Reprinted from the Daily Press, Saturday, October 20, 2001:
by Brian Whitson
Daily Press
WILLIAMSBURG, Virginia — Vicki Pavlova was ready to return home last summer.
The Russian exchange student had just graduated from Jamestown High School, and it was time to go home. Her suitcase was packed, and she had an airplane ticket for the next day.
Then the letter came.
She had been accepted to the College of William and Mary.
Pavlova, now 18, had a quick decision to make: stay and go to college in America -- and probably not see her family for at least another four years -- or head home to Russia.
She loved it in the United States, but she had no way to pay for college, and her visa was about to run out.
After a quick call to her mother and a little brainstorming with her adopted "parents," Pavlova made a gutsy move.
"I ripped up my ticket and started unpacking my stuff," said Pavlova, who often speaks rapidly with a Russian accent.
"I didn't know if it was going to work. I was scared."
The honor-roll student took out an $8,000 bank loan to pay for her first semester.
But now a sophomore, Pavlova depends solely on donations and fund-raisers to cover about $20,000 in annual costs, including out-of-state tuition, insurance, meals and books. With the help of her host family, Steve and Gilinda Rogers, Pavlova started "Vicki's College Fund," a Web site that explains her story and tracks the amount of money that she needs to raise.
Pavlova's Web site tells her life story, includes a letter from her parents and keeps donors up to date on her fund-raising efforts -- a thermometer tracking the amount of pledges that she's gotten so far.
In one month, the site got more than 1,000 hits.
She credits her second family in Williamsburg with making her college experience possible.
"She has truly become a member of the family," said Connie Granger, mother of Gilinda Rogers and wife of Gil Granger, the former Williamsburg mayor.
When the Rogerses recently moved to Hawaii, Pavlova moved in with her adopted "grandparents."
They go to church together. They go to football games together. And they talk a lot.
"She's really got a good mind," Connie Granger said. "It's been a while since we had a teen-ager around. It keeps things lively."
And Pavlova keeps things busy around the Granger house.
Most of the donations come from companies and civic organizations who hear about her story. And she's happy to tell it.
Pavlova travels all over the region, talking to groups. Last spring, she used a free plane ticket -- one that she got when she was bumped on a flight to a student workshop -- to go to California and meet a Kiwanis Club in Oakland.
This year, she's raised a little more than $8,900 and said she's paid up through the fall semester. Pavlova's largest gift came from an anonymous donor, who dropped $2,000 in cash into an envelope and wished her luck.
"I found this in my mailbox," she said. "I still don't know who it was."
Despite her success, it's still a constant struggle to raise enough money for school.
Because William and Mary is a state school and Pavlova isn't a U.S. citizen, she isn't eligible for loans and traditional grants from the college. Pavlova does some baby sitting, but her visa doesn't allow her to take on a regular job, she said.
Her biological parents are supportive of her U.S. stay, but, she said, tough economical times in Russia make it difficult for them to help her with costs. Her dad manages a nuclear plant and makes $30 a month. Her sister, a doctor, earns just $20 a month. They live in Obninsk, a city of about 100,000 near Moscow.
Pavlova plans to use her education to help Russians. As an international-relations major, she hopes to pursue a career in communications.
"I want to do something to improve life there," she said, "to make people's lives a little bit different -- a little bit brighter."
Brian Whitson can be reached at 221-7220 or by e-mail at bwhitson@dailypress.com.
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