From Romania to Colorado: The Isle's Popa happy her journey is over

Opinions differ about who was the scariest Dracula. You have to consider Bela Lugosi’s dark and mysterious presence; the icy glare of Christopher Lee; and, who can forget the terror-inducing tan lines of George Hamilton in “Love at First Bite”?

But for Transylvania native Victoria Popa, none of those guys stack up to the real thing. Popa, a guest safety agent at the Isle Casino Hotel, grew up in a house next to one of the historic Romanian castles owned by the original Dracula himself, Vlad the Impaler. She can tell you ghost stories about relatives whose bodies were discovered to have turned over in their graves onto their stomachs — and if that doesn’t make Bram Stoker turn over in his, we don’t know what will.

Popa stands about 5-feet tall and that may be exaggerating. When she talks, her eyebrows raise and she grows animated. She might touch your arm as she apologizes for her accent or struggles to talk about the details of her life, details that would not be easy to describe in any language.
In her home country, Popa worked as a secretary during the years of the communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, a man credited with killing thousands of Romanians either directly or through an austerity program that resulted in starvation for many. She never believed the administration to be trustworthy, but when she witnessed forged government reports on agricultural trade statistics pass through her office, she felt it was time for her to leave her homeland. She sent a letter to an underground movement in Munich, Germany, to try to arrange for her escape.
Unfortunately for Popa, the letter was traced to her office by the government.
The same night that one of her best friends identified her as the author of the letter, Popa took her three daughters to stay with her sister and fled toward the Yugoslavian border.
With no time to prepare for such a journey, Popa discovered her secretarial skills weren’t much help in the Romanian forest. “I love the animals in Romania, but I think they’re a little cuckoo, and I was very afraid,” she says, able to laugh some about it now. “So every night I tied myself high on a tree trunk to be off the ground.” The problem? “Every time I fell asleep, I hit my head against the tree and woke up.”
Five rain-filled days and nights left Popa’s feet swollen and infected by the time she reached the border and she was immediately placed in an infirmary. If she knew what would happen next, she might never have wanted to get well. Instead of freeing her, as she expected, the military sent her to a prison camp.
“It was horrible,” she recalls, “every night they picked a different woman to rape or beat. To get out of there, I took a chance and volunteered for kitchen duty. I didn’t know what would happen, I just worked as hard as I could.”
One day when the military was preparing to send the prisoners back to meet their fates in Romania, a commandant who remembered Popa’s work happened by and had her
pulled from the group. This simple act would eventually allow Popa to reach America through political asylum granted by the George H.W. Bush administration.
Today, Popa is still fighting to regain her family’s land in Romania. Her daughters are safe, one living in the U.S. and the other two in Europe. She is writing her memoir, though some parts of it, like the unknown fate of her fellow prisoners, are too much for her at times, and she has to stop.
“I love my job, I love this country,” she says. “But sometimes I worry, I think we believe freedom is not real because it is like a dream that can never be taken away.” Of course, in Popa’s experience, facts are more worrisome than fictions. Vlad the Impaler would probably agree.

— by Sam DeLeo, 303-954-1437, sdeleo@denvernewspaperagency.com