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Promise kept: The journey of Dr. Stefan Bean · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:00
  Informed dissent, the intersection of health care and politics with Dr.
• 0:05
  Jeff Barke, board certified primary care physician, and Dr.
• 0:10
  Mark McDonald, board certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist.
• 0:15
  Welcome everybody to Informed Descent.
• 0:17
  I'm flying solo without my co-host Mark, and it is an honor to welcome Dr.
• 0:22
  Stefan Bean.
• 0:23
  Thank you for joining.
• 0:25
  Thank you, Dr.
• 0:26
  Barkey.
• 0:28
  Ah, can't complain.
• 0:29
  So for everybody who's listening, you may not know who Dr.
• 0:33
  Bean is.
• 0:34
  Uh currently he holds the position as the elected superintendent for the county department of education in Orange, Orange County, Orange County Department of Education.
• 0:47
  And uh running for re-election, which is awesome.
• 0:52
  Are so far you're unopposed, is that right?
• 0:54
  Yeah, that's that's accurate, unopposed.
• 0:56
  I love it.
• 0:57
  That's the best way to run.
• 1:00
  So I've known Stefan for a while because uh he served as a board member for the Orange County Classical Academy, a a charter school here in the city of Orange that I co-founded with another guy, Mark Booker, and we were honored to have you for a short period before you moved on to uh bigger and better things.
• 1:23
  So, Stefan, you recently wrote a book, and that's really what I want to talk to you about.
• 1:27
  It's an incredible book called Lifted to Lead, how a paraplegic orphan rose from the streets of Saigon to become a transformational American leader.
• 1:41
  All true.
• 1:42
  Now I've I've heard you verbally tell this story multiple times, and now I've read the book, which is incredible.
• 1:50
  It's as much a love story as it is a transformational story of what happened to you as an abandoned orphan in Vietnam.
• 2:00
  And uh the love story is the part that really touched my heart.
• 2:04
  And I had forgotten some things that you had told me about your, of course, long relationship with your wife Janet, who passed a few years ago from cancer and uh and your kids and so forth.
• 2:16
  Yeah, brought brought back some memories because you attended USC and uh were in a fraternity and some of the shenanigans and you were part of the Trojan Knights, which I was as well.
• 2:28
  And oh, you were?
• 2:29
  I didn't know that.
• 2:30
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:31
  It was a lot of cool, it's a lot of fun.
• 2:33
  And I'm sure you attended many football games and all the craziness of of being a Trojan on the campus.
• 2:38
  Yep.
• 2:39
  So, Stefan, why'd you write this book?
• 2:43
  You know, I wrote this book to uh remind certainly anybody who has challenges that they can overcome and be lifted through those challenges, as we all have stories and face many challenges in our life, and it was more to inspire people uh to lift individuals, which would then lift communities, right?
• 3:05
  And and that's how I got to where I am is by people just truly lifting in my life.
• 3:12
  When did you decide that you wanted to write this book?
• 3:14
  Well, you know, I've been telling this this book uh as in keynotes and as a story for probably you know two decades now, and I was always asked when when you when is the book coming out, and I always say, well, I don't have time.
• 3:28
  And so uh when I got into this role as the Orange County uh superintendent of schools, I thought, well, now better than ever to uh get get my story on paper so that we can uh inspire more people.
• 3:43
  And so yeah, we started this process actually about a year ago.
• 3:46
  Yeah, you and you have a co-writer, Kathy Nash.
• 3:50
  Yeah.
• 3:51
  How did you connect with Kathy?
• 3:53
  Well, it's it's interesting because I I interviewed lots of different uh writers, and uh then I found Kathy through uh LinkedIn, and so I interviewed her, of course, and because she was a person of faith and and aligned in faith and uh was retired school former school leader, uh, knew about education, and she had a lot of times a lot of time on her hands to be able to write.
• 4:20
  I knew she was a perfect fit.
• 4:21
  So our values aligned, and um the rhythm that we got into writing the book was was really uh pretty I would recommend it to anybody that wants to write a book and doesn't quite have time to get it on paper, you know.
• 4:35
  Is to get a get a helper that can help you do that.
• 4:38
  Yeah, yeah.
• 4:39
  Um so this book came out.
• 4:41
  What has been the feedback so far that you've received from it?
• 4:44
  I mean, um we've gotten just amazing incredible feedback from people saying that it touched their lives, it really made them think about their own perspective and their own life and that they could overcome anything.
• 4:57
  Uh people said this just a must read.
• 5:00
  Uh they they are uh surprised and halfway the book, as you mentioned, Jeff, that you know, it turns into a love story, and they think that was just remarkable, and that people of all different kinds of uh experiences and backgrounds, including four year uh fourth fourth graders have read the book and said that they've been touched by it because they see a lot of themselves in it as well, right?
• 5:21
  Because it really reaches anybody uh that that certainly lives life, and so just it's been incredible.
• 5:28
  I think I've been more encouraged by the feedback than um I you know I could even have imagined.
• 5:34
  Oh, for sure.
• 5:35
  So the book again is called Lifted to Lead, how a paraplegic orphan rose from the streets of Saigon to become a transformational American leader, and of course, it's available on Amazon.
• 5:46
  Uh, you have a website too, if they want to learn more about you and connect with you.
• 5:49
  What's that?
• 5:50
  Yeah, I have uh two websites.
• 5:52
  I have uh one is lifted to lead, they'll tell more about the book, and then I have another, which is Dr.
• 5:57
  Bean OC uh dot com.
• 6:01
  Okay, and that that tells a little bit a lot about me and who I am as a leader.
• 6:06
  Uh, but yeah, lifted to lead.com and then Dr.
• 6:09
  Bean, which is DR Bean O C dot com.
• 6:13
  There's a lot of heartbreak in this book, too.
• 6:16
  Yeah.
• 6:17
  Well, a lot of heartbreaks, man.
• 6:19
  From uh, you know, losing, you know, when uh came over from coming over from Vietnam.
