But how could he explain in just a few brief sentences how he had cheated death on a boat that sailed from his war-torn country of Vietnam, narrowly escaping the communists who had taken over, kicked his family out of their home and thrown them into a re-education camp?

That was a question Trinh Do faced every day as a student in the Stanford University School of Business, where he was studying to earn his MBA. Hundreds of people would approach him, wanting to hear the story of his family and the brutal war in Vietnam that he lived through firsthand.

The curiosity inspired Do to write a book, Saigon to San Diego: Memoir of A Boy Who Escaped Communist Vietnam, to share the saga of his family and the millions of others who had been forced to endure the horrors, many choosing to risk their lives as he had to escape the country. He will give a presentation to the Friends of the Saratoga Library on Dec. 12 at 1 p.m. in the Saratoga Library Community Room.

Do was born in Vietnam in 1964. He lived with his mother, three brothers and his father, an officer in the Republic of Vietnam, in a small city just south of Saigon called Vung Tao. When the Vietnamese government collapsed on April 30, 1975, and the communists claimed their victory, the new government showed up at his door.

"The communist government basically came in and took our property, and forced 100,000 Vietnamese into re-education camps," Do said.

For the next few years, his family was relocated to another area, and forced to live in what he said were terrible conditions.

"We lived in a room," Do recalls. "Imagine a room the size of a small bathroom in America, with five people packed into it. That was our living space, our eating space, our studying space. It was very dirty, and we had no running water."

Do struggled to stay in school. However, because his father was an officer of the original government, Do faced daily prejudice from the communist administration, which ultimately expelled him in 1978. Soon, war broke out with Cambodia.

"I was in danger of being drafted into the army to fight the Cambodians," Do said, even though he was barely 15 years old. "The communist government was known for drafting young boys to fight, even though the draft age was 18."

Therefore, in May of 1978, Do's mother arranged for him to escape Vietnam on a fishing boat. Do recalls the trip as long and perilous. He was in constant fear of the ship sinking.

The boat reached Malaysia, where he spent the next six months at a refugee camp before making it onto a boat bound for San Diego. He arrived in this country 1979.

"I was by myself, and I didn't speak a word of English," he said. He was placed with the family of a cousin in Southern California, and social services helped pay for his living expenses. Do was determined to learn English and continue in school.

His determination did not let him down. Do graduated from high school in Santa Ana in 1982, the top student in his class and the recipient of the UC­Irvine Regents Scholarship. He moved to Orange County to attend UC­Irvine, where he earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering.

While in school, Do received word that one of his brothers had made it to Australia, and the other two eventually made it to Southern California. However, he received somber news regarding his parents. His father had finally been released from the re-education camp in 1981, and his mother had saved up enough money for them to try escaping on a boat. Tragically, their boat sank somewhere in the South China Sea.

"I never saw them again," said Do.

Do went on to receive his master's degree in engineering from UC­Irvine in 1989. He decided to go after an MBA degree and was accepted by the Stanford University School of Business.

Faculty members and fellow students at Stanford could hardly believe the story of how Do's family had been persecuted by the communists, and how he had barely escaped the country on a small fishing boat, Do said.

"Most people couldn't believe it," he said. "The repression, the re-education camps, the destruction of the middle class—these things sounded like science fiction to them. Most of them were intelligent and well-read, but they didn't know about it."

"I had to tell my story hundreds of times," he recalls.

After writing a short story, "Escape from Vietnam," which was published in the Stanford Business School magazine, faculty members and students began encouraging him to write a book, impressing upon him how many people needed to know the truth about how horrors were in Vietnam.

"Most people have an idea how bad things are in other places, but they need to be told to really know," said Do.

Do graduated with his MBA in 1992, and married My Linh in 1993.

He went to work for Proctor & Gamble and then, ironically, was assigned to work in Vietnam. He and his wife spent three years there.

"It was a bittersweet experience," Do said of returning to the country he had fought so hard to escape. "On the positive side, I came back after leaving it 17 years before, and I reconnected with many friends and family I hadn't seen in almost 20 years.

"However, on the negative side, I could see much of the country is still mired in poverty, still very backward. Many of the relatives and friends that I had left behind, in a way, are frozen in time. Their lives haven't changed. They exist, but they're not really living. It was hard to see them that way."

Do and his wife now live in Fremont with their three daughters, and he said he keeps in touch with his two brothers who live in Southern California as much as possible.

Do said he wrote Saigon to San Diego as a tribute to the millions of others like him who had lived through the horrors in Vietnam, and for people like his parents, who made sacrifices so he could have the life he has today.

"The reason I'm still here and alive today, and able to have a good life, is because of the sacrifices of other people like my parents. I am one of the lucky ones, but many other people weren't as lucky. They are dead today, or are suffering in poverty," he said. "From 1978 to the early 1990s, two to three million people escaped Vietnam by boat. About one million survived.

"The number of people who left the shore and were never heard from again is a tragedy unlike anything in Vietnamese history. I wanted to pay tribute to the courage of those people. I wanted people to know why they felt they had to leave Vietnam."

For more information on Trinh Do's presentation to the Friends of the Saratoga Library, call the library at 408.867.6126. 'Saigon to San Diego' is available for purchase on Amazon.com.