Nearly 40 years after the first Hmong Americans arrived in the United States after the Vietnam War, the first Hmong American judge in the nation will be sworn in Friday.
The Merced Sun Star reports Paul Lo will become a judge in the Merced County Superior Court in California’s Central Valley.
Lo arrived in this country at age 11 and spoke no English at the time. He graduated from the UCLA School of Law and got his undergraduate degree from UC Davis.
“My father, Chong Lo, was a simple farmer and soldier who served with Gen. Vang Pao’s special guerrilla unit in his teens and 20s,” Lo said. “In mid-1975, all of a sudden we were told we had to flee because the country had fallen to the communist Pathet Lao.”
