Kim, who was not quite 3 years old when the children fled Saigon, has no memories of Mr. Smith. Lam (age 10), Lan (12) and Hoa (15) remember he was attached to the US government in some way but wore civilian clothes; surely, he must have had powerful connections to get five children onto a commercial plane as South Vietnam was collapsing.

One person who was in Saigon in the waning days of the war says we might be looking for a Jim Smith who ran a Honolulu-based company called Southeast Asia Computer Associates. "He lived in a very nice home on Diamond Head and had a sailing yacht in Ala Moana Harbor." The manager of the firm's Saigon office was Nick or George Gramatikis (unsure of spelling), and the company also opened a small office in Hong Kong. "Jim was in Saigon often during this period and socialized with many top officials," our friend says. "I'm pretty sure George Jacobsen, the Deputy Ambassador for Field Operations, knew him, but George was older and might well be dead now. A much younger person who might have known him is Ken Moorefield. Ken was the Ambassador's aide, and later became a Commercial Attaché in South America. No clue where he is now. "

The person who knew that Jim Smith recalls that he was 50-60 years old in the early-to-mid 1970s, but he was unable to definitively say the face in our photos belonged to the same man.

Another person has suggested the man we're looking for was a USAID officer named James Thomas Smith Jr., who also may have been a Vietnamese language instructor at the Foreign Service Institute. This person gave us the name of another teacher at the Vietnam Training Center, George Cosgrove, and suggested he might have known Mr. Smith. But we have been unable to find Mr. Cosgrove, who was born January 7, 1937, in California and went to Laos after Vietnam.

According to an entry in the 1974 "stud book" of State Department officers, this Smith had been a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army before retiring and joining USAID. He worked "upcountry" in Vietnam (including Nha Trang) from 1965 to '74, when he transferred to Saigon. The book says he was born 5/6/26 in Kansas, meaning he would have been 49 when Saigon was evacuated -- perhaps a bit too young to be our Smith, although combat could have aged his face beyond his years. The person who knew this Smith says he must have joined the Army late in World War II to have gotten his 20 years; he retired in 1965.

We mention these names and details in the hopes they might jog someone's memory. With the fog of war, the passage of decades and a name like Jim Smith -- not to mention possible ties to the intelligence community -- we realize we might never find the man who changed our family's lives forever. And given his age at the time, it's highly unlikely he's still with us.

But if you read this site and might know anything at all about the man it's dedicated to -- or know where we might find his family -- we would be grateful for your help or ideas. As you've seen from the story links on this site, we've already been blessed by miraculous reunions with family we never thought we'd see again. In searching for our hero Mr. Smith, we're hoping for another miracle.