• 6:25
  I was then put into a foster home and then later adopted by the beans, and and in there one of the the first heartbreaks that I had was seeing um, they had over a hundred foster kids come and go in their home.
• 6:38
  And I remember one baby Arthur came at six months old, and he had to have a shunt from his brain to drain the brain fluid every day because his parents had hit his head against the wall so so often that he has swollen brain.
• 6:52
  And so at the age of when he was two, I was coming down the stairs, and there was uh Judy, my mother holding the lifeless body of baby Arthur because he had succumbed to those brain damages.
• 7:05
  So that at an early age, I must have probably only been like eight years old to see my baby brother pass away because of that.
• 7:12
  Just many of those types of heartbreaks through through the story.
• 7:16
  But the story is also great because it has for every heartbreak, it has victories as well, right?
• 7:22
  And so as just humans living this life, we have moments of uh valleys and moments of peak.
• 7:29
  That's what this book truly signifies.
• 7:31
  So this book is far more than just an autobiography, although it is that it's also a leadership book.
• 7:37
  Yeah, yeah.
• 7:38
  And each and each chapter you end with leadership insight, lifted insight, leadership reflection.
• 7:45
  So it also could be used just as a leadership book as well.
• 7:48
  Yeah, you know, I just gave a keynote um at a uh or um Keller Williams, big uh real estate firm.
• 7:56
  Yeah, and uh as I shared my uh story, I also shared this leadership framework that I I've learned through my life and through my three decades of leading.
• 8:05
  And it's a simple acronym of lifted.
• 8:08
  So we we we listen and learn, and then we uh inspire potential in other people.
• 8:14
  We foster authenticity, meaning if we're leaders, true leaders are one that are authentic with their people, and then we uh transform through hope any kind through any kinds of situations.
• 8:26
  We can we can have hope to transform it, and then empower others and develop others, and so that simple lifted uh leadership framework is about others, it's about leaders, not uh not being the one to climb the ladder, but rather hold the ladder so that we can support others being lifted up that ladder.
• 8:48
  Absolutely, and you were you describe it in chapter one that you were literally lifted from the ashes.
• 8:55
  Yes.
• 8:56
  Your your mom, your biologic mom, literally just abandoned you on the street.
• 9:03
  Yeah, you know, uh Jeff, I uh contracted polio in Vietnam at two, and that left me paralyzed from the waist down and severe scoliosis.
• 9:12
  And as you can imagine during the Vietnam War, that'd be very difficult to care for a paraplegic two-year-old.
• 9:18
  So she litter literally abandoned me on the streets of Saigon and and then an orphanage took me in.
• 9:24
  That was pretty common in that day.
• 9:26
  Yeah, yeah, it really was.
• 9:28
  There were at least uh that that was that was the central motivation for Operation Baby Lift was that there were over 3,000 uh Vietnamese refugees and orphans that were orphaned because of the war, and so they were airlifted to different parts of the world to be placed in foster homes and adopted, and so I was one of those three thousand.
• 9:50
  How many orphans in your orphanage were uh were injured or polio victims or had disabilities?
• 9:58
  As I remember, because I can remember.
• 10:00
  You know, remember uh parts of it.
• 10:03
  Uh I didn't didn't remember anybody else that um was had a disability like mine.
• 10:11
  Um that certainly they were orphaned from the war, but even my adoptive parents, the beans said that you know, uh the adoption agency would send these pictures and and they sent me uh they sent them my picture, and then when they came to pick me up at the airport, they didn't know that I was actually paralyzed because the picture didn't really show that.
• 10:31
  So it was uh pretty interesting.
• 10:33
  But yeah, I as I can recall uh in that orphanage in that village, I was the only one that really was uh paralyzed.
• 10:43
  And you lived you lived in this orphanage for two years, yeah.
• 10:46
  From four, yeah, from uh age two to four, and then Operation Baby Lift uh was executed actually uh 51 years ago to uh almost the date, April 6, um 1975.
• 11:00
  And I know you're a man of deep faith, and there is an argument that it was either luck or fate or or divine intervention that uh you got on the wrong plane when you were actually transported from Vietnam ultimately to the United States.
• 11:16
  Tell us about that.
• 11:18
  Yeah, you know, the day April 6th was so chaotic that the orphanage staff and military were scrambling to get these babies on these planes, and it was so chaotic that they had put my records and my braces on one plane and and then mistakenly put me on another.
• 11:33
  Well, as divine intervention would have it, um I I was placed on a second plane out, and the first plane took off in a crash.
• 11:41
  So over one 93 orphans died on that day on that crash, over 150 people.
• 11:46
  Uh, and then the plane that I got on made it safely to the United States, and and I truly do believe is certainly divine intervention because or through the grace of God, because as you read the story, you're just gonna see too many things that would just be too too coincidental, right?
• 12:06
  Um, even just even just uh bringing me to a uh a country like ours in which anybody can have that opportunity to rise with really good work ethic and and trying hard and striving, and that's that's where I landed in the United States to be able to do that.
• 12:25
  And here I am.
• 12:25
  I can't even believe it.
• 12:26
  Here I am as the only the 12th county superintendent of schools since 1889.
• 12:32
  And so sitting in this seat as a superintendent should tell you that uh yes, I certainly had uh God certainly had a hand in my life all throughout.
• 12:43
  You could also be a very bitter, withdrawn, nasty man as a result of you went of what you went through.
• 12:50
  Absolutely.
• 12:50
  You know, I've uh you know, I've been uh I've hung around a lot of people with disabilities, and many of them are bitter because of the circumstance that that led to their disability.
• 13:00
  Um so you're absolutely right.
• 13:02
  And I think that um through the love of my foster parents and then my adoptive parents, and through people around me, like mentors, like you, even you know, Jeff, I didn't even think about honestly, I didn't even think about um uh this position until you mentioned it right in one of our board meetings, and that was that was a trigger.
• 13:21
  And so it really is about how you allow others to um support you and be okay with that, and that's that's what I did all my whole life, and because of others, I was lifted to this incredible job that I'm in right now.
