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'I am very proud to be Vietnamese, and I am proud to be American too' | Former Vietnamese refugees share their stories of success and resilience

The Vietnamese American business leaders have found success in San Diego at work and at home, but the long road to get there started in Vietnam.

SAN DIEGO — Overcoming incredible odds, three former Vietnamese refugees who live in San Diego wouldn’t let poverty, a communist regime, or lack of education to stop them from achieving the American dream. 

“For the Boat People refugees, we all share very similar stories,” said Jimmy Thai, an author, speaker and philanthropist.

The Vietnamese American business leaders have found success in San Diego at work and at home, but the long road to get there started in Vietnam, where they were all born in poverty amid political turmoil and were desperate to get out.

"I just tried to escape I was captured and sent to prison twice. I witnessed the harbor police shoot and kill my brother right in front of me,” Thai said.

After the Vietnam War, Jimmy Thai was just a teenager when he tried to escape 15 times.

"I am determined, so I told my mom if none of them want to go, give me a chance to keep going and keep trying. I think I have the number of escape attempts in my family, I certainly hold that record,” Thai said.

Jimmy Thai says the dream of going to college motivated him to continue to flee by boat.

"You have to survive a 20-year-old rickety boat in the middle of the ocean. That’s why I went so many times. The boat just completely, the engine just stopped,” Thai said.

Stranded in the ocean with no GPS, Jimmy's boat was captured, and all were sent to prison where he also escaped and has the mugshot to prove it.

"It was just extremely, extremely daunting,” he said.

Jimmy's wife Lily Thai says her family fled their Vietnamese fishing village when she was nine years old with just the clothes on their backs. Lily left her only sweater.

"It got caught in one of the bamboo trees, and then I had to let it go even though that was the only thing of my prized possessions, but at the same time we heard gunshots going off like bang, bang bang,” Lily Thai, a mortgage broker.

Lily's family was chased by police until they made aboard a boat to China.

“I got seasick and I still have motion sickness till today, and I vomited and yet still had to eat everything in that hole for two weeks before we made it to Hong Kong,” Lily said.

Mindy Folkl's father was a South Vietnamese officer until 1975 when Communists detained him in a reeducation camp prison for seven years leaving Mindy's family on their own.

“I was growing up poor too with my sister and my mom who worked every day to support us,” Mindy said.

Mindy made it to America in 1991.

Jimmy arrived in 1984

Lily came in 1981. And that is after Lily survived several months in a Hong Camp refugee camp filled with prostitution and gangs.

“At a young age, I learned very quickly and fast how to fight and to fight for my spot to cook for my family,” Lily said.

With sponsorship from an aunt in San Diego, Lily was grateful to reach dry land in the U.S.

"When I landed here in San Diego, I was so mesmerized by how much concrete we have, were so used to just said,” Lily said.

She held a pencil for the first time at Euclid Elementary School learning English and how to read to and write at 10 years old to later graduating at the top of Hoover High School class to meeting her husband Jimmy as a volunteer teacher to now working as a mortgage broker for 30 years.

Mindy is now an award-winning real estate broker, who says she worked hard to learn English when she was 18 years old in college while also working as retail manager and being a single mom of two.

“I am very proud to be Vietnamese, and I am proud to be American too because this is the country that gave me the opportunity to be where I am at,” Mindy said.

Jimmy chronicled his journey from Vietnam to Thailand to San Diego in his book: “5 Secrets to the American Dream: Stories of a Boat People Refugee." He went from being a janitor at Miramar College to the vice president of a Fortune 500 company, who now builds schools in Vietnam and Cambodia.

“To me, there is no better statement to describe America than it is the land of opportunity,” Jimmy Thai said.

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