Brave Little Girl

After seeing the film Three Seasons, I am reminded of a story of a Brave Little Girl. I have a friend who is a Pharmacist in a hospital where I worked and she is from Vietnam. At the end of the war American troops were quickly pulling out of Vietnam. I remember watching the absolute chaos on television as Americans evacuated. U.S. military planes were full of Vietnamese people who were clamoring to get out, knowing if they were left behind they would be murdered. They had supported the US occupation.
My friend told me her family was one of those families. They were waiting in a crowd to board a C130, the huge dinosaur of a plane like my father flew, a cargo plane. It had a giant trap-like door and loaded from the rear. I asked her if they added seats to the plane. "No", they sat on the floor, no seats or seat belts. She said there were eight of them in her family. She was standing at the end of her family's line when a soldier stopped her. The plane was full and she could not board. Her family was on the plane and she was the last one. Her mother was hysterical. She begged them to let her off the plane to change places with her daughter. My friend watched as the door slowly closed. She was left behind.
She was only ten years old when she watched her family take off for a new faraway land without her. The following day, she boarded a similar plane she hoped would take her to her family. She was taken to a large refugee camp in northern California outside of San Francisco. She looked frantically but her family was not there. She didn't know anyone. She told me they lived in tents, it rained a lot and she remembers all of the mud. She spoke no English. Some families took her in and shared their food. She went from family to family and tent to tent, as some moved on and left the camp. She was alone again.
As time passed, it was noted she was separated from her family and a search was started by the government. They were unable to find her family. She didn't understand this at the time, but later understood she was being put up for adoption. My friend was taken from the camp to visit the woman who planned to adopt her. She told me the woman was beautiful and kind. She wore fine clothing, a hat and had a little dog. My friend had visited her lavishly decorated home in her white limosuine and was shown the room that would be hers. The woman had arranged private schooling and had purchased new clothes for her to wear. The day her adoption was to be final my friend was told her family may have been located in Georgia. It had been nearly a year since she had seen them. She was given a choice to go with the lady and be adopted or take the chance to go to Georgia and possibly reunite with her family. She took the chance, found her family and said it was the most wonderful feeling to see them and to be back with them again.
My friend decided to leave her job at the hospital where we had worked together. I told her how much I would miss her and asked her where she was going. She said she was going to work at the VA Hospital. I asked her "Why?" The pay was substantially less than what she was making, it would be a lot farther commute and the work would be tough. She said she wanted to give back to American soldiers who had helped her and had helped her family. She said they needed help and she knew most of them were Vietnam Vets.