Shay Khatiri, 29, a political refugee from Iran with little familiarity with Pittsburgh, created a GoFundMe account Saturday afternoon that over the next two days raised more than $730,000 on behalf of Tree of Life shooting victims and survivors. He reset its fundraising goal from $50,000 to $1 million.
In a phone interview Monday evening from Washington, D.C., where he is a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Mr. Khatiri discussed the success of the effort — which he says he undertook in the midst of a hangover — and his interest in helping people to whom he had no connection.
(The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.)
Post-Gazette: So you’ve never been to Pittsburgh?
Mr. Khatiri: No, I’ve never been. I have been to Gettysburg, but that’s as much connection as I have to Pennsylvania.
Post-Gazette: So what would you have known about Pittsburgh before Saturday’s horrible news?
Mr. Khatiri: I knew it as the capital of Pennsylvania and the home of the University of Pittsburgh, and the discussion over how a lot of people want to bring the coal industries back, except maybe the people of Pittsburgh themselves.
Post-Gazette: Well, Pittsburgh’s not really the capital, Harrisburg is.
Mr. Khatiri (chuckles at himself): Oh yeah, right, right. It’s just the largest city, right? No, wait, that’s Philadelphia?
Post-Gazette: Correct. Let’s talk instead about Saturday morning and how your GoFundMe idea started.
Mr. Khatiri: Very embarrassingly, I did not wake up until several hours after it happened. I was staying with my friend Sara, who is Jewish, and she was very upset when she told me what had happened. I was shocked, and very upset myself, and I just felt like I wanted to donate something.
Post-Gazette: But instead of just donating, you hit on a way to have other people donate. Why?
Mr. Khatiri: I had created GoFundMe accounts before, just to raise money for myself as a young intern living in an expensive city like Washington with little money. I had some modest success, raised maybe $1,500 each time. And I thought if I did something for Tree of Life and it went viral, it could maybe raise something like $50,000. That was passed in a few hours.
Post-Gazette: You started this a couple hours after the events in Pittsburgh, and you say you were just waking up?
Mr. Khatiri: I was kind of hung over, to be honest. It was Halloween weekend, and I’d been to a party. I thought to myself that I can’t really do anything productive right now — I definitely can’t study — so maybe I can do this. As a millennial, when I wake up the first thing I do is take out my phone and open up my laptop, and that’s what I did, going to GoFundMe.
Post-Gazette: Evidently, the people at GoFundMe pitched in to help you after the funds began streaming in? They have made it the top donation effort highlighted on their home page.
Mr. Khatiri: They have been extraordinarily helpful. Once it started raising money — a few thousand at first, then maybe $10,000 or $15,000 — they told me this has a lot of potential and we want to help you as much as possible.
Post-Gazette: But the way they set it up is the money goes directly to Tree of Life financial accounts instead of through you?
Mr. Khatiri: Right, I have no access to the funds, which is great, because I’m not very good with money.
Post-Gazette: But what were you expecting the money would accomplish?
Mr. Khatiri: I just wanted it to be helpful to the community and for the survivors and the victims — the funeral and medical expenses, the expenses of the synagogue. It was really just off the top of my head — that I will try to raise this and see what happens.
Post-Gazette: Have you had any communication with the synagogue since Saturday?
Mr. Khatiri: I talked to the president briefly. I found him and called him up and said this is what’s happening, and it turned out he had found out about it earlier. You could hear how sad he was, which was heartbreaking to me, but he was very grateful and asked for my contact information. He was understandably very busy.
Post-Gazette: At what point did you realize the whole effort might exceed anything you originally envisioned?
Mr. Khatiri: I think I knew it within a few hours, because it quickly reached $20,000 or $30,000. After I changed the goal to a million dollars, I was really skeptical it would reach there, but now it’s past $700,000, and I don’t know how far it’s going to go — I’m still shocked.
Post-Gazette: How, really, do you explain the success?
Mr. Khatiri: People care. ... They may not like welfare and high taxes, but Americans are charitable and prefer to contribute in their own way. They want to help.
Post-Gazette: But why you? Why Shay Khatiri?
Mr. Khatiri: I guess it’s just the fact that it crossed my mind when it did, and the fact that I have been on the receiving end of a lot of Jewish generosity. I’ve been involved in several nonprofit organizations that benefited from Jewish philanthropy. And a lot of my mentors — both professors and bosses — almost all of them are Jewish. I have been on the receiving end all of my life, and I felt there was this one small thing I could do.
Post-Gazette: And this small thing could end up raising a million dollars for people you don’t know?
Mr. Khatiri: I don’t want to jinx it by saying that. And I don’t want to take credit — it’s the donors. I’ll take credit for the $36 I contributed myself, and for the two minutes of work I put into setting it up.
Post-Gazette: You’re a refugee here in the U.S? Can you briefly describe how that came to be?
Mr. Khatiri: I came here on a student visa 4½ years ago. I’ve been involved with dissident Iranian groups since then in the United States. I also signed a letter against the Iranian regime, and found out I was blacklisted by the government there. All of these things came together to lead me to apply for asylum. I am temporarily allowed to stay here until a judge decides my case, which may take years.
Post-Gazette: Now that you’ve been through the experience of the past few days, does it increase the likelihood you’ll ever visit Pittsburgh?
Mr. Khatiri: I’ve always wanted to visit, even just to go to a Steelers game. But after this, I really hope I could visit the synagogue sometime — not anytime soon, as they have a lot of pressing business. But I really like the Penguins, too, even though I’ve never been to a hockey game.
Post-Gazette: And what’s the long-term plan for Shay Khatiri, assuming you are granted permanent refugee status?
Mr. Khatiri: I really feel like I was born an American but in the wrong country. I want to be a foreign independent policy expert and service this country in any way I can.
Gary Rotstein: grotstein@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1255.
First Published: October 30, 2018, 12:29 a.m.
