Recovering From The Unexpected

This is the cliche immigrant story.. My mom and dad moved to San Francisco from China for a better life 35+ years ago. They gave birth and raised 3 children and worked EVERYDAY SINGLE DAY. Weekends included. My dad is a retired licensed general contractor. And my mom is an extremely loved and trusted house keeper.

Fast forward 35 years of blood sweat and tears. At around 12 noon today, their entire life savings was gone in a less than 15 minute breaking-and-entering. We spent the entire day speaking with police and trying to "not touch anything" because CSI needs to go through the stuff first. I can only imagine the anxiety they had sitting there not allowed to check what was missing from their bedroom.

Just like most traditional Asian families, cash is king, and my parents kept their life savings as cash inside a safe they had hidden away. My heart sunk when I discovered they had so much cash in there but what broke it wasn't losing their life savings. They had purchased three sets of jewelry as wedding gifts, one for each of their children. My brother and I are married so there was one set left in there, for my sister. I was translating this to the police when my mom repeated herself. I snapped at my mom, "you said that already." She responded, "no, there's two sets in there, one is your sister's and the other was given for your dad and my wedding from your grandmother." I choked as I was translating this part and I can see the officer started getting teary eyed too...

I hate that these guys perpetuate the stereotype of who we think are criminals. However, if you're in the SF bay area please keep your eyes out for the two African American men in the pictures above. License plate picture was sent to us from a neighbor but was too hard to make anything of it. Anyone with information please message me or contact the Ingleside police station. The officer said these guys also hit another home in a nearby neighborhood 2 hours earlier. They also said that it's a good thing my parents weren't home because these guys don't care if there's someone home.

Even after all this my dad said, "at least they didn't take the money we earned today." That's right, even after all this my dad was able to see the bright side. And yes, he's retired but he still works for clients who have become close family friends.

*This is our first gofundme, please forgive the goal amount I have no idea what it's supposed to signify so it's just an arbitrary number, I've changed it a couple times because people convinced me 1000 was too little etc etc.. to be honest we don't expect to fully recover the amount lost but every little bit helps.

*The money will go to replacing the stolen items including passports, birth certificates/naturalization documents, repairs and the rest will be to restart their retirement funds (in a bank account this time.) I have direct access to my parents banking information so there will be no trouble getting the funds into their hands.