Every time she spoke of her daughter, Holly's eyes sparkled. Her eldest child was a pre-med student and last fall she was to go on to a medical school. They rarely saw each other, as the daughter was "always very busy with school." The few times a year she managed to schedule a trip home, Holly would spoil her with feasts of her favorite dishes.

Holly and her fellow migrant worker Ping were the two caretakers assigned to our graduate student dorm. It is run by the university, which makes Holly and Ping university employees. We students refer to them as "the cleaning ladies." But the two middle-aged Cantonese more than cleaned our facilities and the public areas and removed our refuse; occasionally they doled out sweets from China and, at least once, homemade pastries.

In my last year at school, to stay close to the library, I took up residence at a university apartment three blocks away from the campus south gate. Unlike most students in the building, I stayed home writing my dissertation and regularly chanced on the cleaning staff. After an accidental lockout more specifically, where Holly came to my rescue, we would exchange more than courteous greetings whenever she came in or we ran into each other in the hallways. That was how I got to know more about her.

Holly and her husband had migrated to the United States with their two small children. I never asked what her husband did for living, but from her remarks, I imagined it didn't procure much more than what she received from the university. They managed, however, to send the children to college. The daughter, if things go as planned, will become a pediatrician in several years, and the son is not far behind in the ascending social ladder.

I used to marvel at the American dream, which seemed to unfold so hurriedly for Holly and her fellow immigrants. One of my roommates there went to MIT while her immigrant father cheffed at a Chinese eatery. Only in America, so they say, a family moves up from being janitors to physicians, waiters to corporate executives over one generation. Their success stories compelled me to be cautious in my critique of capitalism. As Holly might attest, few other systems could offer broader alternatives and faster track to economic improvement. If she can profit from it, who am I to say that capitalism is detrimental to humanity? The millions of new immigrants in the US (and those who insist on coming, albeit unlawfully) seem to prove me wrong.

And it doesn't seem to matter that once in America, immigrants are thrown out of their comfort zone. While Holly was fairly articulate, Ping was timid and struggling with English. At times I caught her studying, during lunch breaks, in a narrow storeroom for janitorial equipments. "We will have a test this afternoon," she would say blushing. The university encourages them to take courses of English, which, starting last year, has been designated the national language.

But more often I found her listening to Chinese radio broadcasts. Does she miss home? I had wondered. But through cultural aphasia and moments of pensiveness, our cleaning ladies mopped on,  for the spouse at home or at work, for the children at college, for those yet to be born -- for the American fairy godmother to turn midnight-blue janitorial pants into daughters' Cinderella gowns.

It is thus heartbreaking when a dream turns into nightmare.

The tragedy at Virginia Tech is nightmarish for so many reasons. The brutality, the pain, and the loss are too real. And as the media began to spotlight the familial background of the gunman Seung-hui Cho, my thoughts went to Holly and her immigrant co-workers.


Cho's family, we are told, had emigrated from South Korea in 1992 in pursuit of a better life. Working long hours at dry-cleaning shops, his parents were able to send his elder sister to Princeton University and Cho to Virginia Tech. From a "dingy basement apartment" in Seoul, the second generation Chos moved up to top-tier universities in America. A classic story of the American dream, it would have been, if Cho didn't just turn it into a living nightmare.

The killings at Virginia Tech have rightly set off lengthy discussions on school safety, the university accountability, mental illness, and finding the right balance between privacy of  mental health patients and community safety. But not nearly as much attention is given to the issue of gun control. The US presidential candidates would rather stay away from this sensitive subject; while for the media, gun control debates don't carry as much news value as, say, Cho's Korean background.

For some of us who followed this tragedy from a distance, it's all too obvious -- guns take lives and shatter dreams.