Looking at Pham Thu Dung in the newly taken photo, many people were startled: Dung has many features similar to… Angelina Jolie, from her angular face to her slightly thick lips. These two women have been and are an important part of Pax Thien’s life, one gave 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡 to him and the other is raising him in a dream of paradise.

Fateful night

9:00 p.m. on November 29, 2004, Tu Du hospital received a pregnant woman showing signs of impending labor. The pregnant woman was rushed to the obstetrics department and half an hour later, despite being premature, a 2.1 kg 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦 boy was 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧. The pregnant woman’s name was Pham Thu Dung. The 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦 was named Quang Sang, taking the mother’s last name.

After giving 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡, Dung decided not to look at the 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦’s face, which was fateful in the life of Pham Quang Sang or Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt later on. Because only 2 days later, Dung escaped from the hospital, still owing hospital fees because she had no money.

Pham Quang Sang, the name came from the mother’s sudden thought, related to the short story Ivory Comb by writer Nguyen Quang Sang that Dung was very moved by when reading as a 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥. A few days after 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡, Pham Quang Sang was taken to Tam Binh Orphanage.

Before 9pm, Pham Thu Dung was still high on drugs, she had severe stomach pain but did not think she was in labor. To relieve the pain, Dung asked her friend to give her another dose, but it still did not subside and she decided to go to the hospital. Pham Thu Dung’s life before and after the Pham Quang Sang incident were both related to a cruel thread: Drugs.

A fallen life

Dung still remembers the days of partying at some famous dance clubs in Saigon nearly 15 years ago. At the age of 18, when going to My Man or Thai Son dance clubs, almost everyone knew Dung’s name, she was extremely rowdy. Nightclubs all day and all night, drinking, drugs, fighting like it was a daily meal, settling scores with gangsters… Whenever she saw someone in shock, Dung would “hit her up” right away, beating them without thinking, beating them to the point that when the security guard saw her face, he had to beg her, “Don’t do anything anymore tonight.”

The Brangelina family is always together

Her comrades are all famous, gangsters in District 4. Dung is famous for getting into fights for money, which means that after the fight, the next day she takes the victim to a coffee shop on Le Thanh Ton Street to “punish” them. The whole group of young partygoers, all around their 20s, do not go home, but spend money to rent a house on Le Van Sy Street, gather there during the day, and go their separate ways at night. Some go to work at a nightclub, some go out and almost all of them get “white”. Many of Dung’s friends have died from drug shock, some have died from HIV.

At 19, she started to get addicted to white goods. Dung said that at that time, her friends kept giving her white goods but she refused, and then they continued to give them, saying “try it and your life will be different, in the end, your life will be different”. At that age, Thu Dung was quite impulsive, if anyone provoked her, she would do it right away.

At that time, Dung’s family was well-off thanks to her father being a captain of an ocean-going ship. But Dung had become notorious and could not get any money back. To get money (because at this time Dung’s parents decided to “financially embargo”), Dung pawned her motorbike and sent a paper home to redeem it. Dung remembered that one time her father came back from a business trip but could not find the cabinet key, so he asked her to go to the market to find her mother and bring the key back. Dung found her mother and took the key, but before bringing it back, she went to a shop to make a “custom” key. Therefore, later on, she had money quite easily, sometimes taking money, sometimes cutting gold to sell. Or there were times when she borrowed money, when she could not pay, the creditor would come to the house and her mother had to pay, and it became a habit. Dung recalled that she had probably wasted half of her parents’ fortune and later when her parents’ business failed, the family fell into real difficulty.

Pham Thu Dung at that time was very different from Pham Thu Dung at the age of 19 or earlier. She was the most beloved 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 in the family. When she was young, she was a good student, studying in Au Duong Lan primary and secondary school (District 8), Le Quy Don high school. In grade 12, she got 4 subjects with more than 38 points. For 9 years, Dung was an excellent student. In grade 10, she crashed her bicycle and broke her leg, so her father immediately bought her an Astrea, at that time only rich 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren were spoiled like that. Perhaps because of such happiness, she became spoiled early. Dung started to fall into a bad situation when she was in grade 11. At that time, her father was always away on business, leaving only her mother at home. Dung often lied to her mother that she was going to school, but in fact she was going out to play, from one dance hall to another, arriving home at exactly 10:30 pm. Some people saw her and reported it to her family, but no one in Dung’s family believed her. Just like that, after graduating, Dung “exploded”…

Pax Thien with his mother Angelina Jolie

Dung still remembers, on March 25, 1998, when her mother took her to Binh Trieu Center for drug addiction treatment (that year Dung was 21 years old), her father just found out the truth. That evening, he sat on a chair in the living room, and cried. Later, he went to the altar to light incense for his grandfather, and stood up and cried again. At that time, Dung promised herself that she would quit, she told her father “Okay, dad, take me to rehab, I can’t live like this anymore”. But after 3 months, when she came back, she relapsed, and after rehab, she relapsed. Dung can’t remember how many times she went to rehab, after rehab, she relapsed. Now, thinking back, Dung says that her life had no destination, it was her, she ruined her future.

