Oakland Officer, a Refugee Himself, Now Helps Others

Robert Sayaphupha learned to be tough at a tender age.

At 12, he escaped the Communists in Laos. At 14, he had survived a Thai refugee camp. At 15, he swallowed his first helping of meanness American-style in the San Francisco junior high school where he was struggling to learn English and win acceptance.

“I was harassed by one black kid in machine shop,” said Sayaphupha, now a 23-year-old Oakland police officer. “He was real big, and he kept pushing me and calling me names. I never did anything. One day, I got real mad. I asked the teacher, ‘Can I fight him?’ and the teacher said, ‘No, you don’t fight in school.’

“After class, we walked into the stairwell, and he intentionally blocked my way. I decided that was enough. I pushed him, and we started fighting on the stairs,” he recalled. “The teacher came and broke us up and took him to the counselor’s office and sent me back to class. The next day, he shook my hand, and we were friends.”

Eight years later, Oakland Police Officer Sayaphupha, now the department’s liaison with the Southeast Asian refugee community, tries to teach three generations of refugees how to stand up for their rights and how to use the American justice system to protect themselves.

“My main objective is to get people’s trust out there,” Sayaphupha said. “I tell them the police in the U.S. are not the same as back home. You can call us anytime you need us. Don’t feel intimidated.”

Sayaphupha faced fear while still a child. He was 12 when his mother sewed $50 in his clothes and paid another $50--three months’ wages in Laos--to people who promised to help him cross the Mekong River into Thailand, where his four older brothers were waiting.

“If they had seen us, they would have killed us,” Sayaphupha said of the Communists who had taken over Laos at the time.

He spent two years in a refugee camp before coming to San Jose, where his family, including all seven children, settled after emigrating. He attended junior high school for a year, graduated early from high school and considered the Army but opted instead for community college and the police academy.

Despite his proficiency in Lao, Thai and three Chinese dialects, Sayaphupha remains self-conscious about his English. He’s proud of the refugee children who chatter away at him in their adopted language when he visits, and he tries to convince their parents to learn too.

“It’s hard for the older generation,” he said. “But I tell them to go to school, learn as much as they can, because they’re living in this country now. They’re going to need to speak English.”

His outreach into the refugee community seems to have made an impact, even after six months. His phone rings not only when Asians are assaulted or robbed but when they have car accidents or family deaths as well.

“When I go out there now and talk to a lot of (Laotians),” he said, “ they say, ‘We’re very happy to have you as an Oakland police officer because we have a lot of problems and cannot communicate with people, and you’re the best person for us to talk to.’ ”