By Lisa Morehouse at KQED News
Lynda Trang Dai is the most glamorous proprietor of a sandwich shop I’ve ever seen. She sports stiletto heels, a short skirt and perfect makeup — including false eyelashes.
Her shop, Lynda Sandwich, sit in the middle of a parking lot in a strip mall. Inside, though, it feels like a posh living room, with lush plants, brightly painted murals of her idols like Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe, and a wide-screen TV playing the Food Network. There’s also a wall of fame, with framed images of Vietnamese-American singers, but Lynda Trang Dai might be more famous than any of them.
In 1979, her father got tipped off that the government was going to investigate him on suspicion of aiding the CIA during the war. They escaped at 2:00 in the morning, family members split between tiny boats.
“We had to be quiet, so quiet,” Lynda remembers. “It was scary. If we got caught, we’d go to jail.”
They went through storms and ran out of food, and finally found some refuge on a Chinese island, where she says they were fed rice with sugar. “It’s strange to eat rice with sugar, but it was so good at the time,” she says.
They got back on the water, headed for Hong Kong, and then saw the large British ship that would save them. They all started waving.
“I could never forget. It was just unbelievable, the most amazing moment,” Lynda remembers, choking up. “When we got up for them to rescue us into land, they gave us croissants. That was like going from hell to heaven.”
But when her family got to the United States, she developed another passion, and found her first career. She always loved to sing, the first to volunteer in elementary school, she says. As a high school student she started performing in tiny venues around Little Saigon, putting up her own fliers.
And then one night she was discovered singing at a club. She was invited to film her first spot in a variety show called “Paris By Night” — a hugely popular video series — so she missed her high school graduation and flew to France.
She became a star, dressing provocatively, singing in both English and Vietnamese, a draw for young Vietnamese-Americans. In the ’90s in any home throughout the Vietnamese diaspora, you’d probably find a VHS tape featuring Lynda Trang Dai. The videos even made it back to Vietnam in a kind of gray market.
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