Arammaly Iem survived land mines, starvation and the Khmer Rouge, but it was gang warfare in San Jose that almost destroyed him. And his salvation would also be rooted in violence -- the drive-by shooting of a friend.
On an August night in 1994, Iem and three of his gang brothers had been drinking and then hopped into a pick-up truck. As they traveled south on Highway 101 near Tully Road, an Acura Integra carrying three people came alongside and fired shots that hit Iem's friend Son Nguyen.
A terrified Iem held Nguyen in his arms as they rushed to a hospital. The incident left Nguyen, who was shot in the face, a quadriplegic and forced Iem to confront his own gangster lifestyle.
"That was then that I realized, man, I have to get out," he said.
Now 32, Iem is working to keep at-risk kids out of gangs. He serves as a counselor for the Safe School Campus Initiative, a program funded by the East Side Union High School District that provides counseling for young gang members.
Iem was born into well-off family that grew mangos and oranges on a farm in Battambang, a province in Cambodia. His father, Meo, was a police officer who later became a soldier and fought the communist insurgents of the Khmer Rouge. His mother, Mi, stayed at home, taking care of him and his brother, Long.
As the ruthless Khmer Rouge assumed power and began its extermination of 1.7 million people, Iem and Long, one year younger than Iem, were separated from their family and forced to work in a child labor camp run by the government. His mother and grandmother, Som, were sent to a labor camp for adults. The family would reunite at night after the camps were closed.
Eventually, Long, 2, died from complications stemming from starvation, Iem said. The fate of his father is unknown, but Iem presumes he is dead, too. He last saw him fleeing from the Khmer Rouge.
"My dad disappeared into the forest without telling us where he was going. He didn't want to leave us, but he had to because if he, as a Cambodian soldier, were caught with our family -- we would have all been slaughtered," Iem said stoically.
Facing a hopeless future, the family decided to escape Cambodia. They headed to Thailand on foot, watching out for Khmer Rouge soldiers.
"That time in my life is embedded in my brain. It was harsh to lose family and to be surrounded by death. We were wary to step over the bodies of the dead that were everywhere, and even then we had to worry about the landmines," Iem said.
After more than a month of grueling travel, they found themselves in Thailand, living in a refuge camp operated by the United Nations near the Cambodian border. When he was 9, Iem and his family immigrated to San Jose after being sponsored by relatives. He became one of 150,000 Cambodians who migrated to the United States.
But in coming to San Jose, Iem soon found himself facing new problems: poverty and racism.
"People made fun of me and other refugees for not having the right clothes and for not being the right race," Iem said. "I was called a 'F.O.B.' and a 'Chinaman' for the way I looked."
His family's only source of income was government welfare. He found it difficult to communicate with them about the issues in his life
"It was kind of an Asian thing to find it hard to open up to my family and talk about issues like sex, drugs or gangs," he said. "It was just easier to talk to my friends.''
The racism and emotional separation from his family led him and many of his peers in similar situations to start a gang to "gain respect," he said.
"We were being called all these names and that's not what we were. We had to distinguish ourselves not only as Cambodians, but as people not to mess with,'' he said.
Iem and his friends formed the Cambodian Crip Gang, allying themselves with the Crips, a well-established black gang. The Crips adopted Iem's gang and they often hung out at each others' parties. The refugees even adopted the Crips' color, blue, while passionately resenting the color red and all gangs affiliated with it because of its association with the red communist Khmer Rouge.
"All of us had family members who were killed by the Khmer Rouge,'' he said.
Soon, the Cambodian Crips Gang graduated from "hanging out" to criminal activities such as selling drugs, robbery and stealing cars, stripping them for parts and selling them, Iem said.
Fights with other ethnic gangs were virtually a daily occurrence.
"We fought because we had to back up what we believed in, that we deserved respect," Iem said. "Being Asian, everyone wanted to test us, wanted a piece of us, we just had to prove ourselves."
As deep as Iem was in the gang, he deviated from the gangster norm by graduating from high school and avoiding drugs.
"I still had a sense of responsibility and didn't want to be a loser," Iem said. "I also never did drugs. I knew what they did to people, the addiction, the pain."
Iem's lifestyle took an emotional toll on his family. After Iem was stabbed in the arm by a rival Latino gang member during a fight, he avoided his mother and grandmother for several days and did not return home until his deep wound had healed.
"My commitment was more with my gang back then. Sometimes it makes me want to emotionally break down when I think about the pain I caused them," he said.
Then came the night Son Nguyen was shot, a turning point in Iem's life.
Slowly, he weaned himself off the gang life . Those close to him immediately noticed the change.
"He knew what his life was about after he left. He knew what to believe, spiritually and morally, and he became more calm," says Lavinh Vongsouvanh, a close friend and co-worker who has known Iem since his gangbanging days. "Leaving also helped him develop a sense of other people's cultures, when before, he would only care about his own."
With the help of an anti-gang outreach worker, who also happened to be Cambodian, Iem joined the Right Connection, a gang-intervention program that later became the Safe School Campus Initiative, in 2000.
Iem now works with many young people who come from various backgrounds and gangs. He offers legal advice, personal advice and even mediation truces for feuding gangs. It's rewarding work, he said.
"It's overwhelmingly frustrating at times, but when you make a connection with a kid and he starts to actually listen -- you can see in his eyes that you're affecting his life," Iem said. "That's one of the greatest feelings in the world, to know that I have the power to make a positive impact."
"One thing I've noticed about all of them is that they're all the same once you strip them of their colors.''
Iem now shares a close, loving relationship with his mother, and he knows firsthand how important a role communication between a parent and child plays in keeping kids out of gangs.
"I just want to shake parents sometimes," he said. "Some are completely clueless about the paths that their own kids are taking.
"Even worse, some are encouraging their kids to join them in the gangs that they themselves are a part of -- it's like a circle, the cycle just keeps going and going.''
According to Iem, about half of the kids that he works are lost to the streets while the other half -- the lucky ones, like him -- find a way out.
"It was possible for me to have killed someone back then,'' he said. "I thank God everyday that I never went that far.
"I feel like I'm blessed to have escaped, like there was a spiritual power that prevented me from doing anything else that I might regret. I must have a guardian angel somewhere."