"Touger Vang spent little time in his native Laos before his family fled to Thailand," the Greensboro, NC News Record reports. "Vang, whose first name is pronounced two-zher, spent the first half of his childhood in a refugee camp. Like many Hmong, Vang’s family was ousted from Laos because of their involvement with the United States in Vietnam ... Now 35, Vang has spent his adult life trying to merge the best of his two worlds. In southeast Guilford County, Vang raises chickens and ducks and grows Asian produce on his 6.5 acre farm just as his Hmong ancestors did in Laos [and works as manager of undergraduate student services at the University of North Carolina]...Deborah Tollefson, the school’s director of financial aid, hired Vang in 2001, and he later became one of her financial aid counselors. Tollefson described Vang as a motivator who connects to both the elders and young in his community. 'He’s really, somehow, single-handedly managed to build a bridge between ... the past and the present and the future within the Hmong people,' she said."