Photo by Brant Ward, SFGateSunday, December 2, 2007
San Francisco Gate (Calif., USA)
THE BADGE
In mid-November, a 36-year-old San Francisco police officer stepped off an airplane in his native Cambodia. He was instantly struck by the heat and humidity. And then he saw him. His father. A little old man he barely remembered.
He had dreamed of this moment for years. He had put it off and toyed with the idea of going to meet this stranger whose DNA he shared, until, finally, he could deny the moment no longer.
Nearly 30 years after running from the murderous Khmer Rouge government, Sophal Roger Chea returned to his roots.
"I choked up," said the 36-year-old. "It was pretty emotional."
They hugged and they talked. And Chea spent two weeks getting to know his father, his family and his native culture.
It was the end of a long and winding journey for Chea.
He was born in 1971; the Khmer Rouge took over the country in 1975 and remained in power until 1979. His father was a soldier for the previous government and, as such, was arrested and held for a couple of months. He was one of the lucky ones. Millions of people died of torture, execution or starvation in those years.
Chea doesn't remember his father, well, from that time. He remembers the bodies. They were everywhere: cadavers stacked up on roadsides, bones and skulls littering the fields.
"Death was everywhere," he said this week in an interview at SFPD's Central Station.
He remembers the fear. He remembers taking some fruit to the hospital where his father - who had fallen ill - was held. A Khmer Rouge soldier wearing black pajamas pointed an AK-47 rifle at him, took his food and threw it on the floor.
Chea was 7.
"It was very intimidating," he said.
Members of Chea's family eventually escaped to Thailand, traveling by foot and bus to Bangkok, and later immigrated to San Francisco. There, they lived in the heart of the Tenderloin. The flashing neon light of a massage parlor illuminated the small apartment.
When he was 18, Chea made a painful discovery: The people he knew as his mother and father were, in fact, his aunt and uncle.
It turned out his father had a wife from before he met Chea's mother, who was the daughter of a Cambodian army general. His father's wife was Vietnamese, and he had gone to Vietnam to be with her. Chea's mother went to Vietnam to reclaim Chea's father, only to be turned away. She disappeared on her way back to Cambodia.
Upon learning the truth, Chea said he was angry and confused. He asked his parents why they never told him that they were really his aunt and uncle. They said they never knew what to say; they didn't know how he would respond.
"A lot of things were going through my head at the time, but I got over it," he said. "I even love my parents now more than ever."
Chea lived a rough life in San Francisco. After years in the Tenderloin, his family moved to the projects in Potrero Hill. Their car was stolen, house broken into and once two men burst in and stole their stereo and TV in a home-invasion robbery.
Chea lay on the living room floor, pretending to be asleep, as the men pointed guns at his father. He remembers looking out the window to see the men laughing as they ran down the street with the Chea family belongings.
But that kind of life makes you tough, too. Not long after Chea moved out of the house, he was taking his mother's old car out and two men tried to carjack it. One man stuck a pistol to his neck, but instead of giving up the keys, Chea fought back. He was pistol-whipped and lost a lot of blood, but he didn't lose the car.
Chea eventually joined the SFPD and has worked at several stations. He now works a patrol car out of Central Station, just down the street from the squalid apartments he lived in as a kid. Occasionally, he gets called to translate for Cambodian immigrants.
Along the way, he made telephone contact with his father, and they kept in touch over the years. Chea got married and had two children of his own.
Fatherhood got him thinking about family, and what he left behind in Southeast Asia. Finally, after years of thinking about it, he bought a ticket to Phnom Penh for a two-week visit with his father, and to play tourist.
It did not go the way he had imagined it.
His stepmother asked for money. His half brother asked for money. His father asked him to sponsor his half brother to immigrate to the United States.
Once, Chea and his father were in a shop, and Chea wanted to buy a bottle of water. There was some discussion about the purchase or the price, and the shop owner said, to the father, something like "Let him buy the water and help me out." His father replied in Cambodian, perhaps forgetting that Chea also spoke the language: "He isn't helping me."
"That really kind of bothered me," Chea said. "I felt like there was nothing there for me, like they only wanted something from me."
The trip made Chea wonder what his life would have been like if he had stayed in Cambodia. He would probably be living with or near his father's family, but he would have been "second family," not from his father's legal wife.
In the end, despite all the hardships, the move to San Francisco, the years in the Tenderloin and wondering why his father left him, Chea came to some realizations. That family is important, but it's not always about who gave birth to whom. And just because two people share the same DNA, they need not share the same values. He also discovered the truth in the old saying, "You can't go home again."
And maybe that's a good thing.
Reporter John Koopman and photographer Brant Ward are focusing on the San Francisco Police Department. Their stories appear weekly in the Monday paper. To see more photos and an audio slide show with this story, go to sfgate.com/thebadge.
