A local Catholic church helped them find a two-bedroom apartment in a poor part of Honolulu. "I was shocked," Stuart says. "In Vietnam, people talk a lot about America -- it's like a dream, and everybody is rich -- so when we got here, I was, like, 'Oh my God.' We didn't even have blankets. My sister and I found a mattress in the trash, and we were so happy."
Stuart eventually borrowed $40,000 to start a successful car service for wedding parties, paying off that loan in a year. By 1998, at 26, she was ready to see the rest of the United States and then, finally, get on with her education. One leg of the trip landed her in Springfield, where she crashed with the friend of a friend of a friend. She worked briefly as a waitress at a Vietnamese restaurant near Seven Corners called Huong Que (Four Sisters), where she met a customer named John Stuart, a burly 33-year-old who lived in Falls Church and had been working as a computer consultant in Europe. They hit it off in a big way, and she relocated to Virginia and started classes at NOVA.
Hieu Stuart in the Hollins University library.
(Pilar Vergara)
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By the end of 1999, she and John were engaged, planning for a wedding sometime after she graduated. But a month later, John learned that he had a rare form of cancer on his spinal cord called neuroblastoma, typically a pediatric disease. They married quickly, and spent most of their next three years together traveling around the country consulting with experts and trying various alternative treatments that burned through their savings. Stuart took classes when she could, but she frequently had to withdraw as her husband's condition deteriorated to the point of paralysis. He died while she held him, reciting a Buddhist prayer, two years ago at Arlington Hospital.
She took his ashes to Hawaii, where her family still lives. A few months later, she was back in Virginia. "I wanted to face reality and deal with it; I didn't want to run away," she says. After she finished her two-year degree at NOVA -- where Stuart took her first psychology class and fell in love with the subject -- a teacher suggested Hollins because of its Horizon Program.
Five months ago, Stuart moved into the drab student housing -- pale-brick block-like buildings with linoleum floors -- across the street from the bucolic campus. This is where she returns after lunch, dropping her book bag by the couch. The apartment is decorated with photographs of her soccer team and a dart board, and by one wall there's a big blue exercise ball and a mat where she likes to practice modern dance. She frequently has candles burning, and in the fall she scattered colorful leaves on the table and counter-top. Today she also has a fridge full of Vietnamese goodies she's cooked up for a party she's throwing later to celebrate the end of the season with her soccer teammates -- "the kids," as she calls them.
Stuart expects to graduate in the spring of 2006 and hopes to immediately jump into a PhD program, perhaps at George Washington University. This summer she plans to go to Vietnam to study the way psychological treatment is perceived there. Generally, she explains, it's considered shameful in Vietnam to seek help for problems of the mind. Stuart says she wants to "start a fire over there" regarding awareness of mental illness.
"At this age, you're not going to school to earn money," she explains. "It's something [deeper] than that."
Christina Ianzito is a frequent contributor to the Magazine.
