Guam Crash Kills Young Southland Scholar-Athlete

For much of his 15 years, it seemed that nothing could stop Ben Hsu and little could slow him down.

A runner on the track team, he finished his freshman year at Diamond Bar High School with straight A’s, charging ahead toward his goal of getting to UCLA and eventually becoming a doctor.

But Ben Hsu’s sprint to success ended when he died with more than 200 others aboard the Korean Air jetliner that crashed into a Guam hillside Wednesday.

Hsu was traveling to Guam with his aunt and three cousins from Atlanta to spend a month there with his grandparents. Ben’s cousin, Grace, 11, was the only survivor among the family members.

Ben was one of two Los Angeles County residents who died in the crash, along with 8-year-old Tiffany Kang of Glendale.

An only child, Ben was eager to spend time with his cousins and a favorite aunt in Guam, his mother, Judy Chu, said. He had just finished summer school at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights, where he studied Chinese and was a teacher’s aide for an elementary school class.

“He liked children very much, they always ran up to him when we got to the temple,” his mother recalled in a telephone interview from Guam on Thursday. Chu had flown to Guam with Ben’s father, Bobby Hsu, as soon as they heard about the plane crash, and are waiting to bring the boy’s body back to Los Angeles.

At Hsi Lai, which is the largest Buddhist temple outside Asia, children at the temple’s school knew that Ben was on the plane that crashed, but they were not told that he had died. They folded 1,000 paper cranes and hundreds of paper stars, a ritual of hope for their friend’s safe return.

Angela Chang, 11, said the children thought of Ben “like a big brother. He played with us, he taught us goods and bads, he was a very good role model.” As she showed the origami cranes to a reporter, she explained that “we’re going to give these to Ben and his parents when they come back.”

Shirley Tsao, the temple school’s principal, was struggling to decide how and when to tell the children of Ben’s death. “I don’t know how to tell them, I don’t want to hurt them,” Tsao said, choking back tears.

Tsao planned to inform the children of Ben’s death late Thursday. A service was held early Wednesday morning at the temple to pray for Ben’s safety. A memorial service was planned for this morning.

In addition to studying at the temple school, Ben also was a middle-distance relay runner for the temple’s track club. He also played basketball for a team run by the Diamond Bar Chinese school.

Judy Chu volunteered as a part-time clerk at the temple office, and Ben often stopped by after school to help his mother operate her personal computer.

Ben came to Diamond Bar at age 9 with his parents from Kaoshiung, Taiwan. He mastered English in a year, and soon after became a top student.

“He knows how to work,” said his mother. Sometimes, Chu said, she worried that he was pushing himself too hard. “I tried to tell him that if he wanted to help people, there were a lot of ways. I wanted him to be a teacher,” she said.

Now, she hopes he will reach heaven, and can be reincarnated to serve others. “I want him to be a bodhisattva,” she said, referring to a person devoted to easing mankind’s suffering.