How student fled after disaster struck his Haitian holiday

Haverford College freshman Ralph Alexis had eluded the collapsing cinderblock wall that fell near him as the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince last week.

He made it through two fitful nights in a corn field as aftershocks rocked the earth beneath him.

He safely got out of the city and traveled two hours by car up a mountain, past dead bodies, to reach his grandmother's home.

And when escape from his ravaged homeland of Haiti finally seemed at hand, he faced yet another obstacle. He was not permitted to board an Army flight out of Port-au-Prince because it was taking only U.S. citizens, and he is a permanent resident. Soldiers escorted him out of the airport, and his friend who had dropped him off was gone. He was alone.

It was only through the luck that seems to have been with Alexis all his life, and the kindness of a stranger who befriended him outside the airport, that the full-scholarship student at the Main Line college made it back two days later, on a commercial flight out of the Dominican Republic.

"I just could not hold on anymore," Alexis said in Philadelphia on Tuesday, less than a day after he arrived home. "If I stayed in Haiti any longer, I probably would have just gave up hope."

This was Alexis' first time back in Haiti since he was 8. In 2000, he had moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., with his family when his father sought political asylum.

Along with his older brother Ruben, he went to visit an aunt, a grandmother, and other relatives over Christmas break. For two weeks, he swam at the beach, collected seashells, soaked up the balmy weather, and enjoyed the island food.

Ruben Alexis, 21, a senior at Haverford also on full scholarship, then left to return to New York City for an internship.

The day of the earthquake was Ralph Alexis' cousin's 14th birthday. Alexis, his cousin, and his aunt were at the table, about to eat.

A rumbling began in the floor. It turned into a violent shaking. The house swayed; things started falling. "Run, run, run outside," shouted his aunt.

Alexis ran out. A wall separating the house from another crashed down near him.

"It's like, if you move a step closer, the whole wall would have crushed all three of us," he said.

Parents cried out for their sons and daughters.

Shortly afterward, a 23-year-old cousin arrived at the house, telling of his harrowing escape from a collapsing three-story school and his desperate run home, dodging dead bodies and body parts, Alexis said.

"I just closed my eyes and kept praying and thinking about my brother and everybody I have here in America," Alexis said.

A day later, his grandmother sent someone to pick him up and take him to her home in Lascahobas, two hours from Port-au-Prince, where she calmed and fed him.

From a cybercafe, he made his first contact with Ruben - who had feared for two days that Ralph might have died in the quake - and made plans to return home.

On Saturday morning, he left for the airport, carrying only a dufflebag so that he could drop it and run if robbed.

He was shocked when soldiers turned him away, even though he had a green card, a passport, and a student ID.

"I started crying," Alexis said, noting that he had no phone, no knowledge of how to get back to his aunt's house in Port-au-Prince, and no money. "I didn't know what to do. I told them, there is so much violence. How are you going to let me alone? And they said, 'Sorry, can't do anything for you.' "

But then, a Haitian woman, whom he only knows as Nancy, saw he was distraught and took him home with her. On the 45-minute ride, he saw how badly Port-au-Prince had been hit and winced, recalling the "stench" and the screaming and crying. He saw a shoot-out with police.

"It was really stressful," he said.

Back in the United States, Joan Mazzotti and her husband, Michael Kelly - who have been mentoring Ralph and Ruben Alexis - were working the phones trying to arrange a way for Ralph to come home.

Mazzotti is executive director of the nonprofit Philadelphia Futures, which helps promising city students into and through college. Her husband, a retired lawyer, became the Philadelphia Futures mentor to Ruben and Ralph Alexis after they moved to Philadelphia in 2004 to live with an aunt. The boys' parents died under circumstances Mazzotti would only describe as tragic.

The couple couldn't get anyone at the U.S. embassy, so they advised Ralph to make his way to Santo Domingo, where they arranged for him to get a ticket on a plane.

Mazzotti and Kelly said they planned to complain that Alexis was turned away by the military at the Port-au-Prince airport.

"The only thing that stands between him and citizenship is a couple months of bureaucracy," Mazzotti said of Alexis. "To us, it's unconscionable that they turned him away."

Noel Clay, a spokesman for the State Department, said last night that the embassy has been overwhelmed with requests for help, and that its priority has been to help U.S. citizens.

By luck, a friend of Nancy's niece had planned to return to Santo Domingo, where she is a medical student. She offered to escort Alexis to the airport there.

They rode in converted trucks, took taxis and a bus, and 16 hours later arrived at the Dominican Republic capital's airport. His escort stayed with him in the airport that night.

When he arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City Monday afternoon, Alexis looked different: Thinner, his skin with a greenish hue, his usual smile replaced with a somber expression.

He spent the night at Mazzotti and Kelly's Haverford home with Ruben and had pasta, ice cream, and brownies. He got "Facebook attacked" by friends at Haverford, happy to hear he was home. Within five minutes of starting to watch a movie, he had fallen sound asleep.

By Tuesday, his smile had returned. He skipped a morning class - his first of the semester - to catch up on sleep, but was back at school yesterday.

He plans to get his degree, pursue a career in the business aspect of fashion design, and send financial help home to family members in Haiti.

"All Haitian American students should do that," he said.

But for now, he has turned his attention to the new semester: Did he get that anthropology course he wanted so badly? He was in a lottery for it.

"Good," Mazzotti said. "You have normal things to worry about."