August 1968 was a traumatic month for all Czechs, but it was piquantly and privately so for Vlasta Gabriel, the young mother of two small children. Ten days after Warsaw Pact armies rumbled into Czechoslovakia. Vlasta's husband Bedrich, an electrician and occasional truck driver in Decin, bundled the couple's children into the family car and defected to the West. He eventually settled with his émigré mother in Yucaipa, Calif., (pop. 26,000) and died of lung cancer not long after. Vlasta plunged into a lonely, uphill custody battle for her son and daughter. The case is still pending in a San...
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