A champion of Southern Nevada's Asian community, Vida Lin is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Tragedy is what brought her to Las Vegas, but the desire to see the Asian community triumph in Nevada is what kept her here.

An insurance broker who would later lead the Las Vegas Asian Chamber of Commerce, her current mission is to improve the general well-being and education of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities in Nevada.

Vida Lin, Founder and President of the Asian Community Development Council, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

(Vida Lin) Thank you.

Thank you for inviting me.

-Before we talk about the tragedy that I referenced, which brought you to Nevada, let's start in San Francisco where you were born and where you worked as a waitress in your father's Chinese restaurant at just 11 years old.

-Yes.

-Now, that would not be allowed today.

I think the legal-- -I'm sure.

- --working age is 14.

And even then, there are restrictions.

Do you ever think back to that and what impact it had on you?

-You know, the impact of doing that was being able to talk to people, to meet with people, but also to talk about our food and how important that is.

So I really enjoyed that whole interaction of working in the restaurant.

And it was hard work, but it also taught me value in long hours and how to, you know how to work and be okay with that.

Yeah.

-You were an outgoing child?

-I wasn't, but it did make me come out.

-It forced you to?

-It forced me to, yes.

-All right.

So you gave an oral history to UNLV.

And in it, you said that before opening multiple Chinese restaurants, your father worked as a dishwasher at Fisherman's Wharf, was fired, but then went to a Chinese community center, help center, and there people gathered enough money for him to open up a coffee shop, which then led to the restaurants.

What did you think about that?

And when you came to Vegas, did that kind of outreach exist?

-In Las Vegas, I am here about 30 years.

This month would be 30 years in Las Vegas.

And I can tell you we had nothing like that here.

But I didn't know that, being born and raised in San Francisco.

I thought these community center was everywhere, like these Asian community center where the family can get help and services was given, a given.

But I discovered it wasn't.

-Do you think that that experience with your father helped lead to you founding the Asian Community Development Center?

-For sure.

I can tell you it's a funny story.

I tell my parents, and at that time my mom and dad, they're in their 90s, right, and I said, Well, I started this nonprofit.

And they look at me like, You did what?

What did you do?

So they told my other brother and sister, You know what?

You need to help your sister.

She's in a nonprofit.

She doesn't have any money, so make sure you take care of her.

So that's their concept of nonprofit.

-Have you told them that your nonprofit generates millions of dollars?

-Well, I keep explaining that to my mom.

And she is 97 years old.

She goes, Oh, you interpreter?

So I decided not to try to explain myself and say, Okay, yes, that's what I do.

-Granted, in-language services is something huge that you provide.

How big of a difference has that made in this community in your 30 years here?

-I can tell you language is our number one issue when it comes to-- we're not monolingual.

We don't have one language that everyone speak.

We have multiple, over 3,500 different languages.

-Wow!

-So we picked the top seven in Nevada, even though.

So we have interpreters and people there to make sure that we can translate and make sure they understand the services available.

-Back to what brought you to Las Vegas and part of the reason why you were seeking the help of perhaps a community center, it was a situation with your nephew.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but you believe that situation ultimately contributed to the death of his father, your brother-in-law.

-Right, for sure.

He was very stressed.

He will call me, and I was at that time living in San Francisco, and tell me what situation was going through.

And it was, it was heartbreaking to hear.

I can hear in his voice how stressful he was and how he was very unfamiliar how something that was simple as my son-- my nephew.

I'm sorry.

My nephew, yeah.

Happening to my nephew going to school getting treated the way he was with his teacher.

That he would be-- they would come together and help him, but instead, the family has been threatened being fired from home, from work, getting threatening phone calls, tell him to go back to his country, and pretty much dismissed because they found that the Asian family or Asian community was not important at that time.

-So taking a step back, your nephew was having issues with his teacher.

-Right.

-And your brother-in-law and sister, what did they try to do, or what-- -They try to meet with a teacher.

They try to meet with the principal.

Tried to meet with the school district.

They even went to the school board meetings, to the PTA.

And instead of getting help, they were told to keep quiet.

And actually, they actually sued them to silence them.

And my brother-in-law was going through a lot of issues because he's not familiar, and why is he going through this issue?

-And he died from a heart attack?

-He died from heart attack.

He had problems eating, sleeping, to everything.

And he was just so frustrated that he came to America for a better life for his family, for his-- you know, his son was born in the U.S. Why would he have to go through all that, right?

So ultimately, he refused to go see a doctor.

And so he actually died from a heart attack.

It was just very tragic.

-And so you moved out here, in part, to help with funeral arrangements and then to take care of this legal issue.

-Issue that my eight-year-old nephew is going through.

And the family is going through that, yes.

It was quite horrible not to know that there was nowhere in Las Vegas.

They didn't get support and help for that.

It was a simple thing that they couldn't handle.

-How's your nephew doing now?

-He's actually doing well.

He's actually a graphic designer.

When he was younger, trying to communicate, he would draw stick figures to tell me what was going on, or tell us what's going on.

And now he's a graphic designer.

So it's great to see that.

And then my niece is now a doctor.

She wanted to make sure that she can help other Asian families or people who has heart condition or health issue that she will be able to do that.

So we, as a family, we all came together and kind of helping raise the kids as much as we could with my kids.

