Sam Meas could teach President Obama and Governor Deval Patrick a thing or two about hope. But unlike them, he hasn't written tomes about himself, which is too bad because you'd want to read his life story.

"Hope," he says, paraphrasing his favorite movie, The Shawshank Redemption, "is the only thing." Hope took him from Cambodia's killing fields - "a virtual prison" - over landmines, through "a filthy refugee camp" to America. Now the former financial advisor hopes to unseat Congresswoman Nikki Tsongas (MA-5). "I am not an establishment candidate," he tells me in the most understated of understatements.

Indeed he isn't. Born in Cambodia, sometime between 1970 and 1972, Meas isn't sure how old he is, nor does he know how many siblings he had. His birth records and his father were lost in Pol Pot's murderous reign. His family fled, to a refugee camp near the Thai border, but that, too, was overrun when the Vietnamese military invaded, separating him from his family. In the confusion, a cousin whisked him away to a Thai refugee camp, where they stayed for two weeks. His cousin left him there and returned to Cambodia, never to be heard from again.

Alone in the refugee camp, Meas lived a Dickensian existence - chopping wood, babysitting, cooking, and doing the laundry for other Cambodian refugees. He slowly learned English through UN-sponsored classes and, after convincing a customs agent that he didn't know what his own birthday was, he received permission to immigrate to the United States through Catholic Charities in Virginia...[More.]