The Healing Fields

It was hardly an ideal beginning for newlyweds Setan and Randa Lee - living in a basement in Aurora with 12 relatives, learning a new language and culture, making soup out of free bones meant for family dogs.

But after their years in the killing fields of Cambodia, the refugees were grateful even for the crowded quarters offered in 1980 in the home of a Cambodian family who had not been victims of the Khmer Rouge.

Randa marveled at how clean and big everything was in Colorado and how welcoming the people were.

"I thought, 'I'm not important. I'm from a different country.' But people were so warm to us."

They began learning about life in the Denver area, about schools, about English lessons, about where the grocery store was, about services for refugees.

Setan and Randa also wanted to find a place to worship in their newfound Christian faith as soon as they could. Setan looked in the telephone book. He searched for the Church of Jesus Christ - the name of the refugee camp church in Thailand where he and Randa converted and married, the only church name he knew.

"But there was no such thing." He found the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - the Mormons. "That didn't sound right." He kept looking and got even more confused: Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist and on and on. "I got lost. I didn't understand about denominations."

Setan met a man who explained as best he could and pointed them to Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora, where Setan later was ordained and set up a refugee church in the chapel. They remain members there today. "By accident," Randa says, "we became Presbyterians."

Setan, the only family member who spoke English, got a job within three weeks as a case manager with Church World Services' refugee resettlement program, which had helped the Lees come to the United States.

In less than two months, Faith Presbyterian helped the family move into a small house in Aurora.

Setan's $800 monthly income covered the $450 rent, utilities, food and clothing for everybody. The transition to a new country was hardest on Setan's parents. The weather, the customs, the language - everything was new, everything was in upheaval.

The family - except for Setan - walked to nighttime English classes at Aurora Central High School.

"It was quite a walk. (My parents) were old, and they had to walk in the cold and the snow. They cried almost every day," Setan says. "I felt so sorry for them."

Setan's father, Chan, recalls, "We didn't know how to do anything. We couldn't even get kitchenware. We didn't know where to get it. We were afraid to ask."

The Lees learned a few things they weren't taught in English class or from refugee services. One was that the closest grocery store gave away bags of beef and pork bones for dogs - but only one to a customer.

"So they got a lot of dogs at that grocery store - 14 of them," says Setan, laughing.

Each Lee walked into the store to get the bag of dog bones and brought them home to make soup.

A few other family members soon learned enough English to get jobs at a meatpacking plant. With more income, they bought used clothes and stocked their house from a nearby Goodwill store. They all pitched in to buy an old Volkswagen van so Setan - the only one with a driver's license at first - could drive the family around.

Although more of the younger Lees were finding work, hard as he tried, Setan's father, Chan, couldn't get hired. By the time the family arrived in Aurora, Chan was 60 and his wife, Noeun, was 51.

"Whenever my kids would go to apply for jobs, I would always go along," Chan says. "But they wouldn't hire me because they said I was too old. Even at the meatpacking plant or at a motel cleaning."

Setan met a woman who helped his parents apply for food stamps. "I lost everything," says Chan, who had owned a successful import-export business in Cambodia. "It's very difficult. I don't like to talk about it.

"But God helped us through it. I knew it would be OK. I knew we would go on living."

Setan says, "It was a rough start. But it was a lot better than life in the killing fields."

Randa struggled with the language and grew frustrated with obstacles. But she persevered. In 1983, she graduated with honors from Adams City High School. Education was still a priority for her, and she was determined to take advantage of it in her new country.

She learned to drive - after the accident. Randa, ever the brave one, had borrowed her brother-in-law's car to run an errand and wound up crashing it into the side of a neighbor's house. Terrified, she ran back to her home and hid under the bed, waiting for the authorities to cart her off.

"I thought, 'This time I'm going to jail in America.' "

She didn't. She did get a ticket and a court appearance. The owners of the car and the house were understanding. So was the judge.

Her first job was at a McDonald's for $3.40 an hour. She understood more English than she could speak, "so the manager said, 'OK, you stay in the back and cook. If you don't talk to anybody, you're fine,' " Randa says.

Setan went to work for the state refugee services department as a caseworker, and quickly got promoted and won pay raises. He and Randa bought an old, beat-up Mazda for $300. The heater didn't work, which meant the defroster didn't work, so in winter Setan bundled up and drove from Aurora to his job in downtown Denver with the car window open.

Over their family's protests at another separation, Setan and Randa moved to a small apartment in Commerce City in 1981. They visited the family every day. But they wanted to start their own life together.

Their first child, Ben, was born in 1985.

After waiting the required time, they became U.S. citizens in 1986.

Randa went to work at a company, which has since been bought out, making computer printer ink cartridges.

She dreamed of going to college, but money was tight, and she knew that Setan wanted to go just as badly as she did. "I decided if I couldn't get an education, I want my husband to get an education," Randa says.

At first, Setan planned to become a doctor, but he couldn't get a loan, and medical schools wouldn't accept his previous experience. "For a while, I was quite upset. But then I decided God had another direction for me."

Setan started classes at Colorado Christian University, then at Denver Seminary.

As the couple settled into their new home, they also felt an urgency to make good on the vow they had made in the refugee camp to help rebuild their ravaged homeland. Their lives were vastly better here, but "we didn't just want a better life," Randa says. "We did not want to be selfish."

Their dedication since childhood to helping the less fortunate, buttressed by their calling to share their Christian faith, urged them on. They realized that if they could make a living and make a home in such a short time in the United States, maybe their dream of returning to Cambodia wasn't that far-fetched.

"Because of the things we had seen and experienced, we thought it was going to be a long, long time, maybe not even in our lifetime. It was always in our thoughts," Setan says. "We didn't know it was going to come this quick."

Randa's longing for her family remained strong. She had heard from an American Red Cross worker that her sister and brother were living in a refugee camp in Thailand.

But making their way to Cambodia required persistence.

Cambodia was still in turmoil. The Cambodian puppet regime installed in 1979 by the North Vietnamese was being challenged by a coalition of former leader King Norodom Sihanouk, anti-communists and the Khmer Rouge.

Setan first tried to go in 1988, but he was turned away at the Thai border. He was turned away again in 1989, the year their daughter, Sandra, was born. It also was the year that Randa's sister and brother made it to the Denver area. They knew where their grandmother was, and their grandmother knew where to find the rest of the family, including Randa's mother.

So in 1990, Setan and Randa decided to travel to Cambodia together. They left their children - Sandra was only 3 months old, Ben was 5 - in the care of trusted friends from the church. It was an agonizing decision.

"It was so hard," Randa says. "But my dream every day was to see my family, to make sure they were alive and well."

Randa and Setan wouldn't risk taking the children. "We don't know whether we're going to live or die. But this is the killing fields. We don't want to take our kids. It's not fair," Setan says.

This time, the couple decided to try their luck going through Laos. They had been refused visas for Cambodia, but they went anyway. They'd gotten that far. They couldn't go back without trying.

At the border, they told the Cambodian officials they had come to search for relatives. And they said they were Christians, come to spread the message of Jesus Christ.

But to the government authorities, Christians from the United States meant only one thing: Randa and Setan must be CIA agents. They were taken into custody and detained in the capital city of Phnom Penh under house arrest.

For the first time in 10 years, Randa and Setan were home, only to find themselves prisoners again.