• 13:37
  Your adoptive parents um initially foster and then adoptive parents had a hundred uh fosters come through their home.
• 13:47
  Why why did they do that?
• 13:49
  Good question.
• 13:50
  Um, Judy, my my uh adopted mother.
• 13:53
  She always wanted and desired to have a large family, so they had two of their own kids, and then when uh the doctors told her she wouldn't be able to have any more, uh, she really wanted to start to adopt.
• 14:05
  And before she adopted, they wanted to try out foster care.
• 14:09
  And my mom has such a big heart for the most vulnerable.
• 14:12
  They took in foster babies and foster kids, and many of them though had disabilities like myself or were abused, and so these weren't normal typical foster kids that would come into a home.
• 14:24
  And she just loved that, she fell in love with that, and and dad uh wanted a big family too.
• 14:29
  So both of them just had the heart for taking care of kids, in which we say, you know, we say the most vulnerable, most vulnerable are our kids in our in our community.
• 14:39
  That's really incredible because not only is it overwhelmingly time consuming, but it's also very, very expensive to take care of kids and foster kids.
• 14:49
  And I'm sure it play it it plays a more an emotional toll as well.
• 14:54
  Having kids come to your house, you fall in love with them, and then they're adopted out.
• 14:58
  Oh, yeah.
• 14:59
  I yeah, I described that in the story.
• 15:01
  I was there was one uh baby in particular who came, I think just as a newborn, stayed with us only a few weeks, and when she left, that hit me hard for some reason because you get attached is such a beautiful, you know, God's creation, and then and then they have to be moved on.
• 15:17
  So we went through a lot of that, you know, heartbreak up and down, just kids coming in, we get attached to them and then them leaving, and well, you know, the beans actually adopted 10 of those foster kids, including myself.
• 15:29
  So there were 12 kids in that family.
• 15:32
  Incredible uh experience growing up.
• 15:35
  Total of 12.
• 15:36
  So you've got 11 brothers and sisters.
• 15:38
  Yes, I do, and you're in touch with all of them.
• 15:41
  I'm in touch with most of them.
• 15:43
  Um Jasmine is uh in a group home because she has uh cerebulsy, uh, two autistic brothers, they're a group home as well.
• 15:51
  I don't talk to them as much as I do the others.
• 15:55
  And you've got a big family yourself.
• 15:58
  Yeah, I've got four beautiful kids, man.
• 16:00
  I mean, uh, you know, it's funny that you know, I uh I share this in the story or in the book, but my parents told me, and I heard the doctors tell me that hey, Brace Stefan, he's not gonna be able to have kids.
• 16:12
  And then but but you know, sometimes sorry, sorry, doc, but sometimes doctors are wrong, right?
• 16:18
  So between uh 2002 and 2010, uh had four beautiful kids, Janet and I did.
• 16:25
  Yeah, that's wonderful.
• 16:27
  Yeah.
• 16:28
  Um, at the end of chapter one, uh, here is your lifted lesson.
• 16:34
  Listen and learn.
• 16:36
  Leadership begins with listening by listening deeply and learning continuously.
• 16:41
  Leaders not only honor the stories of others, but also transform challenges into opportunities for growth, resilience, and leadership.
• 16:50
  Yeah, it's hard to listen.
• 16:55
  It is it is, but I guess I think the best leaders are those that really do.
• 17:01
  I mean, you know, this you've probably known uh a wise older person who when you walk in that room and they're just sitting there silently and observing you and listening to you, you know they're learning a lot.
• 17:13
  And those are the people that um to learn a lot because they're willing to listen.
• 17:19
  It's very clear.
• 17:20
  I mean, what is one of the uh old proverbs, quick be quick to uh quick to listen and slow to speak, right?
• 17:27
  Yeah, so I think for many people it's it's it's a skill that requires development, it's not always natural.
• 17:36
  Um you actually uh bring up a very good point is that you actually have to be active listeners, and there are actually strategies and skills that you have to go through to be able to do that.
• 17:50
  It's one thing just to listen and but not really listen.
• 17:53
  You could just be quiet and not really listen to something, but it's another thing to paraphrase what the person said, or to summarize what the person said, or to just purely listen and not respond, those are all really uh applicable ways to listen.
• 18:10
  We all tend to listen with the intent of then speaking, yeah, as opposed to listening to understand what the other person is saying.
• 18:18
  Exactly right, and that's probably why we have such a polarizing country right now, right?
• 18:23
  I mean, we got one party that's willing to have good conversations, and you got another party that just doesn't um that refuses.
• 18:31
  And so we have this.
• 18:32
  Well, I'll just say that you you have bad listeners on both sides for sure.
• 18:36
  Um, and I think we just need to really sit down and and begin to speak and listen.
• 18:40
  And I think that's what the count the country was founded on civil debate, really respectful debate, and part of debating is listening to the other side of the debate.
• 18:51
  Yeah, tell us a little bit about what your job is as the superintendent of schools for the uh Orange County Department of Education.
• 19:01
  What is that?
• 19:02
  What do you do?
• 19:03
  Yeah, so as the uh superintendent, um I oversee uh and support uh 28 school districts and and then over 40 charter schools.
• 19:14
  So basically an ed Ed code, California Ed Code is the county superintendent, provide support and services and oversees all local education agencies, and so local education education agencies in Orange County are the 28 districts and over 40 charters.
• 19:29
  So what we do here though is more than just oversee, we support, meaning that we align community resources across Orange County, whether it's nonprofit or it's um public service or whatever it is, to then the needs of districts, and we make that connection for them.
• 19:46
  So it's much different than when I was a superintendent la.
• 19:49
  I was only I was responsible for our schools and our students and the system.
• 19:55
  Uh, in this role as a county superintendent, yes, you're responsible for the system, but you're also responsible.
• 20:00
  Responsible to align systems, different systems across the county to the districts.
• 20:05
  And so it's it's been quite eye-opening.
• 20:07
  I love it because there's so many people in our community that really want to do the work of supporting our students.
