(NEXSTAR) — It is one of the most tragic stories from the final days of the Vietnam War. A cargo plane loaded with young Vietnamese orphans crashed in a rice field just outside Saigon 50 years ago. Jason Kayser was supposed to be on that plane—until he was pulled off moments before takeoff. It was a life-saving fresh start. Now, he’s returning the favor.
Rise Coffee Studio in Ho Chi Minh City is not just about waking up to caffeine. It’s about second chances.
“It has a couple of meanings,” said An Nguyen, who runs the shop. “So the first meaning is that, you know, every day you rise up. But another meaning is because our program is to help orphans, like moving forward, going up, you know, going up and being lifted up.”
Nguyen said each cup served helps Vietnamese orphans build a better future.
It’s all because of Vietnamese orphan, Jason Kayser’s past. Now living near Charlotte, North Carolina, Kayser dreamed up Rise Coffee Studio after getting a second chance half a century ago.
He never knew his birth parents. Just a baby, he was taken to an orphanage in Saigon, cared for by Catholic nuns as thousands tried to flee the war zone.
“My name there in the orphanage was Lysander, because we all looked the same so they named us after Shakespearean play characters, so I was Lysander,” Kayser said.
“These are pictures that they actually sent over to my American parents before I came to say, ‘Hey, you really do have a son. Here he is and he’s doing all right,’” Kayser explained. “And I always knew that my life had some meaning to it,” he said.
He was scheduled to be evacuated on the first flight of Operation Babylift in April 1975—a Herculean humanitarian effort to get 3,000 Vietnamese orphans out of the war zone and into loving homes around the world. But that plane crashed in a rice paddy just outside Saigon, killing 138 people, including 78 children.
Kayser survived because medical staff pulled him off the flight at the last moment—he was too sick to fly.
“It is the sort of somewhat survivor syndrome. Why did I survive and not everybody else?” he said. “And what I found out was just, we’re all like miracle babies that all have an individual story. And we got over here in very different circumstances.”
Not long ago, Kayser began searching for a way to help orphans—just as he’d been helped. He and his brother started businesses around the world that employ orphans to give them new opportunities.
“And then last year we started a coffee shop in Vietnam,” he said.
“So great products, purposeful impact,” Nguyen added.
A second chance—thanks to someone who got his own second chance so many years ago.
“It’s just a good feeling to know that my life is kind of full circle,” Kayser said.