Meet Arcadian, Dr. Victor Luu MEDICAL DOCTOR AND VOLUNTEER MASON FOR 4 YEARS By Michelle Simone
Like many Americans, Victor Luu’s family came to the United States in search of a better life – in their case fleeing the chaos of Saigon in the final days of the Vietnam War. The refugees’ desperation was palpable: Luu, then 13, remembers it vividly. “I can hardly fathom the fears that must have been on my parents minds as they left everything behind and got on a fishing boat with no idea of where it was headed and no access to food or water,” he says.
Fortunately, the family was rescued by a U.S. Fleet ship. They traveled first to the Philippines and later moved to San Mateo, California, through a church sponsorship. Luu thrived, attending the University of California, Davis, and later the UCLA School of Medicine. Today, he is an urgent care physician and is firmly rooted in Southern California with his four children and wife, Nicole. He is the senior deacon of Arcadia Lodge No. 278.
Luu was drawn to Masonry’s tenets of love, relief, and truth, which reflected the values his parents instilled in him as a child – as well as his experiences with martial arts mentors at the Chinatown East Wing Kung Fu Club in Los Angeles. “My two Kung Fu masters freely give back to the community without expecting anything in return. Their honorable actions are so much in line with Masonic traditions,” he says.
These same values drove Luu to join the Project Vietnam Foundation, a nonprofit humanitarian organization that provides volunteer medical services to underresourced children and those in Vietnam’s most impoverished rural regions. “Helping the poorest of the poor with basic medical needs is the greatest sense of providing relief,” Luu says. “It cannot be described, only experienced.”