PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — More often than not these days, Joe Dubyk wakes up startled. The sounds of missiles jolt him awake.
“You’re always thinking, is this one for me? And that’s a very scary feeling,” he said.
The 37-year-old roofer from Jamison, Bucks County — who is of Ukrainian descent — returned to Ukraine to lend a helping hand to the people of the war-torn country. This is his second trip there.
He’s working with an organization to deliver food and medical supplies to civilians and the military. On the weekends, he clears rubble. He has also been designing technically advanced drones for the war effort.
“I am going to deliver this to the special forces,” he said of the drones. “They’re going to give us some feedback on this drone, and then we are going to go from there. We are going to keep developing the drone and hopefully we are going to get enough money to keep producing these.”
For about a week, Dubyk was distributing aid in the city of Kramatorsk — roughly 6 miles from the front lines.
“It’s much scarier and it’s much hotter, and you hear a lot of more explosions,” he said. “And unfortunately, there are just a lot of people there that just can’t get out. They have no means to flee and they are kind of stuck there.”
Dubyk plans on returning to the U.S. in July.
“We all just want this war to end and end as quickly as possible,” he added.
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