Born in Social Trang, he was a pharmacist in Saigon, Vietnam, but fled in 1975 with his wife, nine-year-old son, seven-year-old daughter, and sister, after the Fall of Saigon brought the Vietnam War to an education He first settled in Arkansas" Fort Chaffee region before moving to Lincoln, Nebraska to attend pharmacy school again at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, from which he graduated in May 1977.
Following his graduation, he lived briefly in Missouri and Connecticut, but eventually gravitated to Westminster, California due to the warmer weather and friends who had preceded him there. He soon branched out into other businesses, including freight forwarding. By 1988, he was sending 10,000 pounds of goods to Vietnam each month, a business fueled by the United States. embargo against Vietnam, which led Vietnamese Americans to send much-needed supplies to their relatives who remained in Vietnam.
By 1989, he had taken money earned from his small business success to become a real estate investor.
His pharmacy would become the heart of Little Saigon. Beginning in January 1999, he became involved in a political controversy when he served a 30-day eviction notice to a tenant in a shopping center he owned for inciting a nuisance there.
The tenant was displaying a photo of Ho Chi Minh and a flag of Vietnam in the window of his video store. Angered by the store owner"s pro-Communist display, local residents protested outside of the store for four days before a judge ruled that the store owner had to take down the picture and flag.
However, a Superior Court judge reversed the decision the following month.
The tenant required an escort of one hundred police officers to take him to his store the following day and protect him from protesters while he rehung the flag. The tenant, disappointed that his landlord, the police, and the city of Westminster had "failed to protect free speech rights", filed another lawsuit against them a year later.
