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Klobuchar helps family in Japan -- Emergency visa interview granted to Kieko Chelmo

(Detroit Lakes Online)

March 24, 2011

By: Paula Quam, DL-Online

There is some good news for the Chelmo family.

After a week-long media blitz, pleading their case to come home, the Detroit Lakes family stuck in Japan is very close to seeing that happen.

Brook Chelmo and his parents, Joyce and Richard Chelmo, have been working feverishly to get him, his wife, Kieko, and his 15-month-old daughter, Aria back to the area after the devastation and continuing threats of earthquakes and nuclear disasters in Japan.

Working with Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office, Kieko, who is Japanese, has now been granted an interview with U.S. Embassy officials in Japan April 1 in the hopes they will give her an emergency visa.

According to Chelmo, Klobuchar’s office has continued to put pressure on the embassy after officials there “blew him off,” telling him and Kieko to apply the standard way.

That would have taken over a year.

With an emergency visa, they family could be home sometime in May.

In the meantime, Brook writes on his Facebook page that he wants everybody to continue supporting and thanking Sen. Klobuchar’s office.

“If for some reason we have troubles with the embassy, the final gate keeper, we will need them (Klobuchar’s staff) to fight! With irradiated water up north I won’t stop till we’re home!”

Radiation in food and water is only one concern of the Chelmos.

Continued scheduled and non-scheduled blackouts in the country have them concerned about their daughter, Aria, who needs a machine to breath when she falls asleep.

Without that, she would likely die.

Brook Chelmos says they fear the possibility of having to manually pump air into their daughter’s lungs if the power goes out for an extended amount of time.

This week that fear is joined by new hope though, as the family is now busy getting ready to pack up their lives in Japan for a permanent move back to the U.S.