 Times Record -- Having come to the United States as a child, patrol officer Vu Pham has made his American experience that of a dedicated public servant.
Now serving his fifth year with the Fort Smith Police Department, Pham is expanding himself beyond police work, serving in the Arkansas Army National Guard, for which he aspires to become an officer, and training vigorously for an upcoming marathon. Pham was born in 1978 in Bien Hoa, South Vietnam. When he was 4 years old, his father traveled to the United States.
Photo: A U.S. Army National Guard Veteran and local Police Officer Vu Pham, a member of the Cyber Investigation Unit, works on a Mobile Data Transmitter in his office at the Fort Smith Police Department on Friday. The MDT is the onboard computer patrol officers use in their vehicles.
“He came here early to escape the Communists, but he wanted us to be reunited,” Pham said.
Pham’s father eventually gathered the resources to bring his family to the U.S. In 1989, Pham, his mother and two little brothers arrived. Not long after, Pham had a third little brother.
The Pham family settled in Fort Smith. The United States, Pham said, was larger than anything he had seen before.
“The scenery is a big difference,” Pham said. “Everything is huge, humongous, bigger than Vietnam. And in life, everybody goes at a faster pace.”
Pham entered the Fort Smith Public School System, attending Belle Point Elementary (now Belle Point Center), and had to learn English from scratch.
“The first two or three years were real difficult,” Pham said. “You can’t communicate with everybody; you’re basically mute and deaf.”
A Vietnamese-American classmate who spoke English became a friend who helped him get by in school.Pham took special classes to learn English and adjust to the public school curriculum.
“It was eighth grade when I started to get everything settled down and took regular classes like everybody else,” Pham said.
After completing Darby Junior High School, Pham went to Northside High School.
“I liked Northside; it’s a big old melting pot,” Pham said. “You can communicate with everybody easily.”
During his first year of high school, Pham joined JROTC. Pham said he was interested in participating in the JROTC air rifle team and was intrigued by the possibility of the military helping to pay for college.
Pham also appreciated the discipline of military life.
“Everything had to go a certain way, everything had to be uniform — that’s what I like,” Pham said.
Pham rose to the rank of cadet first lieutenant, winning several awards, most of which were for marksmanship. Pham extended his military aspirations to the Army National Guard, joining before he graduated from Northside.
“I knew I wanted to go to college, that’s why I picked the National Guard instead of the Army,” he said.
With the support of the GI Bill, Pham attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, but returned to Fort Smith every month for Guard drills.
Pham majored in computer engineering, but he said Fayetteville’s high-energy social scene was hard to resist for a college freshman out on his own for the first time.
“You’re away from home, living by yourself and nobody’s watching you,” he said. “It was fun; basically you party a lot up there, party more than you study. If I could do it over again, I would have done my first two years at Westark.”
Pham returned to Fort Smith after a year at Fayetteville. He enrolled at Westark College and took on a full-time job at Baldor.
Around 2004, Pham joined the Police Department, becoming the first Vietnamese officer of the department. As a beat cop, Pham said, every day was a new experience, a new surprise.
Pham’s bilingual abilities were called upon, as he often was asked to translate for investigators questioning Vietnamese-speaking victims and suspects. Pham also lent his translation abilities to Crawford County agencies.
It was Pham who was asked to speak to the family of Quy V. Nguyen, a 19-year-old Van Buren man who was shot to death at Walmart, 2425 S. Zero St., in July 2007.
“I went to the family to calmly tell them what happened and that if they needed anything, I would help them as much as I can,” Pham said.
Pham knew members of Nguyen’s family prior to the shooting.
“Most of the Vietnamese community around know me,” he said. “That made it a whole lot easier for them to know there’s somebody in the police force who can give them information (in Vietnamese).”
This past year, Pham joined the Police Department’s network team. As a member of the three-person networking team, it is Pham’s duty to network and provide tech support to the laptops officers keep in their squad cars and use in the field. Pham provides tech support to not only Fort Smith police laptops, but also in-field laptops for the Sebastian County Sheriff’s Office, University of Arkansas at Fort Smith Police Department, Fort Smith Fire Department and Bonanza Police Department. Pham’s work helps the agencies share information on suspects.
“Vu’s a great worker,” said Alvey Matlock, the Police Department’s network manager. “And he’s a great guy to have on the team.”
Laptops in squad cars are necessities for modern law enforcement officers.
“Officers need (computers) in the field to make their job a whole lot easier,” Pham said. “They can type up reports in the car and enter it in the (department’s) database right away. It cuts back on time so officers can go home (quicker).”
Pham also remains busy with the National Guard, training for Officer Candidate School, and academically, chipping away at a bachelors degree in applied sciences at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith.
While juggling so many responsibilities, Pham also finds time to train and burn calories at a rapid rate in preparation for an upcoming marathon in Dallas.
Pham said that although he is open to any promising opportunity, he is more than happy with his current position at the Police Department.
“I don’t think anything could offer me better than this,” Pham said. |
