Via the New York Times:
Since local officials announced Ms. Pham’s positive test early on Sunday, the news has resonated through circles of friends who worked with Ms. Pham or studied nursing with her at Texas Christian University, and through the Vietnamese community in Fort Worth, where she grew up. In interviews and news reports, friends have described her as a compassionate and caring nurse who loved her job, was grounded by her Catholic faith and cherished her King Charles spaniel, Bentley, named for her old neighborhood.A Dallas city spokeswoman has said that the city would care for Ms. Pham’s dog.
In photos from friends and family and her now-deactivated Facebook account, Ms. Pham is invariably smiling — posing with a friend on a trip to Boston, sitting outside at a cafe or taking a selfie while her dog nuzzles her.
“She’s able to make friends in any setting, any scenario,” Ms. Joseph said. “She has a contagious
laugh.”
The daughter of political refugees from Vietnam, she grew up in the Bentley Village subdivision of Fort Worth, in a large red-brick home that her family built in the mid-1990s, said a next-door neighbor, Jim Maness. Neighbors said that the family was exceedingly private and quiet.
Ms. Pham attended the accelerated nursing program at Texas Christian in Fort Worth, and graduated in 2010. Ashlee Mitchell said she bonded almost instantly with Ms. Pham in classes there. Not long after they met, she said, “we were best friends.”
Ms. Pham and her family were active at Our Lady of Fatima, a largely Vietnamese Roman Catholic church, said Tom Ha, the church’s education director. Because the family prizes its privacy, he said, congregants are meeting in small groups, rather than large gatherings, to pray for Ms. Pham. Christina Mykhanh Hoang, a church member, said Ms. Pham’s mother had simply asked friends “to continue to pray.”
laugh.”Consider making her, and all victims of this disease and those involved in treating the sick and finding a cure, part of your daily prayer routine.
Amen.