• 20:14
  In LA, you were superintendent of a charter school of a very large charter school district, right?
• 20:19
  Yeah, that's correct.
• 20:20
  Yep.
• 20:20
  Yeah.
• 20:21
  Yep, aspire public schools.
• 20:23
  And so you you were very familiar about what charter schools are all about.
• 20:28
  And I know you as a superintendent, and of course, the county board of education are very supportive of charter schools in Orange County.
• 20:37
  Yep, that's correct.
• 20:38
  I uh half of my career was in traditional public schools as a teacher and principal, and then had uh half the other half of the career was uh support or where was leading charter organizations.
• 20:51
  Um and then, of course, in this role, it's supporting both, right?
• 20:55
  And the bottom line that is is that we need to be able to provide an education, really viable uh options for families and students because one size fits all doesn't fit all.
• 21:09
  And so there are there are many students that learn uh better in a different setting that they wouldn't be getting at a traditional district or wouldn't be getting at a private school, and so yes, uh it's it's it's not that we're we're certainly pro-chartter, but really it's more we are pro-school choice, meaning we want families and students to have the choice of what best fits the learning need of their child.
• 21:37
  You also are responsible for education for kids that are incarcerated.
• 21:41
  That's right.
• 21:42
  So um, you know, as a county superintendent, we are responsible for them uh to educate the most vulnerable directly.
• 21:50
  So those are students that either um don't do well at traditional districts or they get expelled or they kick get kicked out.
• 21:58
  So that's our alternative education students, students in high school that need to finish their high school degree but couldn't.
• 22:05
  Then it also includes foster youth and includes students with disabilities that are moderately moderately to severely disabled, and then it includes our incarcerated youth.
• 22:15
  And one of my most favorite things to do as an Orange County superintendent is to go and visit them monthly.
• 22:22
  I have lunch with the uh incarcerated boys there, and we play uh cribbage old school game, and uh it's great to just actually play cribbage or games with these kids and listen to their lives, listen to their aspiration, and be reminded that yes, they absolutely need to suffer the consequences that you know for their really poor decisions.
• 22:45
  Um, but be uh but outside of that, they're normal kids really aspiring, really wanting to do things and understand their mistake, right?
• 22:55
  And that's why these boys are just incredible.
• 22:58
  Um it's just an incredible time that I have with them.
• 23:02
  How many kids right now are under that umbrella of incarcerated that you're responsible for educating them?
• 23:08
  Uh that the number fluctuates, but um uh it's a little over 150.
• 23:14
  It used to be much more um until uh you know, policies change at a state level, and so the numbers have de decreased.
• 23:23
  Uh many of if I'll put it to this way if they weren't in juvenile hall, they would probably be in one of our access schools, right?
• 23:31
  Right.
• 23:31
  So overall, and in terms of access and our uh incarcerated youth, we have over about 2500 students.
• 23:39
  And there are teachers that actually go to the jails or various places that these kids are and hold hold classes and so forth.
• 23:46
  Yeah, yeah.
• 23:46
  We actually have a school in uh the juvenile hall center in Orange, and so classrooms are there, and our teachers go there daily to be, you know, to teach us if it was any any school they would go to.
• 24:00
  How do you choose those teachers?
• 24:02
  Do they volunteer to do that?
• 24:04
  Um they go through you know, they go through their regular hiring process.
• 24:08
  Uh, they have to have a teacher credential, but yes, they have to have a a different and unique and special heart for servicing and providing instruction for uh some some oftentimes difficult and challenging students that have that have challenged the school system for sure, and you can relate to them because you grew up in uh in a very difficult situation.
• 24:33
  Yeah, you know, it's great.
• 24:35
  That's a great uh insight because I I tell people I was quoting OC Register saying, look, I got their back because I was an English learner, I was a foster youth child.
• 24:45
  I was adopted, you know, now I'm a single father and a you know, running a single family or single parent family.
• 24:52
  And so I understand and can empathize for many of our students.
• 24:57
  Oh, not to mention I was disabled student as well, right?
• 25:00
  So I can understand and empathize for our kids that we serve directly.
• 25:03
  For sure.
• 25:04
  Stefan, we're gonna take a quick break, and then when we come back, I want to hear more about your childhood because you weren't coddled and uh and just simply patted on the back and made and had somebody else do things for you.
• 25:20
  Yeah, you grew up pretty rough and required a level of resilience.
• 25:24
  So we'll we'll be back in just a moment.
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  All right.
• 28:00
  He is the elected uh county superintendent of schools for the Orange County Department of Education.
• 28:08
  Uh, he wrote a book that is awesome.
• 28:11
  It's not just an autobiography, but it's a really good leadership book.
• 28:15
  Um, and it's called Lifted to Lead, How a Paraplegic Orphan Rose from the Streets of Saigon to become a transformational American leader available on Amazon.
• 28:25
  Um what an incredible story.
• 28:29
  And you were airlifted out of uh Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War.
• 28:36
  Um under the great airlift, and by a miracle, you ended up in the bean family home where they adopted where they fostered literally hundreds of people, ultimately adopted 12.
• 28:50
  And you were, you know, a recovering polio person, paralyzed from the waist down, multiple recurrent, very painful surgeries.
• 29:00
  And your mom and dad didn't coddle you, they didn't carry you around, they didn't uh pretend like you needed help.
• 29:07
  They forced you to help yourself, didn't they?
• 29:10
  Oh, you know, absolutely.
• 29:11
  I I chuckle because I remember uh being in the home after a year, we moved to a larger home, a two-story home, and uh we moved in, and my parents first thing they did is they came up to me and said, Stefan, your bedroom's upstairs, so figure out how you're gonna get up there.
• 29:29
  So that was just that yeah, that was the epitome of my kid of my uh my parents.
• 29:35
  I mean, they they did not coddle me at all.
• 29:37
  So of course I figured out how to get upstairs.
• 29:39
  I would, I mean, I have to, right.
