The youngest of seven hyperachieving children of a Vietnamese shrimper in Kemah, she had been born in exile on the South China Sea, her mother going into frightened labor shortly after their refugee boat was boarded by pirates.
She was never on her knees, never humiliated by the Soviet collapse, even though she was born in Sebastopol a Black Sea port redolent with past Russian glory when it was part of the Soviet empire, and went to school there when it had become part of Ukraine.