Chess man plots his next moves to citizenship

Saravuth Inn inviting a player to a chess game in Union Square. (Photo by Aidan Gardiner)

August 19 - 25, 2010
By Aidan Gardiner
The Villager (San Francisco, California, USA)
Volume 80, Number 12

Saravuth Inn crooked his hand over the board and let it hang for a moment. He slapped his knight down and as suddenly, snatched up the enemy pawn.

“I love chess,” he said. “To be able to be omnipotent. To be able to do many things in one shot. Freedom. Control. Flexibility.

“Chess allows you to do that when in life, you can’t,” he added.

Inn, 49 and Cambodian-born, is fighting his way out of legal limbo and into proper citizenship. He’s been making a living playing chess in Union Square for the past two years. After Christmas, he plans to finally visit the Department of Homeland Security to get a naturalization number, which will enable him to get a steady job. However, he fears officials may deport him to Cambodia instead.

“I will not accept that as an option,” said Inn, who was brought to the United States during Operation Babylift in 1975. “I’m an American. This is my home.”

Inn’s father taught him chess as a boy, before the Khmer Rouge killed his family when he was 13. He was living in an orphanage when American soldiers found him and took him to the U.S. A family in New Jersey adopted him, but then began abusing him. Inn played the tournament chess circuit throughout high school. He later attended Rutgers University between 1984 and 1987 and studied literature and classics.

“Ulysses is hilarious. Back then I didn’t think so. But now — oh God, I’m laughing!” he said, leaning back, grinning, with his eyes wide. “It’s the way he mastered everything and expressed it the way he does. It’s wonderful.”

Inn comes to Union Square every day and perches over his chess mat rolled out flat on a piece of plywood. Usually, he’s surrounded by a crowd. Some are his supporters who come to keep him company. Others are passersby looking to watch a quick game. Though his daily revenue varies, Inn’s supporters, mostly students, always come play and donate about $5 each. He said it’s enough to pay his modest rent.

Two years ago, border agents temporarily detained Inn during his return from Montreal. He had been making a living playing guitar on the street after his wife left him, citing their worsening financial situation. A bag containing all Inn’s most important belongings had been stolen from him sometime before, so he had no documentation proving his citizenship.

“I was captured by Calypso,” Inn said, referring to “The Odyssey” and Ulysses’s, a.k.a. Odysseus’s, journey. “Except I don’t have a dog to recognize me coming back.”

After some questioning, agents handed Inn a slip of paper, and let him in. He pocketed it, not knowing what it was for, and forgot about it.

A.J. Abucay, a documentarian making a film about Inn’s life, said that the paper allowed Inn’s re-entry on the condition that he turn himself over to Homeland Security at Newark Airport’s Terminal B by the following month.

“It was not until he allowed me to look through all the documentation he had in his possession that I discovered this piece of paper,” Abucay said. “It was already late 2008 or early 2009, way past the date he was supposed to appear.”

When Inn consulted Ana Pottratz, a pro-bono lawyer, she told him not to go because he might be deported back to Cambodia.

Inn said that he’s tired of scraping together a living and would like to go into teaching.

“I don’t want to continue this,” he said. “I want to have rights, to at least be able to work at McDonald’s.”

Inn seldom discusses life in Cambodia, but still remembers his family’s death. They were living in Phnom Penh, the capital, when Cambodian troops forced his family into a truck.

“They gathered us like we were going on vacation,” Inn said.

They drove for an hour to an area outside Oudong. When his family exited the truck, the troops shot each of them. Saravuth was the only person to survive.

Inn is covered in bullet holes, like pink fingerprints all over his body.

“I can’t even count them all anymore,” he said. Inn also has a piece of shrapnel lodged in his brain that causes him to suffer occasional seizures.

Brother Mike, a monk, found Inn wandering the streets and brought him to an orphanage.

“Unfortunately,” Inn said, “I’m the character of my own story.”

Inn leaned back in his chair, took a drag from his cigarette, and let the smoke dribble out of his mouth.

“Chess is a war game,” he said. “You’ve got to have that conniving and crushing instinct in you. I have a lot of anger and I express it in that.

“I use a defense when I’m playing as a black,” Inn added. “It’s very aggressive. It expresses a lot of emotion, a lot of anger. It’s called Sicilian Dragon. And I’m good at that in the game chess, but in life I need to slow down.”

Inn leaned forward and quickly pushed his rook forward two squares knocking over an enemy bishop. For him, the board is a playground, a space to move freely and dance with power, even while he’s caught in a bureaucratic maze.

“I used to be vicious,” Inn said. “Now, I just enjoy chess. Like with Ulysses, I was too academic. Now I look at it and I’m laughing.”

Students bond with Cambodian orphans

BY FORREST SELLERS | FSELLERS@COMMUNITYPRESS.COM
Cincinnati.com (Ohio, USA)

ANDERSON TWP. - Students in Shari Devine's class have made some new friends. However, they are not in the same building nor are they even in the same school district.

Some of the fourth- and sixth-graders at Maddux Elementary School are pen pals with youngsters in Cambodia. Specifically, they have been writing to children at the Cambodian International Children and Friend Organization, an orphanage at Phnom Penh.

The students sent their first letters in December. In addition, they have also bought "Doodle Pro" writing and drawing tablets for the children.

"They are excited to have contact with students from another country," said Devine, who teaches language arts and social studies. "They also feel good they (are) in communication with a child who is an orphan."

Devine said it has been a pleasant learning experience for both cultures.

