Inspired Success Magazine | December Feature 2022

MITZI PERDUE

Focused and Intentional

An Interview with Kat Mische Elle

Mitzi, tell us about your backstory from childhood to where you are today. What made you, you?

Well, certainly my parents. Both parents were very focused and intentional on not having spoiled children. They didn’t want us to be entitled. They made sure that even though my father was the co-founder and president of the Sheraton Hotel Corporation, as hoteliers, they still ensured that our education included time at public and private schools.

Up until the age of eleven, the only clothes I ever got were hand-me-downs. There were 5 of us, and I was the youngest. I remember being excited the first time I ever had something that was not passed down to me from a sibling. It was a pair of gloves.

My mother said that she wanted me for once to have something that was just for me.

My father was a very philanthropic man. I remember when I was a child at the age of ten, I walked into his office in our house, and he was busy with books and reading letters.

I asked him what he was doing. He said, “I’m answering requests for charitable contributions.” And then he said, “The greatest pleasure my money ever gave me is giving it away.”

My mother was equally generous. She pounded into our awareness that it was our responsibility to give back to the community and globally. That life wasn’t just a one-way street. A lot of nice things came our way. But it was essential to give back. My brothers and sisters and I owned that as a part of our life’s path.

When I became an adult, it was important for me to achieve goals on my own and not take advantage of my family name. Now at the age of eighty-one, I’m not sure I agree with that approach. I think it was almost foolish to throw away some of my aces. Nevertheless, I chose lines of work where I had to earn it on my own. For example, I became a writer. If you’re not a good writer, it doesn’t matter who daddy is; you won’t stay employed.

Mitzi Perdue, MPA, F.ISRM, Senior Fellow, Bosserman Center for Conflict Resoution, Anti-Trafficking Advocate, Award-Winning Author of MARK VICTOR HANSEN, RELENTLESS Cover photo by Stephen Speranza | photo (left) by Helene DeLillo

I became a syndicated columnist, first for Capitol News in California. And eventually, for Scripps Howard News Service, which is national. I also applied for and auditioned for jobs on television.

Eventually, I had a show called Mitzi’s Country Magazine that was syndicated to 76 stations. My confidence grew knowing that I didn’t get the television spot because of who daddy was. I got it because I auditioned and was chosen. I was quiet about my life and up until my late 40s, I did everything I could to hide my family background.

The world has been paying attention to Ukraine since the beginning of the war that began earlier this year. What led you to visit Kyiv this year in July?

Kind of a tenuous thread that led to it. But, at least digitally, I got to know a person who fled Odessa, Ukraine and was living in the United States. But before coming to this country, he spent at least a couple of months in Poland and while there he saw human trafficking among the refugees from Ukraine.

So, I wrote a story on what he had observed, and it was published in Psychology Today. I write a blog for Psychology Today on human trafficking. The article had human trafficking in the title, and it also had Ukraine in the title. And somehow, it came to the attention of General Andriy Nebytov.

He is the head of the police law enforcement for the Kyiv region, which extends across a very large region from the capital city to the border of Belarus.

My article about Ukraine and human trafficking came to his attention. And it resulted in a zoom call, in which he invited me to see for myself of what I had been writing about in his country.

I couldn’t accept the invitation fast enough. Ten days later, I was in Kyiv. I landed, there was an air raid, and I spent my first night in a bomb shelter.

As a guest of the Kyiv police, I also visited Chornobyl, areas where Westerners aren’t normally invited. And we’d be traveling at 80 miles an hour to go thru it, never stopping.

There were two reasons for this. One, we could be exposed to radiation and become horribly sick. But I was told that we won’t absorb a significant dose if we go through the area very fast. After we drove thru the area, we were checked with Geiger counters to ensure we were safe from radiation poisoning.

The second reason for driving around eighty miles per hour near the Belarus border through villages was because if we drove slower people on the Belarus side of the border could easily target us for an attack.

While I was there I wanted to interview members of the Kyiv region police department. The incredible men and women who are in a war-torn city were still providing protection and help to its citizens wherever they could.

