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OAKMONT, Pa. – The “other American” imprisoned in Russia also has a name.
He was always just Mr. Vogel to the students he dragged in with lectures about the Cold War. But he is Mark Hilliard Vogel in his well-worn passports, profusely stamped from his years of teaching International Baccalaureate history courses at schools attended by the children of American diplomats and the world’s elite in Colombia, Venezuela, Oman, Malaysia and, for the past 10 years in Russia.
Vogel’s charmed life was overshadowed at the age of 60. He never sought fame. But he and his family have slowly come to the realization that telling the world his name could be his salvation.
For the past 11 months, Vogel has been in Russian detention centers since his arrest in August 2021. for trying to enter the country with about half an ounce of medical marijuana, which he had been prescribed in the United States for chronic pain after multiple injuries and surgeries. First he waited interminably for trial, often in overcrowded, smoke-choked cells. Most recently, he was serving the first weeks of an incomprehensible 14-year sentence handed down by a Russian judge in June.
Vogel’s situation parallels a similar case that played a big role news websites, leading cable news shows and prompted statements from the White House: the trial of WNBA basketball star Brittney Greener, who was also arrested for trying to enter Russia with a small amount of medical marijuana. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced that the United States had made a “substantial offer” to Russia to secure the release of Greener and another jailed American, Paul Whalen, who is serving a 16-year Russian sentence on espionage charges that was rejected.
Mark Vogel’s wife, Jane Vogel, said in an interview after the news broke that she still hoped her husband would be included in an exchange. But those hopes are fading, she said, speaking publicly for the first time about her husband’s case.
“I have a feeling in the bottom of my stomach that Mark is going to be left out,” Jane Vogel said Wednesday after the announcement of the possible trade, including Griner and Whalen. “It’s terrifying. I hope that President Biden and especially First Lady Jill Biden, who is an educator, realizes the importance of including Mark in addition to Brittney Greener and Paul Whelan.”
In suburban Pittsburgh, Jane Vogel watched the Greener case unfold and wondered if her husband had been forgotten. Greener’s wife, Cheryl, received a call from the president. The Vogels were held at the middle functionary level of the US State Department. Speculation of a possible prisoner swap ahead of Blinken’s statement on Wednesday had earlier filtered into his Russian prison cell, adding to his anxiety.
“This hurts,” Mark Vogel wrote in a letter home, referring to reports of the prisoner swap. “Teachers are at least as important as baboon players.”
In an emailed response to an inquiry from The Washington Post, a State Department official said the agency was aware of Vogel’s case but did not provide additional information, citing privacy concerns. The employee did not respond to interview requests.
After Biden’s conversation with Greener’s wife, the White House released a summary of the conversation saying he told her the US government was working hard to secure the release of Greener and another American and Whelan. Biden added that his administration is pushing for the release of “other” American citizens imprisoned in Russia and other countries. Mark Vogel’s name did not appear.
“It seems like the government is working really hard for Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan,” Jane Vogel, 60, said in an interview last week at her home, surrounded by memories of the family’s wanderings around the world. “We want them to work for us, too.”
Jane Vogel was quick to point out that she hopes Griner and Whelan will also be released. Greener herself issued a statement calling for the release of other Americans. It’s hard to escape the fear that her husband’s case will never become a priority. That she might never see him again. At times, she said through tears, she feels like a “widow.”
Encouraging students to ‘live life’
Mark Vogel has always been the lucky one. Regardless of the difficult situation, he seemed to land on his feet, like a cat, his friends would say.
Presentable, athletic, sometimes a little goofy, the Pittsburgh-area native with that broad beaming smile, square jaw, thick head of wavy hair could talk to anyone. Things were forever falling into place for him. A crazy idea to hitchhike from Prince George’s County, where he taught public high school, to see the 1994 Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Pittsburgh led to a chance meeting with his future wife, Jane, a friend of his high school They have seen each other only occasionally since they graduated a decade and a half ago.
