ST. PAUL, Minn. — On the night war came, it felt like time stopped. Dr. Yakov "Jacob" Gradinar, who emigrated from Ukraine to the United States in 2007, couldn't keep his eyes off the news: Bombs, then more bombs. He called his parents in the western Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia. They told him bombs hit Lviv, only 120 miles away.
Gradinar pleaded with his parents and four siblings to leave. But no: "This," they told him, "is ours."
Amid hopelessness, Gradinar prayed: How to help from half a world away? In time, an answer would come to the former orthopedic surgeon in Ukraine, now a prosthetic limb specialist in Minneapolis.