General Nebytov told me I was the first Western journalist interested in how the war was affecting the police. The first thing that Russia did was bomb the police stations and steal the police cars. They destroyed all police records and police communications.

It’s a psychological operation designed to demoralize the residents and make resistance much more difficult.

The Russians deliberately emptied the prisons. This means that the murderers, the rapists, the arsonists, and the looters were roaming free, and you couldn’t call on the police to serve and protect.

Once I returned from Ukraine, I wanted to do what I could to work with law enforcement in this country, to develop a bridge to help law enforcement in Ukraine.

I have been a part of creating organizations where American law enforcement people will be visiting Ukraine, learning who their counterparts are, learning what’s needed, and how they can help. And I’m incredibly proud of that.

Photo by Oleg Semeniuk

What are the most challenging things you witnessed, and what has the Kyiv police task force shared with you about Ukraine since the war began?

The Chornobyl police are tasked with keeping poachers out of the hot zone. There are areas in the 1,000 mile exclusion zone, where the potency is extremely intense and penetrating. It kills people.

The population of Chornobyl in the evacuation zone was 385,000 people. They left behind many cars, washing machines, and buildings. And a lot of scrap metal. It is worth a lot on the global market.

The poachers that venture into this area take the scrap metal and sell it on the global market to the automotive industry and to any companies that buy scrap metal for household items.

For example, somebody in Asia might have a doorknob that is made from this scrap metal, and it is highly irradiated. They will never know what made them sick five years from now.

This is a global crisis.

The biggest thing that I learned had to do with human trafficking. Traffickers from throughout the world always choose the most vulnerable people.

With Ukraine and its millions of refugees, there are thousands of people

with no money, no home, and are emotionally traumatized. When women and young girls more specifically cross the border thinking they are safe from bombs. Instead, they are being approached by men who appear kind, offering a warm meal and shelter but they must hurry because the van leaves in 10 minutes. Then these women find themselves hauled off to where the traffickers take control of them.

I was told that they might be raped 30 times that night to destroy and demoralize her so much that there’s nothing left of her emotionally to resist. And she’ll be trafficked for the rest of her soon-to-be short life.

Did you witness trafficking taking place when you were there?

Yes.

When I was first entering Ukraine, I entered from Poland. We took a car from Warsaw to the border at Medyka, Poland and at this border town of Medyka, from where the parking lot where you leave the rental car. And the lot, by the way, is a muddy field and a 10-minute walk to the actual border.

It was pointed out to me how easily the abduction was happening in front of me in broad daylight. An intelligence officer I was with showed me two pretty girls who were talking with a couple of attractive-looking guys who were helping them into a Mercedes Sprinter van.

He said, “Those guys are traffickers. And those girls, you know, they think they’re safe. But you know, tonight, their life is pretty much over. They’ve just made the worst mistake of their lives.”

What we witnessed was completely a heart-wrenching tragedy that haunts me to this day. Especially because there was nothing, we could do to stop it because the women crossed over into another country,

This was happening a quarter of a mile away, and the traffickers were armed. There’s absolutely nothing that we could do at the distance we were at.

What can be done to help prevent this?

General Nebytov has a way. At the border crossings, the men, women, and children crossing the border are so vulnerable. They’re scared, they’re traumatized, and they’ve lost everything that makes life feel normal.

They are creating a facility of shelter houses that are temporary places to stay so they can get their bearings down for their next decisions on the Ukraine side of the border.

This safer opportunity can offer them a warm, safe place to rest and regroup, alleviating their desperation and preventing quick decisions. The shelters can also allow the refugees a space to be warned about what’s on the other side, and they wouldn’t be so vulnerable.

With your observations, and the dialogue you’ve had with the Kyiv police force, what keeps the people of Ukraine inspired in the most challenging moments while enduring this invasion?

I remember on my first full day in Kyiv being surprised that some of the women with whom I interacted had well-kept manicures.