• 29:41
  Um, they made me, you know, I had crutches and leg braces, so they made me strap those on every day and walk to school, literally four or five blocks, uh, which was actually as you as I reflect back, those are really great parenting strategies because it helped me build physical endurance.
• 30:00
  As well as mental resilience.
• 30:02
  Um I say, I don't know if I I should share that uh one funny.
• 30:06
  Should I share that one funny Yahtzee story?
• 30:08
  Oh, please do.
• 30:09
  Yeah.
• 30:09
  Okay, so I mean, um, so I I every day would have to walk to school back and forth, and one day I earned enough, I don't know, classroom bucks or whatever to win a yachtsee game.
• 30:22
  I was so excited, I try to put this Yahtzee game in my backpack, but it was too big.
• 30:28
  So just like any you know, boy would do.
• 30:31
  I I dropped my the game and I decide I'm gonna kick it with my crutch.
• 30:36
  I kick it 10 feet, then I'd hop 10 feet, kick it again, pop 10 feet, and and meanwhile, we got mothers driving by saying, Do you need help, young man?
• 30:46
  And I would look at each of them and say, No, I got it.
• 30:49
  So I literally kicked this game box five blocks to home, and then when I got home, as you can imagine, the Yahtzee box was completely distressed, shredded, shredded, and so I didn't know if it was my ego or if it was my resilience that won that day.
• 31:06
  What was it?
• 31:07
  Why didn't you allow other people to help you?
• 31:09
  Uh, you know, oh, because you know, and I say this in the book, um, because I didn't really want I didn't want others to think that I was weak or incapable, and that certainly my parents just embedded in me that you can overcome whatever you challenges you face.
• 31:28
  So that was the challenge of the moment, right?
• 31:30
  Is to get this game box hole.
• 31:32
  And so I didn't want and by asking others for help at that time meant that maybe possibly they would see a weakness in me, or I would see a weakness in myself.
• 31:44
  Well, you weren't asking, they were offering that that that's right.
• 31:47
  That's right.
• 31:47
  They were offering, and you know, it's interesting because a lot of people offer to help me uh public, you know, publicly today, even just getting in my car or or or uh opening a door or whatnot.
• 31:59
  And I think that's the right thing to do is offer absolutely the right thing to do is offer.
• 32:04
  Um I am very gracious now and allow people to do certain things because that makes them feel like they've they've supported and helped back then when you're you know, uh a six-year-old kid or seven-year-old kid, you know, now you're not gonna have you're not gonna receive help.
• 32:20
  So I said no to all those moms.
• 32:23
  No, I've seen it myself.
• 32:24
  You would come to board meetings and maybe we were both pulling in at the same time or leaving at the same time, and uh you're in a wheelchair, but you drive independently, you have a car that's set up for you with hand controls and the like.
• 32:40
  Um, and I remember I'd say, Hey, can I can I help you?
• 32:42
  And go, no, I got it, man.
• 32:44
  Got it.
• 32:44
  Or you'd say, Yeah, sure, grab my backpack, but no, I got it.
• 32:47
  Yeah, and I would watch you and you'd open the door and you'd scoot in, you'd fold up your wheelchair, you'd put it in the car by yourself, and you were like, I got no, I'm good, I got it.
• 32:56
  I don't, I don't thank you, but no, I don't I don't need your help.
• 32:59
  I'm good.
• 33:00
  Yeah, you know, I think the other I I was thinking the other day.
• 33:03
  As I get older though, I'm finding I need more help.
• 33:07
  Well, I I appreciate I appreciate your independence.
• 33:09
  I think it really says something about you, yeah.
• 33:13
  However, I do think allowing people to help you, maybe even if you can do it yourself is good for them, not just good for you.
• 33:22
  Yeah, and that's why I said that I I give more grace to people because it is good for them, it's good for them just to um see and and begin to have sympathy or or understand, not not sympathy, but understand what it would take to get a wheelchair into the car, right?
• 33:40
  So I think that's important.
• 33:41
  You know, my parents instilled that and still in that uh growing up.
• 33:45
  She they made me do chores.
• 33:47
  They didn't care that I had they said you're folding all the laundry, and mind you, there's 14 people in the family have to fall clothes for, so you do the laundry, you know, get up and downstairs yourself, and and all these things, and I think that's important for any child to go through is is this could also be a parenting book.
• 34:08
  Yeah, it certainly could be, maybe a part two.
• 34:11
  No, I know I mean I know I got two grown kids, you've met them.
• 34:14
  Um I I think uh I think I failed in many ways not doing more of what your parents did to you and make them do things on their own as opposed to doing things for them, yeah.
• 34:25
  So yeah, part two, I think could be a parenting book.
• 34:28
  Here's the end of chapter two.
• 34:30
  Lifted value, inspire, inspire potential, inspire potential leaders, inspire when they call out gifts others do not yet see within themselves.
• 34:41
  Inspiration awakens people to unique strengths that they may have overlooked, and that happened with you, yeah.
• 34:49
  Yeah, uh, Mr.
• 34:50
  Geisinger.
• 34:51
  So, you know, Jeff, I didn't do very well in in school from kindergarten to fifth grade, probably because I got pulled out a lot through those surgeries and and therapy.
• 35:00
  Um, so I didn't do very well.
• 35:02
  And then my sixth grade teacher, Mr.
• 35:04
  Geisinger, uh noticed this this strength in me.
• 35:07
  And he says, Stefan, look, I don't care that you're in a wheelchair, I don't care that you're just learning English.
• 35:12
  What I do notice is that you have this gift, and it's the gift of gab.
• 35:16
  And he was right because I love to talk to my friends.
• 35:20
  So he says, So I'm gonna use that gift of gab for the good.
• 35:23
  And so he made me um give only oral presentations that whole year, and as you can imagine, that really built my oral skills and it built my confidence in who I was, and I learned quite a bit, by the way.
• 35:37
  When you teach somebody something, you learn more than when you hear it.
• 35:41
  I learned a lot, and um, what he did was he inspired that gift of communication within me that I didn't even know I had.
• 35:50
  Incredible, yeah.
