne said, "because it was something she wanted to be successful at. She had a passion for it. We did not want to see her go."
Through her work with the Child Leader Project, Serkadis accompanied a group of students from Riverside's Norte Vista High to India last summer to get a firsthand look at a different culture. While there, she saw a picture of Selam on Facebook but was horrified that her sister was in a hospital after being injured in a bus accident.
At the time, Selam was traveling from Somalia to Greece to find work and a better life.
Serkadis and Mimi, who had been working as a housekeeper, rushed to Turkey to care for Selam. Since then, Serkadis has been working with contacts in the US to find a way to assist Selam with the care she needs, which includes physical and occupational therapy, accessible housing and an immigration lawyer.
Serkadis is back in class at UC Riverside and will graduate with a degree in psychology in June. Being the first in her family to complete college is no small feat.
"It's going to be amazing," she said. "I'm pretty much the first one and the only one going to school besides my little sister, who's in high school. I'm getting an education for everybody in my family, all of my sisters who didn't have the opportunity to go. Our mom passed away at such a young age, everybody had to drop out of school to take care of us, to take care of themselves."
She plans to begin taking classes toward a master's degree in social work so she can work with foster youth and adopted children, hardly a surprise given her past. This summer, she plans a return visit to Ethiopia with Samarwit. But she hasn't given up thoughts of running competitively, either.
At one time, she dreamed of competing in the Olympics. She has a higher calling now, but she knows that she'll eventually return to the track.
"I miss running now," she said. "I hope in the future I will go back to it."
