Donated by Mark Grimmette, two-time Olympic luge medalist and current USA Luge sports programs director, and his wife Keela, the minivan will carry essential supplies to Ukrainian soldiers and civilians.

“He lives pretty close to me, and there’s a trail in the back of our house and he likes walking that every day,” Grimmette said. “And he was walking by (the van) every day, and we weren’t using it — we have a new vehicle — and so we were just trying to get rid of it, so Dmitry thought of this idea to take it and send it to Ukraine.”

Grimmette said the minivan was never going to make a profit, had he chosen to sell it — the repairs would cost the same as the value of the vehicle. Donating it to Feld was “a better route.”

“(Feld) has become a good friend, and if he comes up with an idea, I try to help if I can,” Grimmette said.

The minivan was sent to Central Garage in Lake Placid for repairs before being shipped out. Feld was surprised at the “huge discount” the garage gave him and said he “thank(s) them very much” for their donated time.

“(We were) just helping a local out,” Central Garage owner Jay Strack said. “We try to help people out as much as we can.”

The minivan left Lake Placid on a flatbed Friday, Sept. 8, and it was first sent to Ohio to be prepared for shipment along with other supplies from Little Wing Relief, the organization Feld has partnered with for a year. Then it will be sent to Norfolk, Virginia. The van will see nearly 4,500 miles of travel before its tires meet the road and the odometer starts climbing again, leaving Norfolk via freighter on Sept. 19 and arriving in Lithuania around Oct. 15. There, Ukrainian relief organizers will take the van. Its contents will be donated to soldiers on the front lines, and the van will help to deliver humanitarian aid.

Every seat in the minivan — with the exception of the driver’s — was packed tight with boxes of supplies by the team Feld assembled. Most of the van’s contents were sneakers, a specific request from the Ukrainian army.

“Sneakers was a request for us from the Ukrainian army,” Feld said. “It’s for the border army units and also for the special forces units who might go into enemy territory. They go through rivers, through swamps, through sand and they destroy their shoes.”

Feld collected an estimated 150 pairs of used sneakers from the Lake Placid community, which he stored in his garage until the van was ready to be shipped. He cites USA Luge and state Assemblyman Billy Jones, D-Chateaugay Lake, as instrumental to the sneaker drive, as well as the residents of Lake Placid who banded together to donate their old shoes.

“It was an amazing effort,” Feld said.

Yuliia Tyshevych, a Ukraine native and Lake Placid resident, helped organize and box up the sneakers. She is a part of the core group of local immigrants frequently called upon by Feld to help with humanitarian efforts, in which she participates eagerly. Tyshevych first met Feld when she moved to Lake Placid on a J1 visa in 2016. When given the opportunity to remain in the U.S., she opted to make Lake Placid her new home. Since the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, she has helped Feld during his many fundraisers and aid drives for their shared home country.

“Since the full-scale invasion, Dmitry has started doing a lot of donations, getting humanitarian aid sent to Ukraine so we all just kind of got together, Tyshevych said. “Every time he needs something, he just sends us an email and spreads the word around and we just come together to do it.”

Most of Tyshevych’s family remains in Ukraine, with the exception of her mother, who moved to the U.S. last September and recently received her green card. As Tyshevych packed boxes at Feld’s house, her mother had just landed back in Ukraine to visit family.

“My grandma is there, all my aunts, my uncles, brothers, cousins, everyone is there,” she said. “So, she just went to visit them, and within the first two hours she was there she already saw drones flying over her head. She was already freaking out.”

Another friend of Feld’s, Bachana Tsiklauri, helped load the heavy boxes of supplies into the minivan.

“I am simply trying to do my best as a human being,” Tsiklauri said. “That’s all we do. We help each other.”

He is not Ukrainian, nor is his family. His parents are good friends of Feld’s and hail from Georgia, a former Soviet republic on the Black Sea. Georgia was invaded by Russia in 2008, and though that war only lasted five days, Tsiklauri sees the similarities between the two conflicts. He also sees the ways in which a regional conflict can turn international if not quelled at that start.

“Just read the history,” said Tsiklauri, who is currently the village manager in Saranac Lake. “Don’t want to go back? Just help Ukraine. I mean, let’s face it, in 1939 or even in 1940, who would’ve thought that some boys from Tupper Lake and Lake Placid would find themselves in Italy … fighting Germans? Like, who would think, you know? But, it happened, didn’t it? If someone thinks that (the Adirondacks) are too far away from (the war in Ukraine), they’re wrong.”

Tyshevych hopes that Americans will keep the war in mind as time wears on and continue to aid Ukraine — even when it is no longer prevalent in the news or fashionable to do so.

“I think people just need to remember that there is still a war going on,” Tyshevych said. “I get asked so many times, so often, ‘Oh, is there a war still going on in Ukraine?’ People say, ‘Is that still going on in Ukraine?’ Yes, people, it is. People are dying every single day — soldiers, civilians, everyone is still dying and scared every single day. So, just because it’s not on the news 24/7 anymore doesn’t mean it’s not happening anymore. I wish people were doing research and reading about it on their own. Just because it’s not on TV 24/7 anymore doesn’t mean it’s over.”

To donate items for Ukraine, contact Feld by email: dmitry@usaluge.org.