• 35:53
  One one person, one teacher at a moment in time.
• 35:57
  Yeah, and who knew who knew because as I reflect back in my 40 something years since I met him, that uh that gift of communication has really uh catapulted me to the kinds of careers that I'm doing now.
• 36:12
  Well, I hope the teachers that you interact with hear a bit of that story, how one teacher can literally transform the life of a student in their classroom, and they may not even realize it.
• 36:25
  Exactly, yeah, pretty incredible.
• 36:28
  June 8th, 1975.
• 36:30
  Uh, you were baptized.
• 36:32
  Tell us about that.
• 36:33
  I actually remember that day.
• 36:35
  Um, yeah, you know, uh, we my parents were attending, I think an episcopal church at the time, and uh I was only five or six, and um adopted into the church uh through baptism.
• 36:51
  Um I don't think that that really hit me spiritually until probably about grade three when I went through vacation bible school, and then then I understood, okay, I understand what baptism was and how it connects with our faith.
• 37:07
  Absolutely.
• 37:09
  And do you still attend church?
• 37:11
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 37:12
  We uh as a family for 20 years, 20 years we attended Bethany and Long Beach, and then just recently we moved since the pandemic, we actually moved churches to um uh compass church here in Huntington Beach.
• 37:27
  Sure, sure.
• 37:28
  Yeah, awesome.
• 37:30
  So ultimately you found your way attending USC.
• 37:33
  Yeah, and there's a lot of heartache and love that went on there.
• 37:41
  So the the one story you tell is this gal named Shannon who you had a crush on, and yeah, might have been your first kiss in the in the library in stacks.
• 37:51
  Yeah, that's right.
• 37:52
  And then she could remember stacks, you remember stacks by the way.
• 37:54
  Yeah, I bet they don't exist anymore.
• 37:56
  It's all computerized, right?
• 37:57
  That's true.
• 37:58
  Yeah, so the library's a giant library on campus, it's quite beautiful.
• 38:03
  It's like a traditional library you'd see on an Ivy League school.
• 38:07
  Kids go to study and goof off and order pizza and do all kinds of stuff, and it was obviously filled with books.
• 38:14
  I haven't been I haven't been back on campus or to the library in years.
• 38:17
  Maybe they still have books or just computers, I don't know.
• 38:20
  But you were heartbroken, she blew you off.
• 38:23
  What happened?
• 38:23
  Uh well, you so you have to set the stage, you know.
• 38:26
  I was heartbroken uh just from uh puppy love, uh, several times before college, and then when I get to college, I I actually have what I think is the first uh real uh physical relationship with with this girl where you know she did give me we we kissed it in the stacks of Dohini Library, and so we uh went out for about half a year, and next thing I see is her uh walking on campus with another uh gentleman.
• 38:55
  So that totally just crushed crushed my life at that time.
• 39:01
  I'm sure I every guy can relate to that, yeah, for sure.
• 39:05
  And as I'm reading it, I'm going, Oh, I feel your pain being miserably depressed over it and trying to carry on and stay busy and changing up your routine and so forth.
• 39:17
  Yeah, but it was good because you know, I um well that was happening that uh after I was trying to recover from from that girl, Shannon.
• 39:26
  I um started uh striking a friendship with with another girl at college, and and I and even though uh I met so I met Janet and we learned about each other, we had connected, and then but uh the thing is I asked her out three times in college, and she said no all three times.
• 39:43
  She was she played hard to get for a long time, didn't she?
• 39:46
  She really did, man.
• 39:47
  She really did.
• 39:48
  So you met her uh because you worked together with her at the um the lion athletics center.
• 39:54
  Yeah, yeah.
• 39:55
  And you re-rack weights from knuckleheads that didn't put their weight.
• 40:00
  Back and worked in there.
• 40:02
  Strong.
• 40:03
  She was a strong girl, man.
• 40:04
  I mean, she's this petite Portuguese woman, and you wouldn't think of you wouldn't think she was strong, but she lifted those weights like they were nothing and put racked them in.
• 40:13
  But she was also strong in character, so we uh really connected and had lots of great conversations.
• 40:20
  Um she challenged me and I challenged her.
• 40:24
  Um, she was a year behind you.
• 40:26
  How did how were you able to rack those weights in a wheelchair?
• 40:29
  That's a great question.
• 40:30
  I could lift up those 45 pound racks.
• 40:33
  I just left it up like I'm you know, you're curling it and put it on my lap, and then go over and set it in those racks, and um that's funny that they would assign me of all things of all things racking the weights, but you know, you probably they probably couldn't get away with it today, fear of liability.
• 40:50
  But yeah, I didn't mind it at all.
• 40:52
  I picked up those dumbbells and you know, put them back on the rack.
• 40:55
  I think what happened is your mom called your supervisor and said that you they should just give you the worst job and make you make you just suffer for a while, yeah.
• 41:05
  Probably so you and Janet worked together and you developed a friendship long before a romance, yeah.
• 41:13
  And the first time you asked her out, she said, uh nah hard pass, dude.
• 41:17
  Take a no, thank you.
• 41:21
  Yeah, she she did that actually.
• 41:22
  She did that three uh times, and I and I asked her um eventually.
• 41:26
  I said, Why did you uh say no all three times?
• 41:29
  And she said, because I was at USC uh for two things.
• 41:33
  One, I was there to get a college degree, earn my college degree as the first in her family.
• 41:39
  Uh, who came from the Azores, which is the islands off Portugal, and they were far, you know, they're farmers, and so um, she worked her way to USC, so she wanted to get that degree, and the other was to get to know and love uh God more.
• 41:54
  And I thought, man, and so she said, Stephanie, I had no room for you in that scenario.
• 42:02
  I think only a woman could have such discipline to make that intellectual decision, huh?
• 42:08
  Well, that's that's Janet for sure.
• 42:11
  She was always very intentional.
• 42:13
  Uh, so she pursued her uh her education at USC, and then she's pursued her relationship in the church and with God, and until those two were solid, she didn't have room for you.
