A Turning Point: Westlake woman opens home to Ukrainian family

Lindsay Buckingham has more on a Westlake woman who brought in a family from Ukraine amid its war with Russia.

According to Axios Cleveland, in the past year since Russia invaded Ukraine, more than 4,000 people in the Cleveland area have volunteered to host a family from the Ukraine.

The statistics make Cleveland one of the top metropolitan areas for Ukrainian refugees, according to Homeland Security data.

One of those volunteers is Cathy Tasse, of Westlake. As an empty nester with two grown children, she lives alone. Her beloved husband Jeff passed away from cancer back in October, but before he moved on, the couple had a dream.

"During that time, we were volunteers helping refugees learn English and citizenship. [Jeff was] half Ukrainian, but he didn't really know that much about Ukraine in his whole life," Cathy said. "I said, 'The Ukrainian refugees are going to be coming to Cleveland, and wouldn't it be cool to host them, host a family?' And he said, 'That would be great.'"

The dream was on pause after Jeff passed.

"We've known for 15 years that this was coming," Cathy said of his death. "We never really talked about anything coming to an end, because that's not the way we lived."

Then, Cathy saw something on Facebook about sponsoring a family. She wanted to honor what she and Jeff had planned.

Read: https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/com... --

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