Vietnam War Hero Hungers For Achievement
He took three bullets. He escaped a mountain prison farm. He survived a harrowing boat ride to freedom.
Now this Vietnam War hero is attempting to overcome some truly formidable odds. He’s trying to make a buck in Spokane’s forgotten, schedule-crazed Intermodal Center.
Peter Le, 53, opened his spotless, tastefully decorated Kochi Teriyaki grill last week on the second floor of the city’s revamped train and bus station at First and Bernard.
Kochi Teriyaki fills the void left 10 months ago when Greyhound yanked the plug on its money-losing, 24-hour diner.
Le’s cafe has two essentials needed to create a downtown following - terrific food at amazingly low prices.
Customers can fill up on breakfast for $3.25 or a generous plate of tender teriyaki chicken for under $4. A $5.25 combination plate of teriyaki beef, pork and chicken is the most expensive thing on the menu. Le’s top-secret teriyaki sauce is wonderful - sweet but with a heat that builds slowly into mouth-watering ecstasy.
The Vietnamese Communists Le battled two decades ago were worse than bad. But government-involved capitalism at the Intermodal Center is no pretty thing, either.
Taxpayers shelled out $9 million to transform the city’s shabby Northern Pacific Railroad station into a first-class transportation hub. City leaders promised an exciting place of art and entertainment that would draw the general public in addition to those hitting the road.
But unrented third-floor office space, limited parking and a train schedule suited for Count Dracula made the Intermodal Center a lonely place much of the time.
Buses mainly come and go in morning and early evening clusters. That creates big chunks of lag time. Then the place starts hopping after midnight when the only train rolls in.
“I wanted to go to sleep,” says Le of his first week of trying to keep pace with this schizophrenic flow of customers.
The Intermodal Center will never be a first-rate transportation mecca until it has a daylight train run. Even so, you have to bet on Le succeeding. The small, powerfully built man has an iron will that kept him alive during the Vietnam War.
Le was a Special Forces captain with the Republic of South Vietnam’s army. The story he tells is moving:
In 1968, he was shot in the knee while on a parachute raid near Cambodia. In 1971, he was hit in the shoulder during a reconnaissance mission. Four members of his seven-man squad died.
Le was grazed in the foot by a stray bullet from a U.S. helicopter in 1972.
After Saigon fell three years later, Le says he was sent to a prison farm. He endured five years of maltreatment. Then one night in 1981, Le and a former Army Ranger pulled a daring escape. As they ran a guard cut loose with his AK-47, killing his friend, Trung Nguyen.
“I heard him yell, ‘Peter, I am dying,”’ recalls Le. “I kept running.”
Eating plants and whatever else he could scrounge, Le made it back to his mother’s home in Saigon. There, he learned bitter news. Communists killed his father a year earlier.
Fearing he would be next, Le’s relatives raised $3,000 and bought him a boat ride to freedom. It was nearly a coffin. Le says 78 people were crammed on a 33-foot craft that took on 3 feet of water.
It took 13 days to reach Indonesia. By then, says Le, passengers were drinking their urine to survive.
Le came to America after a year in a refugee camp. He settled in Seattle and worked in restaurants and for the city’s housing authority. He was reunited with his wife, Le Nguyen, in 1994. He hadn’t seen her in 19 years.
Last summer, a friend persuaded the couple to try their luck in Spokane. Because Kochi Teriyaki is run by family, every penny is funneled back into the business.
His biggest dream is to return to Vietnam and see his mother before she dies. Even though he is an American citizen, Le knows better than to try.
“If they want to kill you they can any time, anywhere,” says Le of his former country. “Communists. Terrible. Terrible.”
, DataTimes