• 42:24
  Yep, I think that's actually a very mature way of handling that.
• 42:27
  I think if more people uh had those priorities, right?
• 42:31
  We'd have better relationships.
• 42:33
  And maybe it's God or luck or fate, but uh in the interim, you didn't have another relationship, you didn't fall in love with somebody else and go in another direction.
• 42:43
  No, uh, you you hung in there and she remained in your heart and in your mind.
• 42:47
  Yeah, that's right.
• 42:48
  And so it was uh, I think four or five years later when a mutual friend had a wedding, and and he put us at the same table, Janet and I.
• 42:57
  Now, whether he did that on purpose or not, I have yet to yet to find out, but put us at the same table, and um, sure enough, you know, we rekindled the chemistry we had in in college.
• 43:10
  So, what what message is there in there for your for her patience and discipline and your faith in just hanging in there, knowing that God would work it out in the end, his timing, not your timing.
• 43:22
  Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 43:23
  It's his timing, not my timing, and it's also a good lesson for guys to never give up and pursue pursue that right woman, right?
• 43:31
  She was definitely the right woman, and you never know what happens, but yeah, that night she uh she gave me the first kiss and and we started dating.
• 43:39
  Love it.
• 43:41
  The rest is history, rest is history, as they say.
• 43:45
  So gotta read the book to find out what happens.
• 43:47
  Oh, yeah, exactly.
• 43:48
  So after you graduated USC, you struggled a bit to find a job.
• 43:53
  Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I went uh to multiple dozens of interviews, and I'll get uh comments like, you know, this job requires traveling, right?
• 44:03
  And I'm all yes, what's your point, right?
• 44:06
  I can I can travel.
• 44:07
  Um, or this job would require you to lift lots of materials and books into the car.
• 44:15
  So, you know, even back then you had these biases against peace with people with disability in the job search.
• 44:22
  So yeah, it took a heck of a time, and then I finally did end up getting into an executive program at Robinson's May.
• 44:30
  Not sure if you remember that department store, but sure, of course.
• 44:33
  Yeah, so got in that uh the the buyer's pathway, so went in as an assistant buyer, and you know, in retail, and it ruined by the way, retail ruined my whole holidays, so I was right.
• 44:49
  It really did, so I was ready to get out of that.
• 44:51
  And so I got out of that like three years, but at least taught you how to be a good dresser, yeah, exactly.
• 44:57
  Yeah, yeah.
• 44:58
  What happened after Robinson May?
• 45:00
  What was next?
• 45:01
  Yeah, and then I started my own software company.
• 45:04
  We did pretty good.
• 45:06
  Uh, I like to say that, and we did.
• 45:07
  We actually developed uh what called a collaborative word processor where multiple people could be in multiple rooms or parts of the the city or wherever, and they could access the same document and start typing into it.
• 45:22
  So we shopped this thing around, and everybody said, Well, the bandwidth is not gonna allow people to really make good use of this because remember back then that it was dial up, right?
• 45:32
  So you get that you know that noise, and so lo and behold, 10 years later, Google comes out with Google Doc, right?
• 45:42
  Google documents in the around 2005, 2006.
• 45:45
  So I like to say that we were the first ones to do Google documents, yeah, very cool.
• 45:53
  Is a software company still exist?
• 45:56
  Uh no, but some of the partners uh that were in it still uh um program the same software that we had we had used back then, but we we had dissolved it.
• 46:07
  Uh you know, when Janet and I started dating, um I had I was at a crossroads whether I was going to continue with something that's not didn't really give back to me.
• 46:17
  Um, or joined Janet because she had to go she had to move back up to Fresno to be with her mom who's struggling through cancer.
• 46:25
  So um I said, you know what?
• 46:27
  Time for a career change.
• 46:28
  So I went up there and then began to follow my dad's footsteps as being a teacher in education.
• 46:36
  Yeah, awesome.
• 46:37
  And now, and now look at you as a leader in uh Orange County education.
• 46:42
  Yeah, crazy.
• 46:43
  Pretty incredible.
• 46:45
  Crazy how that works.
• 46:46
  That's the up, you know, that's only in America.
• 46:49
  I say for sure.
• 46:52
  You lost your wife a few years back, and I know I was uh uh we were friendly during that time, and I heard and uh got to support you a little bit through that journey.
• 47:04
  Uh, but there were lessons to be learned even through that painful time as well.
• 47:09
  Oh, absolutely.
• 47:11
  You know, um, I I talked about in the book how she was struggling with migraine headaches, and it took it took an optometrist to to see in her eye, and then we later discovered that it was breast cancer that metastasized the brain.
• 47:26
  Uh the lesson that we learned through that whole thing was two things.
• 47:31
  One is is that we taught our kids to have hope that you could overcome, and when you have realistic hope, you can transform a really bad situation.
• 47:43
  And so we had to live that.
• 47:45
  We lived that because our storm was Janet being diagnosed in 2014.
• 47:50
  So one of the lessons I learned through that is that with real hope, hope grounded in faith, hope grounded in um the reality of the situation that that we could even turn the darkest storm of our life into a positive one.
• 48:05
  So Jenna was through her whole battle with cancer, she loved on people.
• 48:10
  She it was incredible.
• 48:12
  There's some stories I don't think I shared in the book, but one was just she was getting chemo or radiation therapy, and we traveled to Los Angeles and one time we got there, and uh there was a hospital staff yelling at a homeless person who had made a mess of the bathroom.
• 48:28
  And Jan immediately got up out of her seat as she was waiting for for the radiation therapy.
• 48:34
  She went up to the the hospital staff worker and said, Don't you ever talk to one of God's creatures that way?
• 48:45
  Wow.
• 48:46
  So then she went in and took care of the homeless guy, but then cleaned up the bathroom.
• 48:55
  Wow.
• 48:57
  What a what a model, even in her plight and her suffering, she was looking to take care of other people.
• 49:03
  Yeah.
• 49:04
  Just amazing.
• 49:05
  What a uh what a model, not just for you, but for your kids.
