50 youth headed to China were stranded by the tech outage. Tacoma came to the rescue

Adam McMurray has seen the “best of human nature” in Tacoma over the past few days, he said.

The 18-year-old from Utah was one of about 50 youth from across the country whose student travel group was stranded in Seattle on the way to China on Friday.

Teachers and staff frantically communicated with parents and other camp personnel and worked to find lodging. The University of Puget Sound and others in Tacoma stepped up.

They put the students up in dorms on campus for several nights, and community leaders arranged for the group to see Tacoma landmarks.

By the end of the weekend, Grit City had quite a few new fans.

“It was really a miracle to see just the kindness and the friendship from the people of Tacoma,” McMurray said. “None of them knew us.”

McMurray, who plans to go to Brigham Young University this fall, flew into Seattle on Thursday and planned to travel to China the next morning.

Then the global CrowdStrike technology outage hit, affecting airlines, medical facilities and other businesses that use the cybersecurity firm’s software.

McMurray said some of the students were back on their way to Shanghai by Sunday morning. He was part of a second group headed out Sunday night. The rest of the students had tickets to fly out Monday morning.

When the students learned that the soonest they could leave for China was Sunday, McMurray said it meant they were “losing three very precious days” of their experience abroad.

The students, ages 12-18, were traveling with a nonprofit called the Helen Foster Snow Foundation , which aims to build bridges between different cultures across the world. The foundation hosts a summer camp in Wuxi, China, called Camp Gung Ho , where American and Chinese students live and work together for two weeks.

How did the students end up at UPS?

As Adam Foster, head of the nonprofit, worked to find lodging for the stranded students, he happened to be at a Sister Cities International Conference in Tacoma on Friday. The timing was fortuitous.

He asked Clare Petrich, who chairs Tacoma’s Sister Cities Council, what to do. They were struggling to find short-term rentals or hotel rooms.

“She said: ‘You know what? I know everybody in Tacoma, and we’re going to take care of you guys,’” Foster said. “It was just amazing. I was just blown away.”

A representative from University of Puget Sound at the conference made a call, and all of the sudden they had 50 rooms on campus. The group took a Sound Transit route to the Tacoma Dome Station. Pierce Transit arranged a special bus to get the students to UPS.

“They said: ‘We’ll take them. We’ll take all the kids,’” Foster said. “So we didn’t have to break up the group or anything. We kept them together. We didn’t have to sleep at the airport. You know, you can imagine these parents hearing what’s going on, and they’re just so worried about everybody, but, my gosh, the people of Tacoma just saved the day.”

Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards was at the conference, too. Foster let her know how generous the city had been in finding housing last-minute. Then Woodards asked what the students would be doing. He told her about the group, and she offered them tickets to the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. They also got leftover sack lunches for the kids from the conference.

“It’s a miracle,” Foster said. “Honestly, it’s a miracle.”

‘They just welcomed us with open arms.’

McMurray said the students had been worried about what they were going to do for three days and where they would stay.

“I assumed it would just be a little delay,” McMurray said. “I did not imagine this.”

All the students were really excited for camp, he said.

“We were really sad when we were delayed by several days,” he said.

McMurray said UPS personnel seemed to sense that the students were disappointed in how things worked out and helped make the most of their visit when they got to campus Friday.

“They just had all this fun stuff for us right when we arrived,” he said.

The school had cool sunglasses and snacks waiting, he said, which were a hit with the hungry, stressed students.

“It was just really cool to see the campus,” he said. “It’s just so beautiful up here.”

They had fun playing Frisbee in a field on campus.

McMurray’s mom lived in Tacoma at one point, he said, and he had fun sending her photos from his time here.

Sunday morning, former Tacoma mayor and historian Bill Baarsma met them at the Chinese Reconciliation Park to talk about the impacts of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act in the Pacific Northwest.

The park “is a critical component of the community-led reconciliation process intended to commemorate the 1885 expulsion of Tacoma’s Chinese citizens,” part of the city’s website says.

The park is meant “to express Tacoma’s commitment to end racism and hatred, and to promote a peaceful, multicultural community,” the website says.

The students also spent their days in Tacoma bonding with one another.

While talking to a News Tribune reporter, McMurray handed the phone to one of his fellow travelers and new friend, Elias Lundquist, an 18-year-old from Massachusetts.

Lundquist said he likes history and particularly liked their visit to the park.

“That was really interesting to learn the history of how that park came to be and the history of Chinese and American relations in Tacoma, and how the city is working to rebuild and make up for past mistakes,” he said.

It fit well with the purpose of their trip: building bridges.

He said the campers will be working with their Chinese peers to do some sort of project with the U.S. Consulate, which they’ll present to government and business leaders at the end.

Lundquist, who plans to go to the University of Massachusetts this fall, said he considered applying to UPS last year. He enjoyed spending a few days on the campus.

“They just welcomed us with open arms and were really excited to host us,” he said.

The city came together to make their unexpected stay meaningful.

He wanted to emphasize: “how special that feels for a group of 50 kids who were really worried at first that this trip might not happen at all.”

He’s leaving, he said, with “nothing but good things to say about Tacoma and all the people here.”