Vietnamese maid finds Taiwan employer her long missing father

Jan 22, 2008, 6:41 GMT

Taipei - With the hope of reuniting with her father, a Vietnamese woman came to Taiwan to work as a domicile helper, only to find that her previous employer was her long missing dad, police said Tuesday.

In what appeared to be a soap opera plot, the woman, identified as Tran Thi Khang, 40, came to Taiwan in June 2004 and worked as a domicile helper to look after the seriously ill wife of her 77-year-old employer, Tsai Han-chao, in Taipei county, police said.

But Tsai's wife died seven months later, and Tran had to find another job with another family in Kinmen, an outlying island of Taiwan.

'She came to us last year, hoping we could help her find a ring and a picture she said were very important to her,' said an officer of Kinmen police by phone.

She told police the golden ring carved with the name 'Tsai Han-chao' and the picture of Tsai were left to her by her late mother and were useful for her to reunite her long missing father in Taiwan, the officer said.

'We figured that she must have left the things at her previous employer's home. So we contacted him and asked him to find if any of such things were left there,' the officer said.

Tsai was stunned to find that those were the things he had given to his separated lover whom he met in Hong Kong in 1967 before she returned to Vietnam to see her ailing mother, the officer said.

Tsai told Taiwanese TV media he quickly flew to Kinmen and could not help but cry after seeing his daughter. 'Life is such a drama, and I never thought I had a daughter,' he was quoted as saying by cable news network TVBS.

He said he lost contact with his Vietnamese girlfriend because of the Vietnam War in the 1970s. He later returned to Taiwan from Hong Kong, still hoping that he might see her one day.

Tsai said her daughter told him she only realized she had a biological father in Taiwan when she was 21 on the very day of her wedding.

At that time, her 'mother,' who was actually her aunt, told her that her biological mother died two months after she was born in North Vietnam and left the baby to her care. Her aunt also gave her the ring and the picture of her Taiwanese biological father.

Tran then decided to look her father up and came to Taiwan in 2004 after her own children had grown up.

Police confirmed DNA matching of the two and said Tran is now in Vietnam to prepare for official papers for the final reunion of the long separated family.