-When your family was being sued, it was for defamation.

-Right.

-And that is when you learned the importance of homeowner's insurance, which I learned something here.

How does that play into a legal defense?

-So in your homeowners insurance, you have what you call a personal liability.

That personal liability that you pay, that's $100,000, helps you with legal fees.

But it doesn't help you sue, but it helps protect you.

So that's why, that's why I want to educate our community.

If they didn't have that, they would have lost everything.

They would be, they would lose their home, they would lose everything else.

So I'm glad that we had something that we fell into, but I also wanted to educate our community about how important that is.

-And that still exists today, for our viewers out there.

-Yes, for your homeowners insurance.

Insurance company is not gonna love me right now.

I just explain the coverage that you have.

-All right.

So you become an insurance broker.

Then you own your own insurance agency.

You're helping the Asian community in their businesses.

You go on to become the president of the Las Vegas Asian Chamber of Commerce.

And in that oral history I mentioned, you talked about, in that role, you had to talk to the casinos and educate them about the significance of the Asian community in Las Vegas?

What were you telling them?

-I just met with some, one of the largest casino.

I said, Do you know 40% gaming comes from our community?

Why are you not giving back to our community?

And I think it was something that they kind of, Ah-ha.

They didn't know.

So that whole educational piece about our community is very important.

And for my last 30 years, I think, still doing that, educating, connecting and empowering communities is what I base everything on.

-How well understood do you think it is right now, the significance of the Asian community in Las Vegas?

-I can tell you.

Being in Las Vegas at least 10 years, you have seen the growth of our community.

Where right now, according to the 2020 census, we're over 400,000 Asian, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander in Nevada.

So we've grown.

If you look at Spring Mountain and seen that corridor, and now we have the new Asia town, you have seen the growth.

I have seen the growth in the last, for sure the last 30 years I've been here for sure, yeah.

-What do you think about it when you reflect on it?

-I think it's great, because I think what brings people together is understanding our Asian community, our history that we have given to United States and in Nevada, especially in Nevada with railroads and the building of the railroads.

So I think educating our community about how much we have, the Asian has given to our country or to our state is really important.

-Back to the time as president of the Las Vegas Asian Chamber, this is during the recession.

-Right, during the housing crisis.

-How does that impact your community?

-It impact us when it comes to that issue.

A lot of the Asians are homeowners, and many of them lost a home because they didn't understand.

They were trying to refinance their home.

But instead of getting refinancing, they were actually getting money taken from them.

And people were getting pushed out their homes in the middle of night, trying to say, Okay, the bank owns it now.

Out in the street you go.

So educating our community about that, that was really difficult.

And how do we, how do we help that?

And when we talk about homelessness in the Asian community, sometimes we're talking about they will live in a relative's home or live in friend's home and sleep on the floor until they get back on their feet.

So it's a little different how we do that.

So that was an eyeopener for me, to say, I would never expect that we would ever lose your home, you couldn't have a roof to go to, right?

So it's really taught me we need to-- it's great that we can help the business owners, small business owner, but we have to help their home life too.

-So then that opened your eyes, I think I've read, to the need to help individuals.

And so you start your nonprofit.

It gets its status in 2015.

Voter registration becomes a big priority for you.

-Yes.

-What efforts did you take to get-- you had grant money tied to, I have to get a certain number of people registered to vote.

-Right.

-What did you do?

-Well, we did a lot of really crazy things.

But one of the things I did was, people love us, I went to hip-hop club to register our community to vote.

-I was hoping you would tell that story.

-And I tell you, it was really funny to see me going to a hip-hop club and trying to register people to vote.

But I have friends and people that was there that will say, We will help you with that, because we know the importance of getting our community to vote.

Because if we don't get our community to register to vote and get them out to the poll, we will not have a voice.

And that was important to make sure our community has a voice.

-The Asian Community Development Council also played a huge role during COVID.

Of everything that your nonprofit did during that time, what are you most proud of?

-Well, there's two things I'm really proud of.

One is that we started a food distribution that's culturally sensitive to our community.

Because when we first started the food distribution for our community, they were giving us things like cheese and rice and so forth.

I mean, cheese and milk and so forth, which most Asians are not good with dairy, so we started a big distribution that will house like rice and food, fish and vegetables that our community is used to.

So that was one thing that we done.

Then we have given out over 5 million pounds of food so far, helping over 22,000 individual in getting them food, because many of them work in casinos or places and they were out of a job and didn't know how to feed their family.

And the second thing that we're very proud of doing is getting the vaccine to our community, having these popup in the heart of Asia town to make sure our community is vaccinated, understand the importance of that.

-And be given that vaccination by someone who is speaking their language.

-Exactly.

Exactly.

-Last thing, January 18, 2023, was officially recognized as Vida Lin Day in Las Vegas.

-I still find that kind of funny.

-Is it?

-Yes.

-What does it mean to you?

-It means like it's kind of surreal, like why would they recognize me and have a day?

And I think the funny part was when they told me, I was kind of shock.

Then one of my staff asked me, Do we get today off?

I said, It's Vida Lin Day.

I thought that was funny, but I still find that to be amusing.

-Vida Lin, what a tremendous legacy you have and much more to come, I imagine.

Thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Thank you for having me.

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