Vietnamese Lottery Winner Ecstatic--and in Hiding : Instant Millions Bring Him Instant Confusion

Hai Vo, the Vietnamese refugee who went from rags to riches overnight by winning the $2-million grand prize in the California Lottery, has gone into hiding, ecstatic about becoming a millionaire but perplexed and overwhelmed by his sudden wealth, according to relatives and neighbors.

Vo, 25, has moved from a run-down residential hotel in the city’s seedy South of Market neighborhood to a much nicer hotel in a secret location in the Bay Area, where he is awaiting the $80,000 check that will be the first installment of his winnings, family members said. He plans to buy a home with the money.

But the unemployed fisherman and part-time cab driver, who fled his native country in 1978 in a wooden boat, is so unnerved by his winnings that he can barely believe that it’s legal.

Happy but Afraid

“When I picked him up at the airport on Monday (after Vo won the grand prize) he was happy but also afraid. He is rich now, but Vo is still not sure about the money. He is afraid about (having done) doing something wrong. Maybe somebody will take the money away,” said Nguyen Thi, a cousin.

Thi and other family members interviewed this week would not disclose Vo’s whereabouts and avoided questions about Vo’s life as a welfare recipient.

“He wanted to work. But he doesn’t have a car and his English is not good. That makes it very hard for him,” said Thi. Thi and the other family members declined to discuss reports that Vo spent $200 from his welfare checks on the purchase of lottery tickets. However, the Laundromat owner who sold Vo a winning $100 ticket, said Vo purchased tickets from him about three days a week.

Left Vietnam in 1978

Vo lived on Phu Qui Island off the Phan Thiet coast northeast of Saigon, where he was a fisherman before leaving Vietnam in 1978 and arriving in the United States in 1981, said Nguyen Sy, a tenant in the building where Vo lived.

According to Thi and other cousins, Vo wants to share his fortune with the downtrodden in this city. But while Vo is making plans to help other poor refugees, officials at the Center for Southeast Asian Refugee Resettlement are receiving calls from realtors and other businessmen offering to sell Vo the luxury items that have eluded him since arriving in the United States.

Before Vo won the lottery, center officials were helping him adjust to life in the United States. They have not talked to Vo since he won the grand prize, but Wayne Luk, a social worker at the center, said that Vo’s fears about his winnings illustrate the types of problems of acculturation and assimilation faced by many Vietnamese immigrants.

Fearful of the Law

“It’s easy for refugees to become paranoid. They have an inherent fear of authority, and particularly law enforcement. In their country winning a prize like this would mean having to pay off the government officials in order to be allowed to keep the money,” said Luk.

According to family members, Vo’s first move after winning the $2-million prize was to move his wife, Nguyen Nhut, and their three children out of the one-bedroom apartment that they shared with Thi for almost two years.

The apartment is next to an alley and across from a fenced-in lot littered with bottles and trash and once known as “Wino Park.” On Thursday, Thi smiled and said that Vo promised “he will take care of me.” He looked around the apartment, furnished with a folding lawn chair and a kitchen chair that looked like it may have been plucked out of a dumpster, and said, “pretty soon I too will move out of here.”

Bad Neighborhood

“This is a very bad neighborhood. Vo’s children and Vietnamese women are not safe here. Vo was afraid that if he stayed here maybe something very bad would happen to him. He hasn’t received any money, but some people already think that he has $2 million with him,” said Thi.

Lottery officials said that Vo’s winnings will be paid at the rate of $100,000 per year over a 20-year period, with $20,000 deducted from each check for federal income taxes.

Aside from wanting to help other poor people, family members said that Vo wants to use his riches to bring to the United States other family members still in Vietnam.

Held for Ransom?

But now that Vo can afford to bring them to the United States, the possibility that the Vietnamese government will allow them to leave may be more remote, said Thi. Vo is afraid that Vietnamese government officials may exploit his new wealth and hold family members for ransom by putting an exorbitant price on their exit visas.