Photo Brings Family Face to Face

Barry Huntoon was flipping through the pages of a 1985 Life magazine article on Amerasians fathered during the Vietnam War when one face leaped out at him--the teen-age girl pictured on the page bore an uncanny resemblance to him. In 1972, Huntoon, who served as an Army medic in Vietnam, had been unable to get his pregnant Vietnamese girlfriend out of the country after he was shipped out. The girl in the magazine, he realized with a shock, was probably his daughter. Huntoon managed to track the girl with the help of relief workers and this week the Vietnam veteran was anxiously waiting outside a Bangkok, Thailand, refugee processing center for his daughter, Tran Thi Tuyet Mai, now 15. As soon as she is cleared, Mai, who had been peddling peanuts to Soviet tourists on the beaches near Ho Chi Minh City, will go to Paradise, Calif., to live with her father and his wife. Huntoon said resettlement of Mai’s mother is expected later.

--Jack Crowden figured the last thing drug dealers would want is widespread publicity. So the Tacoma resident, who claimed his neighborhood had been overrun with narcotics dealers, took an ad out in the local newspaper: “For sale to individual or group wishing to deal in narcotics without disruptive police interference. 5 bedrooms, conveniently centered among five other rock houses doing booming business on 800 block of South L Street. Officially designated by Tacoma Police as the ‘hassle free’ dealers paradise of Tacoma. Hundreds of happy customers. Buy and party at your doorstep all night long, free from unsightly harassment or arrest. Cash or percentage.” Crowden said he then watched residents of rental houses on the block load their possessions into cars and quickly leave. The newspaper wasn’t as pleased with the ad. “There’s no way our adviser should have let that ad run,” said Judi Terrill, a classified ad manager for the Tacoma News-Tribune. “I don’t want other people to get the idea they can do the same.”

--Not only were they the first women to do so, but two Brits matched a time record set last year by a male runner in completing the 125-mile run from a Mt. Everest base camp to Katmandu, Nepal. Helen Diamentides, a science teacher, and Alison Wright, a civil engineer, arrived at the capital after three days and 10 hours, matching the record set last year by an American high school teacher. “We want to have a bath,” the two women said after completing the run. “It’s been hard work. We felt, why not break the men’s record? It was quite an experience.” The runners climbed 13,000-foot-high passes while carrying their food and gear.