They wouldn't learn each other's pasts until after they married - but their shared tales of trauma and survival would give them the strength to cope and the motivation to start a foundation to help others who have suffered traumatic childhoods.

Theirs is a love story - one of two people who turned their suffering into a message of hope.

Escape from Vietnam

Trong Hong was 9 years old when his father put him alone on a fishing boat with 400 other Vietnamese refugees.

Trong carried a small bag of food and a paper with his home address. His father told him it was for his protection and that he was going to visit his grandmother.

After several days, modern-day pirates raided the boat and attacked, raped and murdered other refugees. The survivors ran out of food and were starving.

The boat eventually shipwrecked on an island, where Trong lived for two years until rescue came.

He escaped from the other survivors to protect himself; everyone fought for food and the weakest wouldn't have survived.

He built shelters from banana and coconut leaves, fished and found fruit in the forest to survive. Eventually he found a cave and lived there with a family of monkeys.

"I just remember the loneliness and not having anybody around," he said. He doesn't remember dwelling on when rescue would come - "it's day by day survival - just trying to figure out how to eat."

When he first arrived in

Seattle, he didn't understand that this would be his permanent home. Then his sixth-grade

teacher had the class write Mother's Day cards. "It just dawned on me: I'm not going to see my mom," he said.

For several months he withdrew and wouldn't talk to anyone.

But he sent the card and a picture to the address he'd kept with him, and his family received it. His father died later that day, knowing his son was alive.

At 24, Hong returned home and reunited with his birth mother and six siblings in a village in South Vietnam.

At first, he and his mother just held each other. Later, the whole village celebrated because he was one of the only people who survived the escape and returned.

He learned the story of his past: His family put up their life savings to secure him a place on a boat headed out of Vietnam. They wanted to save him from becoming a child Communist soldier and give him a life of opportunity.

Childhood of slavery

Rani's parents, too, hoped for a better life for their 7-year-old daughter. They entrusted her to a friend, believing their daughter would go to boarding school. In reality, child traffickers kidnapped her. She was sold and severely abused by the traffickers.

"I was always calling and crying for (my mom)," she said of her only memory of that time.

Much of the rest she blocked out, she said. "I think that was the only way I could survive."

When she became so withdrawn and sick from the trauma, she was sold for international adoption. An Olympia woman adopted Rani when she was 8.

"I looked like I was physically and mentally ill. ... I did not look up. I would not talk to anybody for a period of time," she said.

She grew up knowing little about her past and harboring resentment for her home country. It wasn't until she returned to India when she was 28 that she learned the truth.

During the trip, Rani decided to visit the orphanage from which she was adopted. There, a woman recognized Rani, grabbed her, hugged her and wept, amazed, she told The Olympian in 2001.

The woman, Rani learned through an interpreter, was once her nanny.

Rani's mother learned her daughter was alive and traveled three days to see her. She knocked on her daughter's hotel room door. "I was just in shock. I was told my mother was dead. My heart's jumping just thinking: 'What if this is true?' " Rani said.

She wanted proof. Her mother showed Rani a picture. It was the same photograph Rani had saved from her childhood passport.

"We just cried and cried," she said. She became reunited with a family she didn't know she had just six years ago.

The reunion prompted Rani to research child trafficking, and what she learned was frightening: Approximately 1.2 million children are trafficked each year around the world. Half of those turned into sexual slavery are younger than 16.

Between 600,000 to 800,000 people are victims of human trafficking across international borders, and about 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked within the United States, according to the U.S. State Department.

A blind date

Rani and Trong met on a blind date - a dare from a high school friend of Rani's.

"We know today because of our stories, it wasn't blind by God's eyes," Rani said.

It wasn't until a year after their marriage in 1992 that Trong began to open up about his past.

"He'd never told anyone about anything," Rani said.

Throughout their marriage, they have supported each other.

"We can relate to each other because of our past, and that's what's amazing: that God would give us to each other. While one is weak, the other's strong," Rani said.

The couple started Tronie Homes, which is building Briggs Urban Village. They also started a family, and now have four kids ranging in age from 4 to 10.

"We don't have any blood family here, so we wanted a big family," Rani said.

Spreading hope

The Hongs want to give homes to others who have endured traumatic backgrounds, which is why they started the Tronie Foundation earlier this year. The organization partners with others to help build homes for victims of human trafficking.

The family traveled to Fiji earlier this year for one of the foundation's first projects, and the Hongs built a home for a woman who'd also survived slavery.

They'd like to build similar homes in India, Vietnam and Thurston County as well.

The Hongs also helped push for legislation to curb human trafficking, and their successes include four laws in Washington, with other states following suit.

Rani also has spoken nationally and internationally about

modern-day slavery, most

recently in Washington, D.C.

That has brought a barrage of publicity to the family of six. They have been contacted by producers and authors and have been approached to make a documentary.

The family will have to make those decisions in the next couple of weeks, Rani said.

A production crew from "The Oprah Winfrey Show" came to Olympia this month to shoot footage downtown and of the Hongs' home and life.

Though the publicity has put some strain on the family, the Hongs know it's necessary in order to spread the word about the Tronie Foundation and human trafficking. "The reason we do it is to give hope to other people," Rani said.

Diane Huber covers the city of Lacey and its urban growth area for Lacey Today. She can be reached at 360-357-0204 or dhuber@theolympian.com.

Tune in to watch

The Hongs appear on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" at 4 p.m. Monday on KING TV and at

9 p.m. Monday on KONG TV.

For information about the

Tronie Foundation, see www.troniefoundation.org.

Tune in to watch

The Hongs appear on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" at 4 p.m. Monday on KING TV and at

9 p.m. Monday on KONG TV.

For information about the

Tronie Foundation, see www.troniefoundation.org.

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