How a Houston-area man escaped from Qatar during the ongoing conflict in the Middle East

A Houston father who escaped from Qatar during the U.S./Iran conflict has reunited with his family. He said it was a risky, costly journey home.

FULSHEAR, Texas — After days of fear, sleepless nights and tense phone calls across continents, a Houston-area husband and father is finally back home on his couch, surrounded by the family that spent the last week wondering how — and if — he would make it out of Qatar.

Sitting in his living room with his wife and children, Sean Starkey admits the moment still doesn’t feel real.

“Yeah, it’s surreal. I’m still taking it all in, you know? I’m extremely happy, but it’s still a little weird to be home finally,” he said.

His wife, Jennifer Starkey, said the reunion is exactly what they had been praying for.

“Good. Like, really good. Obviously, it’s great. We, you know, we really missed him and we’re just glad that he was able to make it here and get home to us. So we’re very happy to have him here,” she said.

The timing, the family added, couldn’t have been better. Spring break means extra days at home together after an ordeal that began when attacks in the region halted flights and the U.S./Iran conflict turned Qatar into a place many Americans suddenly couldn’t leave.

Sean Starkey told KHOU 11 News that even before he found a way out, he spent hours imagining the moment he would finally walk off a plane in Texas and see his family waiting.

“Words really can’t describe it. You know, it was the only thing I was thinking about my whole flight from Germany,” he said. “As soon as I got off the plane, all I had was a backpack and a duffel bag, and I just ran as fast as I could … to where they’re going to pick me up and just embrace them, and just didn’t want to let go.”

But getting to that moment took a series of risky decisions — and help from people nearly 8,000 miles away.

He said what finally changed after days of being told to shelter in place was a connection his wife helped make from home. With commercial routes closing and no clear way out, she reached out to anyone she could find who might know the region and know a way around the restrictions.

“Well, I just I just started reaching out to anyone and everyone that I could to try to get information. And, you know, luckily, we stumbled upon some names and, you know, that was able to help them,” she said. “They had a couple of options that they were working on that fell through. So we were lucky that this one actually panned out and they were able to get it through. But it feels good. Knowing that, you know, I helped in a little way, to help them get back.”

Through a coworker of hers, he was added to a WhatsApp group of expats living in Qatar. From there, strangers online connected him with a driver who, for a steep price, was willing to take a group of Americans across the border to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia — a key step to finding flights out.

That plan required another driver just to get them to Doha first. They waited and the driver showed up. Then came the next leg — a nonstop, roughly seven-hour drive from Doha to Riyadh, nearly alone on the road.

“It was a seven-hour drive from Doha to Riyadh, and we were one of the only cars on the road. And so we were really nervous,” he said.

They had been warned that crossing the border came with its own dangers.

“We had been warned about crossing the border because they have some problems there that when you cross the border, your name goes on a list. And then sometimes for the right amount of money, people can pay them off to get the names of the people that were on the list. So we knew that we were taking a really big risk, but it was our only way out and we had to take it,” he said.

Once they reached Riyadh, the stress didn’t end. The driver dropped them at the wrong hotel. Staff there managed to fit them in for one night, but the group had to change hotels again when that one filled up. The only flight they could find out of Riyadh was to Germany — an extra stop on a journey they were just desperate to keep moving forward.

The price tag for that escape, he said, reached into the tens of thousands of dollars — something he knows many families simply couldn’t afford.

“I got to really thank my employer, because, you know, if they hadn’t been willing to foot the bill, you know, we’d still be stuck,” he said.

Looking back, he says the experience shattered some assumptions he had about how quickly the U.S. government could or would step in to help Americans in danger overseas.

“I was really naive, you know, … I thought that if Americans were in peril, the government would swoop in with the helicopter and pick you up. But that’s just not the case. The government never helped. And so we helped ourselves,” he said.

Now that he’s home, he hopes his story serves as a warning and a guide for other Americans traveling abroad, especially in volatile regions.

“If you’re going to travel internationally, you better make sure that you yourself have some sort of a plan in case something goes south, because, you know, it’s not the way you think it is. It’s not like the movies. You have to save yourself,” he said.

The crisis that upended this family’s life has given way to something much simpler: a dad back on the couch, kids on spring break and a wife who says she’s just glad to have him where he belongs.

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How a Houston-area man escaped from Qatar during the ongoing conflict in the Middle East

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