LIME CITY — Alona Matchenko, the Ukrainian law school student and founder of Toledo Helps Ukraine, returned last week from a medical supply mission to her hometown.

Matchenko left for Kremenchuk, Ukraine, on May 7, the day after her final exams at the University of Toledo College of Law.

Toledo Helps Ukraine has been collecting humanitarian aid for the war-torn people since the first week after the Russian military invaded on Feb. 24.

The bulk of her luggage was six bags of medical supplies, including tourniquets. She was also set to meet a shipping container in Poland, to ensure supplies collected in Toledo would make it to the needy.

“There was lots and lots of first aid supplies, like tourniquets,” Matchenko said. “Tourniquets are like a new currency. It’s hard to get them at all.”

The other bags had vitamins, T-shirts, belts, knee pads and personal hygiene supplies.

Kremenchuk is on the Dnipro River, in central Ukraine. Matchenko described it as an industrial town that is very similar to Toledo, except that Matchenko said it has doubled in population since the war with Russia began.

“When here, on this trip, I wanted it specifically to go to my native town. With the Red Cross, and everything else, I have no control there. I’m not a control freak, but I just wanted to help my town,” Matchenko said. “Plus making this physical hustle makes me less guilty from not suffering as Ukrainian people do, because I have everything I need here in the United States. I have no right to complain about anything. In fact, when I came back, I kissed the ground when I saw the flags and the peaceful sky.”

She said her hometown has survived.

“It’s not really been attacked, except the electric utility and the oil refinery,” Matchenko said. “I was terrified at night with the bombing sirens.”

For the first two weeks of her three-week trip, she worked as an interpreter for a couple of reporters from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that were covering the war. The final week she worked on getting more medical and humanitarian aid into Ukraine. Part of the deal she cut was bringing in the additional large duffel bags of supplies.

In addition to her worries for family and friends, she is concerned for the reporters covering the war.

“I do know that Russia has particularly targeted reporters,” Matchenko said.

She was living in Kyiv when some her classmates were murdered during demonstrations in 2014. The memories come flooding back with the sirens that sounded every other night, while she was in Ukraine.

Ensuring that the shipping container from Toledo would arrive in Kremenchuk took most of her third week. It was stuck at the border in Poland without a driver.

Most Ukrainian men cannot leave the country, only women and men with U.S. passports. She said that many of those men are working on bringing supplies into the country, as drivers.

“This week was lack of diesel, salt and cooking oil. Maybe next week it will be another change?” Matchenko said proudly. “It was just an adventure. I bought the fuel myself. When I am exhausted to death, I guess I have earned sleep.“

The process required hundreds of dollars of her own cash.

It took three days to find a trusted driver, the right type of truck that could go through the border, a way to “borrow” 800 liters of fuel and transferring of all the goods from the container to the new truck.

More information can be found on the Toledo Helps Ukraine Facebook page and emails can be sent to [email protected].