From refugee to Golden State Killer prosecutor, he's now running for Sacramento DA Sacramento Bee 3 hrs ago Sam Stanton, The Sacramento Bee May 17—Thien Ho came to the United States in 1976 as a refugee from Vietnam, a 4-year-old boy whose father used his toy pistol to bluff the family's way through checkpoints and flee across the South China Sea on a fishing boat. "My father had stolen a uniform from a communist officer and painted my toy gun black so we would be able to evade the military checkpoints," Ho recalled. "We ran out of gas, ran out of food, ran out of water.