An American woman of Vietnamese origin has lately returned to her motherland in tears after she was taken to the U.S. forty years ago as an adopted child with recurrent nightmares.

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Stacy Thuy Mederith recently paid a tearful visit to her biological mother’s tomb and had an emotional reunion with her maternal relatives in Phung Hiep District, located in the Mekong Delta province of Hau Giang.

Thuy was born in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City now) as Ngo Thi Ngoc Thuy in 1972 to Ngo Thi Diep, a Vietnamese woman, and an American soldier, whom her mother was romantically involved with while she was working at a bar.

During her mother’s pregnancy with her, Thuy’s American biological father was summoned back to the U.S., and was unaware of her presence.

Thuy was told that her mother kept her family in the dark about her presence due to the social stigma on women who had children with foreigners.

She was one of some thousand kids who were flown out of the city prior to April 30, 1975 by the U.S. military and American civil organizations.

Vietnam was reunified on that date after the fall of the U.S.-backed Saigon regime.

“During my childhood, I suffered relentless nightmares which sent me sleepwalking or screaming at the top of my lungs. My foster mother told me that my screams sounded terrifying, as if someone were giving me a good beating,” she wrote in her journal.  

Such haunting nightmares lingered well into her adulthood, she added.

Thuy’s childhood with her foster family in the U.S. was far from happy.

Her adopting father was a pilot during the war in Vietnam, which ended in 1975.

Thuy divulged she kept pondering over if his and his wife’s decision to adopt her came from his war-related repentance.

He and his son tormented her childhood even further by physically abusing her and considering her a demon.

“These scars never heal,” Thuy noted in her journal.

The anguished girl attempted suicide several times, with the first being made when she was only eight.

A psychologist who she sought help from later analyzed her awful dreams, and put them down to the obsessive experiences she went through since when her biological mother gave up on her until her adoption.

The search

Thuy yearned to return to Vietnam long time ago, but she and her husband could not afford a painstaking, costly search for the Vietnamese biological mother, whom Thuy almost no knowledge of.

Only 40 years after her relocation to the U.S. did Thuy muster up her courage to embark on a search for her own mother.

Early this year, she sent the few documents on her mother that she had been provided with to Le Cao Tam, a relative search specialist based in Ho Chi Minh City.

One of the documents is her mother’s commitment paper written in August 1974, when she was 19 years old.

In the paper, Diep, Thuy’s mother, signed her pledge that she would give up all her custodian rights on Thuy, who was 25 months old then, and handed the baby to the Holt Nutrition Center in Saigon for caretaking.

The little girl lived at the center for a short while before being fostered by a Vietnamese woman.

Thuy left Vietnam for the U.S. on March 7, 1975 to begin a new life with her American foster family.

At 25 months old, Ngo Thi Ngoc Thuy left Vietnam in March 1975 for the U.S.   

With Thuy’s limited records on her biological mother, Tam, the relative search specialist whom she later sought help from, was well aware of the immense difficulties ahead.

He soon contacted Nguyen Thanh Tuan, an expert on Vietnamese maps, who provided him with a piece of frustrating information that prior to 1975, there were five locales named Phuoc An, which Thuy’s biological mother mentioned in her commitment paper, in what are now Hau Giang and Tra Vinh Provinces in the Mekong Delta; District 9 in Ho Chi Minh City; Dak Lak Province in the Central Highlands; and Binh Dinh Province in the central region.

Tam instantly sent his three search teams of 12 members to the most likely locales, Dak Lak, Hau Giang, and Tra Vinh.

He said that even if he managed to find Thuy’s mother and relatives, he would not charge her despite hefty estimated costs.

During the search, Thuy remained relatively detached, and said she would not meet her mother or relatives until after DNA results prove them her kin.

The woman, who had been through overwhelming sufferings, shivered at the prospect of shattered hopes and false identification, as some tend to fraudulently claim to be foreigners’ relatives to look for money.

Though Tam managed to identify Thuy’s maternal grandparents, his quest ground to a standstill in late March.

When he was losing hope, Tam then got a phone call from an official in Phung Hiep District in Hau Giang Province, who notified him of Sau An, a deceased man who was likely to be Thuy’s maternal grandfather.

Tam immediately got in touch with Ngo Thanh Van, Sau An’s son, who told him that one of his siblings was Ngo Thi Diep.

The personal particulars of Diep, Van’s younger sister, matched with those of Thuy’s mother.

Tam finally confirmed the two Diep’s were the same person.

Van emotionally said that after giving up on her baby – Thuy – Diep was plunged into serious mental problems, relentlessly nagged by guilt.

He added that Diep died a few years back of cervical cancer.

Tam then provided the photos of five different kids, and Van and his wife simultaneously correctly pointed to Thuy’s photo.

One week later, Thuy emotionally embraced the news.

Contrary to her previous claim that she would not recognize her relatives until after DNA results prove them as such, she decided to come to see Van in no time, which resulted in her recent homebound trip.

“I’m happy that I made the trip. I would still consider the people here my folks even if DNA results may indicate otherwise,” Thuy shared.

Stacy Thuy Mederith is seen kneeling in front of her mother's tomb during her homebound trip around April 2015. Photo: Tuoi Tre

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