E-mail John Koopman at jkoopman@sfchronicle.com
He had dreamed of this moment for years. He had put it off and toyed with the idea of going to meet this stranger whose DNA he shared, until, finally, he could deny the moment no longer.
Nearly 30 years after running from the murderous Khmer Rouge government, Sophal Roger Chea returned to his roots.
"I choked up," said the 36-year-old. "It was pretty emotional."
They hugged and they talked. And Chea spent two weeks getting to know his father, his family and his native culture.
It was the end of a long and winding journey for Chea.
He was born in 1971; the Khmer Rouge took over the country in 1975 and remained in power until 1979. His father was a soldier for the previous government and, as such, was arrested and held for a couple of months. He was one of the lucky ones. Millions of people died of torture, execution or starvation in those years.
Chea doesn't remember his father, well, from that time. He remembers the bodies. They were everywhere: cadavers stacked up on roadsides, bones and skulls littering the fields.
"Death was everywhere," he said this week in an interview at SFPD's Central Station.
He remembers the fear. He remembers taking some fruit to the hospital where his father - who had fallen ill - was held. A Khmer Rouge soldier wearing black pajamas pointed an AK-47 rifle at him, took his food and threw it on the floor.
Chea was 7.
"It was very intimidating," he said.
Members of Chea's family eventually escaped to Thailand, traveling by foot and bus to Bangkok, and later immigrated to San Francisco. There, they lived in the heart of the Tenderloin. The flashing neon light of a massage parlor illuminated the small apartment.
When he was 18, Chea made a painful discovery: The people he knew as his mother and father were, in fact, his aunt and uncle.
It turned out his father had a wife from before he met Chea's mother, who was the daughter of a Cambodian army general. His father's wife was Vietnamese, and he had gone to Vietnam to be with her. Chea's mother went to Vietnam to reclaim Chea's father, only to be turned away. She disappeared on her way back to Cambodia.
Upon learning the truth, Chea said he was angry and confused. He asked his parents why they never told him that they were really his aunt and uncle. They said they never knew what to say; they didn't know how he would respond.
"A lot of things were going through my head at the time, but I got over it," he said. "I even love my parents now more than ever."
Chea lived a rough life in San Francisco. After years in the Tenderloin, his family moved to the projects in Potrero Hill. Their car was stolen, house broken into and once two men burst in and stole their stereo and TV in a home-invasion robbery.
Chea lay on the living room floor, pretending to be asleep, as the men pointed guns at his father. He remembers looking out the window to see the men laughing as they ran down the street with the Chea family belongings.
But that kind of life makes you tough, too. Not long after Chea moved out of the house, he was taking his mother's old car out and two men tried to carjack it. One man stuck a pistol to his neck, but instead of giving up the keys, Chea fought back. He was pistol-whipped and lost a lot of blood, but he didn't lose the car.
Chea eventually joined the SFPD and has worked at several stations. He now works a patrol car out of Central Station, just down the street from the squalid apartments he lived in as a kid. Occasionally, he gets called to translate for Cambodian immigrants.
Along the way, he made telephone contact with his father, and they kept in touch over the years. Chea got married and had two children of his own.
Fatherhood got him thinking about family, and what he left behind in Southeast Asia. Finally, after years of thinking about it, he bought a ticket to Phnom Penh for a two-week visit with his father, and to play tourist.
It did not go the way he had imagined it.
His stepmother asked for money. His half brother asked for money. His father asked him to sponsor his half brother to immigrate to the United States.
Once, Chea and his father were in a shop, and Chea wanted to buy a bottle of water. There was some discussion about the purchase or the price, and the shop owner said, to the father, something like "Let him buy the water and help me out." His father replied in Cambodian, perhaps forgetting that Chea also spoke the language: "He isn't helping me."
"That really kind of bothered me," Chea said. "I felt like there was nothing there for me, like they only wanted something from me."
The trip made Chea wonder what his life would have been like if he had stayed in Cambodia. He would probably be living with or near his father's family, but he would have been "second family," not from his father's legal wife.
In the end, despite all the hardships, the move to San Francisco, the years in the Tenderloin and wondering why his father left him, Chea came to some realizations. That family is important, but it's not always about who gave birth to whom. And just because two people share the same DNA, they need not share the same values. He also discovered the truth in the old saying, "You can't go home again."
And maybe that's a good thing.
Reporter John Koopman and photographer Brant Ward are focusing on the San Francisco Police Department. Their stories appear weekly in the Monday paper. To see more photos and an audio slide show with this story, go to sfgate.com/thebadge.
E-mail John Koopman at jkoopman@sfchronicle.com
