Jimmy Hoang founded the Asian Blue Anchor Association because he knows what it feels like to be helpless and unseen. He has lived it.
His story began in Vietnam. After the fall of Saigon, his family fled in the dark of night on a small wooden boat. When the boat began to sink, they thought it was the end. A passing cargo ship found them and carried them to a refugee camp in Malaysia. Months later, an American family sponsored them to the United States, and they started over with deep gratitude and just as much uncertainty.
The family’s first home in America was a small two-bedroom apartment in Denver, Colorado, in low-income Section 8 housing. With a secondhand car and little else, they began rebuilding from almost nothing. By the end of the decade they had resettled in Oakland, and in 1989 Jimmy and his mother stood beneath the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time, a long way from where their journey had begun.
Beginning again in a country whose language they did not yet speak felt like stumbling through a maze blindfolded. Simple things, a form, a phone call, a visit to the doctor, became daily obstacles, and there was rarely anyone to explain how any of it worked.
The hardship did not end when they arrived. Over the years, Jimmy’s family faced violence, loss, and fear that reached into every part of their lives. His father was beaten and nearly killed, later struggled with mental illness, and was once found by police wandering the streets of San Francisco, lost and disoriented. A close friend was shot and killed. Their home was broken into, their car was vandalized, and a stranger once tried to force his way through their front door. Every time, Jimmy called the police. Every time, there was no guidance, no support, and no clear path forward. With little English and no understanding of how the system worked, his family never knew that help existed or that resources were within reach.
Those experiences could have broken him. Instead, they gave him resilience and a clear sense of purpose. The boy who escaped by sea grew into a man determined that no immigrant family should have to face crisis the way his once did, alone and in the dark. That determination became the Asian Blue Anchor Association, a place where the guidance and support Jimmy never had is finally within reach for the families who need it most.