Kao Vang’s Biography
Excerpted from Healing Journeys: Teaching Medicine, Nurturing Hope
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Kao Vang was born in 1979 in a refugee camp in Thailand. It was during the summer, sometime in June probably, although no one really knows for sure. When he came into the world he had a brother waiting for him. His sister had died of an illness before Kao was born.
Kao’s parents had escaped across the border from Laos to reach the refugee camp. They were Hmong, fleeing the mayhem of the Vietnam War, which had spilled over into the mountains where they lived.… They were in the camp for three years. The camp was safe, but crowded, and there was never enough to eat.… Families applied for visas to leave the country, and slowly these were granted. Kao’s parents were among the last to get their paperwork; many of their relatives left the camp before them. Kao’s mother’s family went largely to France, his father’s to America. Leaving the camp was a heartbreaking experience marked by more uncertainty.
Still a young child when he moved to Minnesota, Kao remembers being bundled up in a little penguin snowsuit to guard against the cold. In it, he was sent to kindergarten, where he found that he loved school. He enjoyed math and anything to do with outer space.
When Kao was in the fourth grade, Kao also went to the hospital to translate for his relatives for the first time. “It was very scary,” he remembers. “It was all adults and it was such a fast-paced environment, but it didn’t take long for me to get comfortable with translating. There were a few doctors who encouraged me, but others wouldn’t even talk to me. They would just say, ‘We don’t need an interpreter...." By the time he was a teenager, Kao was getting calls every week from families who needed help filling out applications, finding jobs, settling disputes or getting a doctor.
When Kao was in high school a biology teacher encouraged him to apply to the Stanford Medical Youth Science Program. “He gave me the application and a map showing how to get to Stanford for the interview. He even offered to drive me there,” Kao remembers.
“SMYSP was one of the most enlightening things that could have happened to me, and it did a lot for me,” he says of the program.
To learn more about Kao Vang’s experience in SMYSP and to find out what Vang is doing today, purchase the book Healing Journeys: Teaching Medicine, Nurturing Hope at the Stanford Health Promotion Resource Center. All proceeds from the sale of this book go to funding scholarships for SMYSP graduates. You can also purchase this book at Amazon.com.