Anh Do has no qualms about referring to her late father, Yen Do, in the present tense. “My father values people over profit,” she says. ” And he values the community over the individual. I have those sentiments. I think that's what he teaches me all the time.”
Despite his death last year, theirs is an ongoing conversation that began in 1978, when Yen Do enlisted Anh and his other children to help bundle stacks of his nascent newspaper, Nguoi Viet Daily News, in the family's garage. Yen Do had been a reporter in Vietnam before coming to the U.S. with his wife and four children as part of the first wave of refugees after the Vietnam War. The family moved from one refugee camp to another before being adopted by a family in Santa Rosa, who helped them get on their feet.
Once they were on their own, Anh remembers a busy, vibrant home in constant flux. “There were lots and lots of refugees. My parents took in all these people coming over,” she says. “We shared everything. We never had our own room or toys. For me, that was normal.”
Throughout these years, her father harbored the dream of launching his own newspaper for the many Vietnamese refugees in the country. Anh says her mother worked full-time in the electronics business so that her father could hatch his first edition of the paper, whose name means “Vietnamese people,” in 1978. “Her paycheck provided for all of us; the paper didn't provide any money,” says Anh of the early years.
But her memories of helping her father bundle stacks of paper and the books and refugee friends that continually filled the Do home have served as her inspiration for the writing and community-relations work she does today. (In addition to writing for Nguoi Viet, she is a guest columnist for The Orange County Register.)
Anh is not editor in chief nor CEO of Nguoi Viet, preferring instead to maintain her close ties to the community as vice president of community relations. “I think I'm the public face of the company in the greater community,” she says. People tie her and her father together, she says, and that helps maintain the paper's reputation as a place not only for news, but also for community.
“I see myself as a connector,” she says. “I try to stay ahead of what's going on with the Vietnamese community, the greater Asian community and the greater community as a whole. . . . I offer Nguoi Viet as a solution to help [people] meet the people they need to meet and launch the ideas they want to launch.”
Here are seven of Anh's favorite things about OC:
1. The soil: “Things grow here. People grow here. I've seen it all my life.”
2. “Pacific Coast Highway on a SoCal day. Escaping with our dogs, peeking out of the window for a good whiff.”
3. “The dessert case at Zov's Bistro.” 17440 17th St., Ste. B, Tustin, (714) 838-8855.
4. Bolsa Avenue: “Mornings, in the embrace of Little Saigon, when your chances of finding a parking space increase so much more.”
5. The abundance of grocery stores: “It helps to track down any ingredient on earth.”
6. Plentiful restaurants: “Every week I try a new one.”
7. “The fact that my parents live here.”