She said it began with a Journal Journey project last September, when the students started a journal that they then sent to people in a variety of locations.

Fourth-grader Emily Navaro sent the journal to her uncle, Kurt Cook, who was visiting Cambodia at the time. A director at the Cambodian International orphanage asked Kurt if the Maddux students would be interested in becoming pen pals.

"I thought it was cool," said Navaro, 9. "I thought it would be fun to write to (them)."

Fourth-grader Bailey Winters, 9, said he has also enjoyed making new friends.

"I'm learning about the Cambodian language," he said.

The students are currently painting pictures in their art class to send with their next letters.

Tumor aside, she's OK with America

Buntheep Chun, 12, a Cambodian orphan, came to Jacksonville to have a lemon-size tumor removed. (Photos by DON BURK/The Times-Union)
Pediatric neurosurgeon Philipp Aldana explains about the detailed surgery he and Saswata Roy, pediatric craniofacial and skull-base surgeon, performed on Buntheep Chun, a 12-year-old Cambodian girl, to remove a large skull-base brain tumor that was stealing her vision and threatening her life. (Photos by DON BURK/The Times-Union)
Buntheep Chun (left) and Gioia Michelotti, director of the Cambodian Christian Arts Ministry, answer questions during a news conference at Wolfson Children's Hospital Wednesday where her brain surgery was explained. The primary surgery took 20 hours, involved the removal of her entire forehead, the upper part of her eye sockets, base of the skull, nasal bones and sinuses. (Photos by DON BURK/The Times-Union)

20 Hours of surgery To remove a lemon-sized growth. Challenge Get to the tumor without harming her face or brain.

1/31/2008
By LARRY HANNAN, The Florida Times-Union (USA)

Buntheep Chun doesn't look like someone who had her entire forehead, the base of her skull and the upper part of her eye sockets taken out and put back together only two months ago.

The orphan from Cambodia looked like a normal 12-year-old Wednesday at Wolfson Children's Hospital in Jacksonville. When asked what she likes best about being in America, Buntheep broke into a big smile and said via an interpreter she likes everything about America.

"I don't think she's talking about the surgical procedures," said her guardian and interpreter, Gioia Michelotti. "She's just very happy with the way people have treated her since we arrived in Jacksonville. We feel very fortunate that God brought us here."

On Dec. 6, Buntheep went through 20 hours of surgery to remove a lemon-sized tumor that was blinding her and breaking through the bones protecting her brain. The challenge doctors faced was getting to the tumor without doing damage to her brain or face.

"I could see this was an enormous tumor that occupied the bottom half of her skull all the way to the back of her nose," said pediatric neurosurgeon Philipp Aldana, who removed nearly the entire growth piece by piece.

Buntheep still has no vision in her right eye, but she can see normally out of her left eye. There appear to be no other complications from the procedure. Doctors hope she will fully regain her sight.

A small portion of the tumor remains, about half the size of a pea. It could not be removed without damaging her brain, doctors said. Buntheep will continue to get regular X-rays to make sure the tumor doesn't grow back.

"There is a 10-20 percent possibility it will grow back," Aldana said.

Buntheep had to go through another surgery later in December after spinal fluid leaked into her skull. The spinal fluid was drained, and doctors pronounced her recovered from the complication on Christmas Day.

To get at the tumor, surgeon Saswata Roy took Buntheep's face apart, and then put it back together again after the tumor was removed. He also removed her nasal bones, and the back of the septum sinuses.

"The tumor was located in one of the hardest locations to get to," Roy said. "For a beautiful 12-year-old girl, you want to get [the tumor] out and leave her with a normal life."

Her face was then reconstructed using the bones of her skull, as well as tissue from the leg.

It took several attempts to remove it. The first one in mid-November had to be halted because of profuse bleeding, leaving it about 80 percent intact.

Bleeding was also a factor in the December surgery.

"We had to stop several times to get the bleeding under control," Aldana said. "Also, portions of her skull bones were mixed in with the tumor."

Wednesday, Aldana and Roy discussed the surgery with the media while Buntheep looked on. The only hint of what she had gone through was a scar about two inches above her hairline that is expected to fade with additional cosmetic surgery and the growth of her hair.

"I've never seen her scared," Roy said. "It's almost eerie."

Buntheep's father, a soldier, was killed when she was 3. Her mom couldn't afford to keep Buntheep and her older brother so she gave them to the Cambodian Christian Arts Ministry School in Phnom Penh. Michelotti is the school's director.

Buntheep began experiencing vision problems in October, eventually losing sight in her right eye and suffering from cloudy vision in the left eye and numbness in the face.

That led to the discovery of the brain tumor.

Michelotti began writing letters pleading for financial help so Buntheep could get the tumor removed.

Missionaries in Cambodia paid for them to come to the United States, and an elder at a church in Pensacola recommended Wolfson.

"Wolfson has a long history of caring for local children and, at times of urgent need, for children from around the world," said Baptist Health President Hugh Greene in a written statement. "This is just an extension of our mission.

The doctors who worked on Buntheep did so for free and Wolfson also did not charge for the hospital stay, said Wolfson administrator Larry Freeman. The costs involved were estimated to be between $500,000 and $800,000.

She was released to the Ronald McDonald House on Jan. 11. Barring further medical complications, Michelotti and Buntheep hope to return to Cambodia in March,

When asked if she would have any advice for another child who had to deal with what she went through, Buntheep thought for a few seconds and then whispered something to Michelotti.

"She said, 'Trust God,'" Michelotti said.

larry.hannan@jacksonville.com (904) 359-4470