Nearly $800,000 raised for two elderly Asian people attacked in San Francisco

The GoFundMe pages for two elderly, Asian victims of assault in San Francisco have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors around the world, as the US reels from the Atlanta shootings that killed eight people, including six Asian women.

A day after the Atlanta shootings, Xiao Zhen Xie, 75, was standing at a San Francisco intersection, waiting to cross the street, when a white man ran up to her and punched her face. In a video of the incident, Xie points to the wooden plank she used to strike back at him. Footage of her sobbing, holding a cold pack up to her bleeding eye as police apprehend her assailant struck a raw nerve, as the country contends with a surge of anti-Asian attacks.

“My mom feels dizzy, and very scared, and traumatized – and very hurt,” Dong-Mei Li, Xie’s daughter, told KPIX on Thursday. “The right eye still cannot see anything and is still bleeding, and we have something to absorb the bleeding,” she said.

The fundraising page that Xie’s grandson, John Chen, set up has raised more than $649,000, and has been the most visited fundraiser on GoFundMe for the past 24 hours, a spokesperson for the organizing platform said. More than 22,500 people in 50 US states and 55 countries contributed. Thousands shared messages of sympathy and support. “No Grand Mother should have to go through this kind of hate,” one donor said. “I cry everytime I think about her and your family. I wish her a strong and speedy recovery,” said another.

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Police say Steven Jenkins, 39, is responsible for assaulting Xie, as well as the assault on 83-year-old Ngoc Pham, a Vietnamese American man who was shopping at the local farmers market when he was attacked. Police said they are still investigating both assaults.

Pham is in hospital, suffering from a nose fracture and neck injuries, according to the GoFundMe page that the Community Youth Center of San Francisco has set up to help him pay for medical bills. Pham “has always had a positive outlook on life as a result of him surviving 17 years in a Vietnamese concentration camp”, his page notes. So far, donors have contributed more than $137,600.

The group Stop AAPI Hate reported that since last March, there have been nearly 3,800 reports of anti-Asian incidents reported across the country – though many more likely have gone unreported, they said. Anti-Asian rhetoric, fueled by Donald Trump and the far right’s insistence on using offensive, stigmatizing language to describe the coronavirus, has helped provoke violence, advocates said

In the Bay Area, several reports of attacks on Asian elders in San Francisco and Oakland have shaken the community. Earlier this year, an 84-year-old immigrant from Thailand, Vicha Ratanapakdee, was killed in San Francisco after being shoved to the ground. This week, Pak Ho, a 75-year-old man from Hong Kong died in Oakland after being assaulted and robbed.

Xie’s grandson Chen shared that the family was overwhelmed by the support they received. And Chen shared a message from Xie, translated from Cantonese: “She hopes the younger generation of Asian Americans can all stand up for one another, and hope they can stick up for the elderly.”