Mark Vogel had a kind of wanderlust that was irresistible. Lying on a beach in Thailand one New Year’s Eve in the mid-1990s, he and Jane came up with a plan — to get married, have children, and teach abroad. Jane told her mother that she would be back in eight months. It turned out to be 27 years.
They went to places that caused fear and blank stares among their friends and family. And they gushed about them. The country house surrounded by flowers where they lived outside Medellin, Colombia; the beach house in Oman where their eldest son learned to snorkel. An exception is Caracas, Venezuela, where a neighbor was killed and a student’s father was seriously injured in a shooting. Their movements became so restricted due to safety concerns that their sons, Sam and Ethan, staged what they jokingly called a “coup” to get the family to move.
Former students remember Mark as an optimistic presence in their lives, who always said, ‘It’s a great day to be alive!’ Kuala Lumpur in the 1990s, who is now CEO of a Finnish organization that advocates on behalf of the unemployed.
In 2012, after leaving Caracas, the Vogels found work at the Anglo-American School in Moscow, a prestigious $34,000-a-year institution that was established by the US, Canadian and British embassies. Their salaries were far above anything they could earn teaching in the United States. They had an apartment on a busy Moscow street. They loved the place. They toured Europe visiting friends in the school holidays.
They mingled with the crowd at the embassy and taught their children. Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia for part of the Vogel family’s tenure in Moscow, said his son was captivated by Mark’s infectious teaching style.
“Mr. Vogel, as he called him, made him excited about these problems in a way he had never been before, even though he met [President] Barack Obama and all kinds of fancy people,” McFaul said.
Over the past few years, as tensions between the United States and Russia have risen, it has become harder for the Vogels to convince family and friends that they are in some kind of teacher’s paradise.
“I’d say, ‘What are you doing there? Putin is a monster,” said Mark’s sister, Elise Hyland. Her brother always responded by saying that the Russians were “wonderful people” and that “you have to understand their culture to understand what’s going on now,” Hyland recalled.
Mark was careful to avoid any impression that he was taking a political stand, said his friend and fellow teacher Steve Coffey. Sometimes they changed lunch plans just to avoid neighborhoods where demonstrations might take place.
All the while, Mark’s body was breaking down. He had back and shoulder surgeries as well as a knee replacement. The pain was endless. He walked with a pronounced limp. Coffey remembers his friend’s characteristic farewell after a long day: “Okay, buddy, I’m going to take a shower.”
Mark was adamant about not taking opiates. In 2021, a doctor recommended he try medical marijuana. Not only did it help with the pain—he liked it the same way someone else might like a glass of wine or beer.
While home in Pennsylvania for summer vacation in 2021, Mark and Jane had to decide whether to return to Russia. Jane was hesitant to return, but her husband convinced her. Just one more year. Then he would retire and they could live in their cozy house in Oakmont with the big oak tree in the back and the bay window overlooking the meadow. They can host barbecues. They could make new friends in their neighborhood.
After three decades abroad, a “normal” life, as she put it, sounded “exotic.”
“I’m really in trouble”
On August 14, 2021, the Vogel family landed at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow after a long flight from New York on the Russian airline Aeroflot. As they got off the plane, Jane noticed they were in a different terminal than usual, with more security, a change from the relaxed environment they had encountered in previous years. She stopped at the toilet and her husband went ahead to the checkpoint.
When she caught up to him, she could tell something was wrong. His breathing had accelerated so much that his mask was inflating and deflating like a balloon.
“Jane,” he said, “I’m really in trouble.”
He had packed 14 rounds of medical marijuana in his suitcase, stuffed some in his shoes and placed several buds of cannabis in a contact lens case, his wife said. Jane said she had no idea he did it. But why take such a risk?
“It’s pretty simple,” his son Ethan said of his father’s plan to import medical marijuana into Russia. “He thought he could get away with it.”
Still, this lucky guy, this guy who always seemed to have things going his way, guessed this was a situation that wouldn’t end so badly. Maybe he just…
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