Burnt Orange Report

Hubert Vo's Journey from Saigon to Austin

By Byron LaMasters

Great story in the San Antonio Express News on Hubert Vo's journey from Vietnam as a young man to the Texas legislature (Via Kuff):

Planes crashed to earth, rockets screamed across the sky and bombs exploded as 19-year-old Hubert Vo began his long journey. Three decades later, he's preparing to take the floor of the Texas House of Representatives as the state's first Vietnamese-born lawmaker.

"I remember my father gave each one of us a gun and said: 'Use it if you have to,'" said Vo, recalling how he, his five siblings and his parents fled Saigon in 1975 as their country collapsed. "It was chaos. The day I left, I stood on the boat, looked at horizon, seen airplanes falling from the sky."

That far exceeds any turmoil Vo has experienced following his election to the Houston-area District 149 seat he captured by a mere 33 votes over longtime Republican incumbent Talmadge Heflin. [...]

Vo worked as a busboy and a cook. He assembled digital watches and video games. He was robbed more times than he cares to remember as a convenience store clerk. He went door to door updating listings for telephone books. He's been a steelworker and a goldsmith, built computers and formed a computer company. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Houston, where he met his wife. And they're raising three children.

He got into real estate, built shopping centers, manages apartment complexes and even earned a license as an air-conditioning technician.

"I worked at different places, getting understanding of a worker, of a manager, of a supervisor," Vo said. "From the ground up, I have that hands-on knowledge, different classes of society. Hopefully I can understand the people of my district better than anybody else, because I've been through all those things myself."

In war-ravaged Vietnam, where his father worked for the Vietnamese navy and coast guard and had ties to the CIA, Vo was a freshman in college studying economics and politics when their world imploded.

Read the article for more. Hubert Vo's had a heck of a journey through his life, and the election contest is nothing compared to his past battles.