Dung said she idolized her father. It was her father who guided her siblings in the family, but Dung was the 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 who went astray. If she had gone in the right direction, her life could have been different. And if her first love had been smooth, her fate might have been different. Her first love broke up, pushing the young girl into a feeling of revenge on life. Dung gathered at dance clubs and used white goods as a way to forget. The men she went to were only for money, not for love.

Later, when she met Quang Sang’s biological father, it was partly also for money. At that time, Dung was a garment worker at a company in Lai Thieu (Binh Duong), this man was the team leader of her team, and had a wife and 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren. It seemed that there was a conflict between the two, so in 2004 Dung decided to break up and quit her job, at that time she did not know she was pregnant. And then the fetus grew, the 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦’s father did not know and Dung also decided not to tell. She also intended to have an abortion, but because she loved the innocent 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦, she decided to keep it.

At that time, Dung had quit drugs, but when she found out she was pregnant, she felt bored, her life was deadlocked, no love, unemployed, so she got involved again. As the 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦 grew in her womb, Dung did not think about going to the doctor, she just needed money to support her addiction. “At that time, I was a very different person, irresponsible to myself and my 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥, there was no excuse,” Dung recalled.

After the night of November 29, 2004

After that night, Dung’s friend informed her sister and two days later, the two sisters escaped from the hospital. “I couldn’t raise my 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 like that. I thought if I raised her, she wouldn’t have a future, so maybe this would give her a better future. When I made her 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡 certificate, I don’t know why I left her real name and her home address, because if I had done it differently, no one would have known… Thinking back now, at that moment, there was something that urged me to tell the truth, to do something sincere, even if it was very small, for my 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥. At that time, I couldn’t think of anything else, I just thought I would leave her in the hospital and not know about her anymore. But my heart ached so much.”

Dung’s family was very poor at that time, the family moved from District 8 to Thu Duc to live. They brought Dung home but no one knew she had just given 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡, her sister only said that she had a fever and needed to go to her room to rest. Her father did not know anything, “because he is very difficult, if he knew the truth, he would be shocked”. It was only later, when the Tam Binh Center came to the house to find Dung’s father, that Dung’s father knew…

Changing life

When the foreign press group came to Dung’s house in 2007 (after which an article about her wanting her 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 back was published in the News Of The World), Dung was feverish and did not know anything. Actually, Dung did not care. She recalled the time before, on the 28th of Tet (2006), “Uncle Hao (Deputy Director of Tam Binh Center), accompanied by a person from the Women’s Union and the local police, stopped by the house to talk to my father (Dung was in the room) and they asked my father to sign the paper for the 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 (ie Pham Quang Sang). After that, I asked why my father did not let the center handle it but he had to sign, my father said that a foreign family had adopted Sang and they required full papers. At that time, my father was very happy when he heard that a foreign family adopted Sang. So was I.”

Pax Thien was 7 years old, having a relaxing summer afternoon on the beach in Malibu, California.

And it was at that time that Dung thought she had to change. In mid-2007, Dung went to Nha Trang, determined to quit. She quit at her rented house, took medicine when she was tired, and went to the beach to swim when she was even more tired. She promised herself that she had to live differently, to live in a way that “so that one day if my 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 comes back to find me, I will stand up straight and not bow my head down”.

It was not until 2009 that Pham Thu Dung learned about Pax Thien, when her grandmother passed away, she returned to Saigon and was told by her brother. “I went home and asked, and finally my parents told me everything. However, at that time, there were many articles written about me that were untrue, they said I was demanding this and that, I was very upset when I read them”.

“So if you had known about the incident at the time Angelina Jolie adopted Pax Thien, would you have asked for money or caused any trouble?” Dung replied: “If I do that, it’s like selling my 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 for the second time, it’s so cruel. I have no idea of ​​meeting Jolie to say: you have to give me this much money so I can build a life. I just want Sang to be happy, to have a good life, better than living with me, that’s all.” Dung thinks that her life is like that but Pax Thien’s happiness in the end is like compensation. “My unhappy life is because of me, I wanted to escape that vicious circle but couldn’t. It turns out that it’s the law of compensation, my 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 will be happier than me, he deserves it. If I met Jolie, I probably wouldn’t know what to say, but deep down I believe she is a wonderful woman and I thank her for everything. I read many articles saying that Jolie adopted a 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 to seek more fame, but I believe that’s not the case, Jolie adopted a 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 because of her heart. I understand that and respect Jolie very much for that. I am an irresponsible mother”.