18 Orphans Saved In Dramatic Style Caught Up In Military Coup, Children Are Flown To Safety

Pinkie McCann-Willis was supposed to get married over the weekend to a Nigerian peacekeeping soldier stationed in the balmy, seaside capital of Sierra Leone.

Instead, the native Californian found herself in a mad dash to save 18 Sierra Leone orphans caught up in a bloody military coup and facing abandonment unless they could be airlifted to safety.

“It was just awful, it was terrible,” McCann-Willis said Monday after arriving with the children in Conakry, Guinea, from the USS Kearsarge, where they were flown by U.S. helicopters.

The helicopters airlifted about 1,200 foreigners from Mammy Yoko Hotel in Freetown last weekend while soldiers who staged last week’s coup became locked in a standoff with Nigerian soldiers. The Nigerians, including McCann-Willis’ fiance, were trying to restore the ousted civilian government.

McCann-Willis, 49, heads the Freetown office of the Indianapolis-based Americans for African Adoption agency, which arranges adoption for children in east and west Africa.

McCann-Willis and the children spent the first days after the coup holed up in the agency’s compound.

“The children were flat on the floor. We were hiding in the attic. We had soldiers outside the gate with their AK-47s trying to get in,” McCann-Willis said.

By the weekend, she knew she had to make a run for it. She piled all 18 children into her pickup truck and sped across town to the Mammy Yoko hotel to appeal for space on the U.S. helicopters.

“First of all, they said no. I was faced with the decision: Do I leave, or do I stay?” McCann-Willis said. She jumped a chopper to the USS Kearsarge, and appealed for the children to be evacuated.

The U.S. State Department gave the go-ahead, and on Monday the orphans were among the last people to be flown out of Freetown.

The adoption agency’s founder, Cheryl Carter-Shotts, said in Indianapolis that all the children had been paired with families in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand and she was arranging their visas to London.