I was expecting gloom and doom, sackcloth, and ashes. When people are depressed, they don’t keep up their manicures. This was surprising to me.

I began noticing this with most women everywhere I went.

One of the woman I interacted with, on the first day I saw her, I noticed she had beautiful red nails. The next time I saw her, she had a fresh manicure.

This time her nails were painted blue and yellow, the colors of the Ukraine flag.

While in Ukraine, I had a conversation with a woman who I had never met before and who spoke English. During our conversation, she showed me a picture of her beautiful nine-year-old daughter.

And the woman told me, “You know, for the first two months of the invasion, all I could do was cry. And then I suddenly realized I’m no good to my daughter, myself, or anybody else if all I do is cry. No, I’m going to do my nails. I’m going to cling to all the civilization that I can. Because I want to inspire my daughter, I want to be there for my daughter, and I will not let myself be crushed.”

I also observed, in a bombed-out police station right nearby, there was a great big, beautiful rose garden with flourishing blooms that someone had obviously been tending to.

A few days after I left Ukraine, I visited a scholar named Frank Ferudi from Kent University in England.

I commented to Professor Ferudi what I was noticing amongst the chaos with the nails, the flowers, and the manicured parks with bombed-out buildings that surrounded it all. “How can people still have beauty in their lives like this?”

He said, “It’s an old story; that the people who survive cling to something beautiful that connects them with normalcy.”

He shared with me that even in World War II, there were cases of prisoners starving to death who would still save breadcrumbs from the meager amount they were getting to feed wild birds that would visit them in their concentration camps.

And the prisoners who survived would say, “The thing that kept me alive was little moments of beauty and remembering that life could be better.”

The Kyiv citizens are determined to not let Putin demoralize them or take away all their humanity.

Tell me about this upcoming auction that you are participating in and what your contribution is to help raise money for the support of Ukraine.

Yes, I am auctioning the Atocha Emerald. It is the 400th anniversary of when the ship sank that had its amongst it treasures. My husband Frank gave it to me as an engagement present. He was one of the financial backers of finding the sunken treasure ship, Atocha. And one of his rewards for that was this beautiful emerald.

As a backer of finding the Atocha, Frank was given many silver and gold coins.

He received many incredible artifacts, and he gave most of them to the Smithsonian or the Treasures of the Sea Museum in Delaware. But he kept this emerald, and he gave it to me.

Frank was the most philanthropic person I’ve ever met. He would be delighted that the auction of this emerald will save and protect people. I think he would be patting me on the back, saying, “Good job for having the emerald do something that has a chance of preventing so much misery.”

100% of the funds that are raised from the sale of the Atocha Emerald will go to constructing the shelters in the border towns of Ukraine.

The other thing I am doing to raise money for these shelters is to donate the funds from the sales of my most recent book, Relentless, written about Mark Victor Hansen, the man who co-wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul.

The reviews are calling it, “The book of the century, It’s the finest business book they’ve ever read”.

It will launch on December 8th this year and every penny of the royalties that the book makes will also go to Ukraine and the shelters.

(right) 6.25 carat octagonal step-cut emerald ring to be auctioned through Sotheby’s Auction House

(left) The ring was given to Mitzi by her late husband Frank

What do you feel is the most important thing to know about Ukraine and what that country is experiencing right now?

These are good people who are fighting for their national lives. If Russia prevails, there will be cruelty on an unimaginable scale because we already know what Russia has done in the areas that they did conquer. I have visited mass graves where 300 to 400 people were shot after torture. Another reason Ukraine has to prevail is that we know more than 200,000 Ukrainian children were kidnapped and taken to Russia. They need to be brought back to Ukraine. I mean, I hope that people support this shelter project that I’m working on. But even more, I hope that people support Ukraine with everything they’ve got. These are good people who didn’t ask for the misery that has been inflicted upon them.

What is the best way for the readers to find and follow you and keep updated on everything you’re involved with?

Visit mitziperdue.com. If you would like to make a donation to help Ukraine, text ‘UP’ to 55312.