Kou Voravong
Kou Voravong grew up in Savannakhet and pursued a primary education there. He obtained the « certificat d'études primaires complémentaire indochinois » - Certificate of Indochinese Additional Primary Studies - (CEPCI) in 1930, went afterward to Vientiane and began his first-secondary-school year at the Collège Auguste Pavie. But because of a conflict which opposed him to French Colonial administration, his adopted father was sentenced to prison that same year. As reaction to this situation, Kou Voravong left school and returned to Savannakhet. As an out-of-school teenager, he practiced sports, especially soccer.
Michael Woo
Woo was born October 8, 1951, in Los Angeles County, California, the son of Wilbur and Beth Woo, native Chinese. Wilbur left the family's ancestral village of Hoi Ping, China, in 1940 to study at UCLA and had to stay in the United States during World War II, while Beth remained in China under Japanese occupation with two young daughters, Pat (later Wong) and Janice (later Chin). The family was reunited after the war, in 1946, and settled in a five-bedroom Monterey Park hillside home. Younger daughter Janice had contracted polio and needed seven operations before she could walk without help. The Woos had three more children born in the United States—Michael, Elaine, a journalist on the "Los Angeles Times", and Pamela, who had Down's syndrome.