The Whole Picture: Steve Helling

He made visits to the country several times after the earthquake to provide continuing coverage. After seeing the orphanages on his fourth trip, Helling and his wife, Emma, made the decision to do what they could to help and decided to adopt.

There were 380,000 orphans in the country before the earthquake and the United Nations Children’s Fund estimated that number doubled after the disaster.

Helling was adopted himself and grew up in the village of Chatham, where his father, Don, taught band at Chatham Middle School. He moved after graduating, but said his childhood had a profound impact on him to this day.

Arriving in Haiti

Helling got the call to go to Haiti while he was writing his first book, the best-selling biography “Tiger: The Real Story.” After talking to his editor on a Tuesday night, he was in Haiti that next Thursday morning.

Having covered Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Helling was not new to disaster reporting, but he said nothing prepared him for the scene in Haiti’s capital.

“I had covered disasters before, but nothing to the scope of what I saw in Port-au-Prince,” he said in a phone interview with Chatham Courier. “In Haiti, there were dead bodies all over. I would have to stop on a street because there were so many body bags. I saw all sorts of people carrying their own limbs and some that were going to die that were just lying in the street.”

The estimated death toll of the disaster amounted to 160,000, according to a 2010 study by the University of Michigan. Other estimates ranged from 100,000 to 316,000.

In his fourth visit to the country in December 2010, Helling found himself in a makeshift clinic, where babies stricken with cholera were being treated after a major outbreak.

“There were 16 babies who had been born to mothers with cholera and all but three had been abandoned,” he said.

The nurse at the clinic said that they would all be sent to orphanages.

“I visited a few; the orphanages I went to were really bleak,” said Helling. “They’re horrible, they’re basically just a rundown cinderblock building where the kids may or may not be fed. I wanted to help, but I didn’t know what to do.”

After speaking to his wife, together the couple decided to do what they could to help and formulated a plan to adopt two children.

The adoption process

“It’s very expensive to adopt from Haiti and it takes a long time,” Helling said. “At the time we were doing it, they were still recovering from the earthquake.”

The process was filled with clerical errors and requests for bribes, he said, but the biggest complication came when he found that one of the two children his agency had matched him with had two siblings.

“We figured we could afford two, but we weren’t going to split them up — so we could either take all of them or none of them,” he said.

The Hellings resolved to adopt all four: Bianov, age 3 at the time; Etienne, 5; Valine, 4; and Nerlande, who was only eight months.

With two children already, Mia, 3 at the time, and Ezra, 2, the family doubled in size.

The entire process took about two and a half years, nearly a dozen trips to Haiti and intervention from the U.S. ambassador and then-President of the Republic of Haiti, René Préval.

“It was very hard on them, it was harder on them than it was on us,” Helling said. “It was a really weird, hazy two years.”

Back in the States

The children have been with Helling and the rest of his family in Florida for over a year now.

“They have become very integrated into our family,” he said. “It feels very normal. The first six months were very difficult and now everything seems easy to me.”

He admitted that it can be difficult to take the whole family out to dinner or on vacation, but they all get along and the children speak fluent English and are doing well in school. After a few years, once the children have grown up more, Helling said he plans to take them back to Haiti.

“As wonderful as it sounds to bring children out of poverty and into the United States … you’re still taking them away from everyone and everything they ever knew,” he said. “I think they need to keep in contact with what their roots are, but they also need to know what their life is now and what their responsibilities are when they come into our family.”

Helling’s hometown roots

Growing up in Chatham as a child to adopted parents had a profound impact on Helling.

“Chatham really did impact this whole thing,” he said. “I was adopted and brought into a community that was extremely open and accepting of me. I was one of the only people of color in Chatham in the 70s and 80s and nobody ever made that an issue — not once growing up. That is a testament to Chatham.”

Living at 9 Woodbridge Ave., the yellow house next to the middle school, he remembered swimming in Crellin Park and exploring the woods out by Smith Pond.

“My entire childhood was in that house, going to that school,” he said. “Chatham really did help me out in so many different ways, with the teachers, with the community, with the small town feel. I’ve told so many people so many times that the little town I grew up in has motivated me not just for the adoption but all the stuff I do.”

Helling left Chatham to go to college in 1988, but still keeps in touch with his old friends and classmates on Facebook. He returned for his 20-year high school reunion in 2008 and comes back whenever he’s on assignment in the area.

He had been freelancing for the magazine for years, but became a full-time writer for People in 2007.

He has reported on high-profile murder trials, Hurricane Katrina and the royal wedding in 2011. Recently, he visited Dolly Parton in Dollywood and spent a couple days golfing with Tim Tebow.

Helling said he has some big plans coming up in the near future, but couldn’t reveal any details. You can keep up with him online at www.stevehelling.com or on his Twitter page, www.twitter.com/stevehelling.