Help Dennis and Katie’s family start over after the robbery

Hello! We're Dennis and Katerina Lukinykh, a family of five with three boys under six: Tim, Theo, and Stephen.

We left Russia in March 2022 and have been living in Mexico since late 2022. We initially planned to go to the USA, but now we're grateful those plans fell through - I received a promising job offer from Canada instead.

In December 2024, after returning to Mexico City from the Pacific coast for the birth of our third child, we met two Russian-speaking families. We were spending a lot of time together and naively decided to share a house before New Year's (everything was booked, and we wanted to save some money).

After moving into the house, strange things began happening, and the situation grew worse each day. Right after New Year's, they started extorting money from me - keeping me separated from my family and refusing to let me leave while threatening violence, until I'd given them everything we had.

We only managed to escape alive by pure luck - the landlady unexpectedly returned to the house, which scared our captors into letting us go. We immediately went to the police, but when we returned with them, the house was already empty. They had taken absolutely all our documents and valuables, along with the banking cards. Not the ideal situation weeks before childbirth, but we acknowledge our mistake in judgment.

The only hopeful thing that kept us from losing heart was my standing job offer in Canada. But without passports, we can't initiate the visa process. The Russian consulate informed me that passports recovery likely won't happen before summer 2026, as we’ve lost all our Russian documenta. This makes obtaining Mexican citizenship the faster alternative, which I try to do daily.

However, our most urgent need for support stems from unexpected medical expenses. When our baby arrived prematurely - with my wife's water breaking suddenly in the car - we raced against time to reach the hospital. Our child was born just ten minutes after we arrived, leaving us with substantial hospital bills we're now struggling to pay. The hospital granted us a one-month payment plan for the $6,000 bill, but we've only managed to raise just over $1,000 so far. If they take legal action for non-payment, it could derail both our Mexican documentation process and consequently our relocation to Canada.

We have a 13-page copy of the police report with an official acceptance stamp, hospital invoices requiring payment, documentation of our requests for assistance to the International Red Cross and local NGOs, including records of our stay at a shelter. Therefore, we'd like to conclude by specifying exactly how the funds will be allocated: