In this era of fast is first, big is better, and here today, gone tomorrow –the steady and the reliable become ever more valuable.

Quynh Tran is a mainstay at the clinic. She has been the Executive Assistant since the clinic opened in December 2001. Anyone who joins the clinic soon learns that she knows where everything is, what’s on the schedule, whose birthday it is, and when to order what by when.

Quynh is one of the “boat people” from Vietnam. In 1978, at the age of sixteen, she and a friend, accompanied by a guardian who was Buddhist monk, boarded a forty-five foot fishing vessel, leaving behind her parents and family. The boat carried 300 people. It was so crowded no one could lie down. They were at sea for five days when it started taking in water. A Thai fishing vessel rescued them. They were taken to Malaysian refugee camp. There Quynh waited for a full year before she received sponsorship support from the Buddhist temple in East Palo Alto. She arrived in California in 1979.

Within four years she had learned English, attended a business college and in1983 was hired as an assistant at the Easter Seal Society. There she was soon promoted to office manager. By 1986 she was a U.S. citizen. To sponsor her parents, a sister and two brothers, she saved all that she could. They arrived in 1991 and lived with Quynh and her husband for two years.

Quynh now looks after her aging parents. Every evening after making dinner for her husband and two sons, she goes to their home to help her father who had a stroke over a year ago. She prompts him to exercise, massages his feet, and helps with his medications.

Taking care of others is second nature to her. “Try this,” she says to a staff member and gives a medicinal plant that is used in Vietnam or she brings a bag of kumquats from the tree in her backyard to share with staff. She is as generous as she is capable.