April 22, 2005

By Brian Meehan of The Oregonian

When Sanja Indic graduates from the University of Portland next month, her mind will drift back over a remarkable journey: from a childhood darkened by war, to being separated from her parents, to a white brick wall in Croatia where she found refuge from gunfire and bombs.

A tennis racket became the 10-year-old Croatian girl's magic wand. The brick schoolhouse wall became her opponent. She belted the ball and chased reminders of war and ethnic cleansing.

"It was like I could leave it all out there on that wall," said Indic, 22. "It was something I loved doing. Without that wall, I wouldn't be here."

Indic, the Pilots' No. 2 singles player, will play her final collegiate matches next week at the West Coast Conference tournament. The former gymnast is fast, fierce and agile. Her teammates say she never quits on the court. She has never quit in life, either.

In the early 1990s, her family lived a good life in Zenica, Bosnia, a factory city of 96,000, an hour north of Sarajevo. Her mother, Marijana, was a pharmacist; her father, Nenad, one of Bosnia's top actors. Though the Indics were Croats, they had many friends in the majority Muslim community and amid the Serbs and Croats who also lived in Bosnia.

Nenad taught Sanja and older brother, Marin, to judge people by their character, not their ethnic background. When the war unleashed hate, Sanja was shocked.

"Overnight, your neighbor became your enemy," she said.

When she looks back, Indic remembers the war as frightening, "but it is even scarier what you get adjusted to."

Like one particular day on the tennis court in Zenica. She was playing with friends when Serb planes flew low to bomb a factory several hundred meters away.

As air raid sirens rang and people rushed to bomb shelters, the young tennis player told her friends: "Let's pick up the balls before we go."

Indic had been an athletic prodigy. She won national gymnastics tournaments before taking up tennis. She won the last junior tennis national before the war put an end to normal life in Bosnia.

Her father had seen the trouble coming and arranged to send his children to live with their grandmother in Sisak, Croatia. Nenad Indic was optimistic the strife would be settled quickly. But of course, it wasn't.

"We didn't believe it would become so dirty, so deadly," he said. "Muslims were getting killed everywhere. I felt it was my duty to be with these people."

For nearly two years, the family was separated. War dismantled the infrastructure. Nothing worked. Nenad and Marijana occasionally talked to their children, but only via ham radio.

Every fourth day, the Indics would get two hours of electricity and two hours of water service. Nenad's weight dropped from 230 pounds to 136.

The couple finally decided, like more than a million other refugees, that they had to get their children out of harm's way. They sold everything and used the money to bribe soldiers at checkpoints. Marijana went to Sisak to get the children; Nenad joined his brother in Germany and began immigration proceedings. After several months, the Indics were reunited in Berlin.

"I will never forget that moment at the Berlin train station," Nenad said. "That is forever."

They stayed five years in Berlin, where Sanja was discovered by a tennis coach. The family had no money, but the coach put her on scholarship at his club.

After Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II ended in late 1995 with more than 250,000 dead, the German government began pressuring refugees to leave. A church group sponsored the Indic family; they would immigrate to the United States. When asked where, Nenad Indic, who just had watched "Sleepless in Seattle," said, "How about Seattle?" Vancouver was as close as they got.

The family moved into a small apartment; within a month, Sanja found the Vancouver Tennis Center. Hector Mendoza, the club's director, put Sanja on scholarship and volunteered as her personal coach.

She won district titles every year at Fort Vancouver High School and finished as state runner-up in singles her senior year. She became fluent in English, her third language, got good grades, and won a full athletic scholarship to Portland. But she never could bring herself to live on campus; she had missed her family too much during their wartime separation.

The Indics, once a family without a country, embraced the United States. Nenad became a citizen; the rest of the family members will gain their U.S. citizenship Tuesday. Nenad found a job as bakery manager at the New Seasons Market in Raleigh Hills. Marijana works as a pharmacy technician. Marin, 26, has a biology degree from Washington State. And on May 1, the family will beam as Sanja receives her diploma on the Bluff.

She plans to move back to Croatia in May and hopes to land a job in sales for Nike. One of her goals is to sponsor two underprivileged Croat children on the tennis court.

"I want them to be able to play for free, just as I did," she said.

The war stole her childhood, but it also taught Indic never to take anything for granted. During her family's long odyssey, she saw the worst side of people, but she also saw the best.

"You just have to wake up every day and think it is another great day," she said. "Because no matter where we went, we met great people. I am living the American dream, but without people like Hector Mendoza or my tennis coach in Germany, I wouldn't have been able to get a scholarship to college. I just appreciate life and all the people I have met."

Life served up major obstacles for Sanja Indic, and she served aces back.