COMMERCE CITY — When his soldier father fled Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War, 11-year-old Dung Le was thrust into a fatherly role in his bamboo hut.
The hardships that he, his mother and four siblings suffered would last the rest of his life.
On Wednesday afternoon, two months after the 44-year-old design engineer was laid off and weeks before he was to declare bankruptcy and close his Dollar Value Plus store, Le was shot to death behind the cash register he manned seven days a week.
“We thought when we came here we would have a better life,” said his sister Hang, 37, who sobbed uncontrollably Thursday as she crouched against the cinder-block wall near the entrance of the Commerce City store. “He didn’t go out. He just worked. It’s just not fair. It’s a nightmare.”
Le’s three sisters and widow, Dao Vo, 28, lit candles and, following tradition, set out a favored meal for the man — a hogie — at the entrance to his store, 5765 E. 63rd Place. Friends left flowers and a stuffed bear.
No arrests have been made, and police have not identified a suspect in the 1 p.m. shooting. Family members say the killer did not get any money from the cash register.
“I don’t know why anybody would do this,” said Le’s sister Van, 35, also mourning in front of the store.
In the mid-1970s, fearing that he would be imprisoned, Le’s father, a South Vietnamese soldier, fled Vietnam and traveled to Colorado.
“My father left when we were young,” Hang Le said.
The siblings’ mother, Hong Phan, was left in a one-room bamboo hut near Hui, South Vietnam, about 10 miles from the coast.
“She was 35 and had five kids,” Hang Le said. “Her whole life, she was never happy.”
Dung Le helped his mother grow and harvest cucumbers, tomatoes and potatoes in front and back of their home. They survived a five-month winter by eating the vegetables they bottled, Hang Le said. Phan, now 69, would often work from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
“That’s how we could survive,” Hang Le said. “She worked so hard to take care of us.”
Because they lived so close to the South China Sea, they were vulnerable to hurricanes. In the late 1980s, a hurricane destroyed their home. With floodwaters up to his chest, Dung Le carried his sisters on his shoulders from the wreckage of their home.
In 1991, their father, who by then had another family in the U.S., paid for plane tickets for his wife, three daughters and son. Another son had been hit by a car and killed years before, when he was 10.
“We had nothing,” Hang Le said. “We had to go to work.”
Hang Le went to beauty school. She started doing pedicures and manicures, working seven days a week, and Dung Le enrolled at the University of Colorado. He graduated in design engineering, but he couldn’t immediately find a job in his field, so he went to work at the Dollar Value Plus. Soon he bought the store.
He began corresponding with Dao Vo, a woman from a family he had known in Vietnam. About six years ago, he and his mother went back to Vietnam, and he courted Vo for a few weeks before they were married.
It would be another year before they could complete paperwork and she could move to the U.S., where the couple had another “beautiful” wedding, Hang Le said. The next year the couple had a daughter, Than.
Last fall, Dung Le was hired to do architectural work for a Boulder company. He would work that job during the day and work at his store at night and on weekends.
At first, the Dollar Value Plus had a lot of customers, but after several new stores opened nearby, business dropped dramatically.
When Dung Le was laid off two months ago, he couldn’t make lease payments on his store. “Everything went downhill,” Hang Le said.
Despite his financial troubles, Dung Le would often let customers with no money take groceries, said Sokchheng Mam, 46, who runs a laundry store in the same strip mall.
“That’s a good man,” Mam said.
On Thursday afternoon, 5-year-old Than joined her aunts and mother at a makeshift memorial in front of the store and watched her relatives crying. Earlier in the day, she thought they were having a party when so many relatives showed up at their house, Hang Le said.”She didn’t understand that her daddy was dead.”
Hang Le said her brother’s favorite shoes were still in the store.
“We’ll clean them up,” she said, “and put them in his coffin.”
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
