After months stuck in Brazil, Minnesota family arrives home with newborn

Lori Tocholke waited nervously near baggage claim carousel 11 Tuesday afternoon at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, her heart “beating a thousand miles per hour.”

On March 12, Tocholke’s newest grandchild, Greyson Leo Phillips, was born, 2 pounds 2.6 ounces and 12 weeks ahead of schedule.

The premature birth was traumatic enough for Tocholke’s daughter, Cheri Phillips. Worse was the fact that Greyson was born while Phillips and her husband, Chris, were vacationing in Brazil.

Because of a technicality, Brazilian authorities refused to issue Greyson’s birth certificate. Without a birth certificate, he couldn’t get a U.S. passport. And without a U.S. passport, Greyson couldn’t go home to Minnesota.

The family’s travails caused a storm in Brazilian media, held up as an example of how the country’s bureaucracy can tie up daily life for no good reason.

At the airport Tuesday, a half-dozen news cameras encircled the entry to baggage claim.

All Tocholke wanted?

To hold her newest grandchild for the first time, 105 heart-wrenching days after he was born. Tocholke told the other waiting family members she had first dibs.

The plane landed at 1:48 p.m., seven minutes early. Tocholke bided her time as Chris and Cheri carried Greyson and their things from the plane and made their way from gate G19 to baggage claim.

Suddenly, a stroller burst through the doors, then Cheri, then Chris: a happy, exhausted family, finally home. Applause erupted. Tocholke hugged her daughter, then she got down to the business at hand: That sweet baby boy.

Greyson’s silver-blue eyes peered up at his grandma as she scooped him out of the stroller and cooed. He cried a few times. “Oh, I know!” his grandma soothed. She snuggled him and jiggled him, and he quieted. She held him like a football, then passed him to another family member, who passed him to another, then another.

“Everybody’s here, everybody’s safe, my heart is full,” Tocholke said.

A few feet away, tears and sweat streamed down Chris Phillips’ face and chest, exhausted after three days of travel and months of uncertainty. The family had gone to Brazil to visit Chris’ 8-year-old daughter, who lives with her mom in the Brazilian coastal city of Florianópolis.

“It was an ordeal, and not something we ever expected,” he said. “We went down for 17 days, just to visit my daughter on her birthday. Along this entire process, it seems like every time we made one step forward, it was three steps back.”

During their sojourn in Brazil, the family did interviews with a slew of Brazilian media outlets, focusing on the gaps in Brazilian bureaucracy. Their story resonated. Three days after Minnesota media first published the family’s story, two representatives from the Brazilian cartorio, like a public notary, came to their Airbnb with Greyson’s birth certificate.

“We love Brazil; this wasn’t us hating Brazil,” Chris said. “I go there three times a year. My daughter is half Brazilian. Now my son’s been born in Brazil. I feel part Brazilian. It’s a wonderful place. But what do I hope changes? I hope Brazilian bureaucracy is behind us, but for hundreds of millions of Brazilians, it’s not.”

Before they left the airport for the hour drive to Cambridge — to the new home they closed on remotely from Brazil — Cheri pulled out a bottle and fed Greyson.

“He’s been alive for three and a half months and never been home,” Cheri said.

“We’re home, bud,” Chris said, patting his head. “We’re home.”