• 49:10
  Yeah, and that's what the kids learn through it all too.
• 49:13
  You can no matter what sufferings you may have, you can still do good and see the good in the situation.
• 49:20
  Yeah, 100%.
• 49:22
  There's a uh passage in the book where you talk about some of Janet's last discussions with you, and um I'm reading from that chapter before she lost her ability to fully speak.
• 49:38
  She looked at me, took my hand in hers and whispered her last intelligible words, babe.
• 49:49
  I love you.
• 49:50
  Promise to take care of the kids.
• 49:52
  That was one of her last words to you, and that really inspired you.
• 49:58
  You say in the book.
• 50:00
  Not just take care of your kids, of course.
• 50:04
  She meant that in part, but take care of all kids that you're able to.
• 50:08
  Amen.
• 50:10
  Exactly right.
• 50:11
  And so I so I do that every day with the support of our community to take care of the 450,000 students we have across Orange County.
• 50:24
  What's the most challenging thing about your job?
• 50:28
  Uh, you know, it's interesting.
• 50:30
  All of us, I would say that a normal adult would want the best for kids.
• 50:37
  And so the most challenging thing is that we know that if we want the best for our students, then why do we um why do we make it political?
• 50:50
  Right?
• 50:50
  Why are there people in the education field that want to turn education into politics?
• 50:59
  And so I say it's very difficult to, you know, naturally, my job or any job like this, you have to have organizational politics and be very savvy at that, of course, which means that there are certain limited resources and you get online resources and people.
• 51:16
  That's politics.
• 51:16
  I get it.
• 51:18
  But when you insert a certain political agenda that that uh harms or sacrifices the care of kids, that makes it very difficult.
• 51:32
  And so I find myself to bring people together to say, let's just we are educators, not politicians.
• 51:42
  Let's just stick with educating our kids.
• 51:44
  And so I think that's one of the most challenging parts of this job is to uh align people who may have this common ground, commonality, but have different agendas.
• 51:56
  So taking care of the kids, supporting the school districts, uh, supporting the teachers, that's the easy part.
• 52:02
  Dealing with different political agendas is the difficult part.
• 52:07
  Yes, sir.
• 52:08
  That's right.
• 52:09
  And because the county board and the county superintendent are charter friendly, um, you often are uh viewed through a political lens.
• 52:21
  Oh, for sure.
• 52:22
  You know, I'm I'm I'm glad you brought that up.
• 52:24
  I'm here to do what's best for our kids and the people that I've been working with and meeting, they see that genuineness in me.
• 52:33
  And so when people want to turn it into, oh well, he's there because he's a puppet of this, or he's politically aligned with this.
• 52:42
  That's nonsense.
• 52:43
  You know, sit down with me, and you'll see that this job is about caring for our 450,000 students, and it's not caring for your politics.
• 52:52
  And I'm not, you know, I I tried to try to message that where I go, and it's it's um being received well because we have to, we are educating the future of our country.
• 53:08
  100% workforce, future leaders, and if we can't do that well, God knows what happens to our our nation.
• 53:17
  What role, Stefan, has faith played in your journey from the orphanages of Saigon to being an elected uh superintendent for the county district of education.
• 53:32
  Which is center part, right?
• 53:33
  It's a central part of the story.
• 53:35
  Um as people read the story, it's it's not in your face, but it's a very you can obviously see that there's divine intervention from missing that first airplane crash to surviving those surgeries that I had.
• 53:52
  And and one of them was the third most dangerous surgery you could have, and that's uh a spinal cord fusion, right?
• 53:58
  They say I guess brain, heart, um, and then spinal cord.
• 54:02
  And so those all take faith and even especially to get over it.
• 54:09
  I mean, well, that's my spinal cord surgery.
• 54:11
  I was in a cast from neck to ankle for nine months.
• 54:16
  Wow.
• 54:16
  And so uh laying there, I mean, for nine months, uh, but what got me through it was I had faith that where God showed me that what it would be like the day that cast came off, right?
• 54:31
  So I always had faith and hope for that next day after something after something challenging was over.
• 54:38
  And so all of these things, I mean, whether we all have different uh belief systems and faith, but at the end of the day, if we have if we have hold steady to that, whatever faith it is and values that we have, that will get us over these challenges, and so that's uh it plays a center central role in my life as a as a um you know, a student raised with disability as a uh uh uh employee as uh superintendent and as a husband and a father, you know, it has to, you have to ground yourself in some sort of values.
• 55:16
  There's a wonderful picture in your book of you and a full-body cast uh laying on the floor opening up Christmas presents, yeah.
• 55:25
  Yeah, that's that was that was that surgery, man.
• 55:28
  10 years old, just crazy, crazy.
• 55:31
  Yeah, we're talking with Dr.
• 55:32
  Stefan Bean.
• 55:33
  He wrote a wonderful book called Lifted the Lead, How a Paraplegic Orphan Rose From the Streets of Saigon to become a transformational American leader.
• 55:42
  Um, this is less to me of an autobiography and more of a leadership book and even a parenting book.
• 55:48
  If you're a new parent, learning tough how tough love uh builds resilience in your kids.
• 55:55
  Too much too many of us parents are soft on our kids, and I don't think we do them a very good service.
• 56:01
  Yeah.
• 56:02
  Stefan, it's been an honor.
• 56:04
  Uh I am blessed to call you as a friend, and uh that we could talk for hours about your book and your life story, but thank you so much for coming on informed dissent.
• 56:14
  Thank you, Jeff, for reading the book and have me uh on your show.
• 56:18
  I'm honored and humbled to share the story with others.
• 56:22
  Awesome.
• 56:23
  Thank you.
• 56:23
  Take care.
• 56:24
  Thanks, man.
• 56:30
  You've been listening to Informed Descent with Dr.
• 56:33
  Jeff Barkey, board certified primary care physician, and Dr.
• 56:37
  Mark McDonald, board certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist.
• 56:43
  Informed dissent, the intersection of health care and politics.