When Saigon fell 50 years ago, many South Vietnamese civilians escaped and immigrated to Los Angeles. Mai Do is one of them.
“My father was studying, he was in graduate school in the United States, and I was just about two and a half,” Mai told KNX News’ Emily Valdez. “He calls my mother and says, things don't sound like they're going well, and it sounds like the communists, the Viet Cong are about to invade Saigon.”
Mai’s mother, Tammie, took a bus to the American embassy in Saigon. But the embassy gates were a scene of chaos, with throngs of people hoping to escape the country.
“Every day for a week, she goes and gets her name on a list and hopes that because her husband is studying in the United States that she can get out,” Mai said. “And every day she has to take the last bus home because there's nothing they can do for her.”
A week later, Do’s father called and said he knew of a pilot who could help them leave. Tammie took another bus to Saigon to find the pilot, but she went to the wrong address – and instead, she found a group of U.S. diplomats and Marines helping South Vietnamese citizens get out of the country.
Tammie gave them her identification and they took her into the back room to wait. But after four hours with no updates on what’s happening, she demanded her papers back and left, dejected.
Before going home, Tammie stopped in to see her uncle, who had papers to get his own family out of the country. Tammie pleaded with him to take her and baby Mai to the air base to see if they could leave too.
“We go back the next morning and her uncle and his family, they all get in the car and they drive to the air base that was controlled by U.S. forces,” Mai said. “Once he's there at the air base, he tries to explain my mother's situation, that she has a husband who's in the United States already.”
In a twist of fate, the man behind the counter at the air base just so happened to be the same U.S. Marine who had tried to help Tammie the day before.
“He remembered her face and he said, okay, come on, let's go,” Mai said.
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Half a century later, Mai credits her mother’s bravery for their family’s happy reunion in the U.S.
“She risked her life to get me out of there,” she said. “Can you imagine, to have a two-year-old child on your hip and getting on a plane, not knowing if you would ever see your family again, not knowing if you're going to reunite with your husband in some country where you don't speak the language? The amount of bravery that that took is incredible.”
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