Struggling to survive on the $3.10 minimum wage of 1978 America, I never envied or blamed anyone for my state in life. I understood the work ethic and the fact that everybody had to start at the bottom and climb the ladder of success if they worked hard. I came here for the opportunities America offered. I wished to study and earn my Ph.D., raise a family, and be free under capitalism. I did not want my whole life to be watched by the dreaded communist police state and to stand in line for hours every day for our food. I was tired of poverty, fear, misery, and exploitation. I never really talked about my former life publicly because I had a healthy dose of fear of all the communist agents that had infiltrated the west. I knew they were everywhere, hiding in plain sight in American society. Every knock on the door threw me into a panic – I was reliving the dreaded 2 a.m. knock on our apartment door in Romania.

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