Emily Huynh has lived in Seattle her entire life. The high school senior and her sophomore brother, Brandon, don't know anything else.
Their parents are a different story. English is not the first language for father Minh. In fact, it's not even his second language. His family immigrated from China to Vietnam, where he grew up learning the native language while also speaking Cantonese at home.
He immigrated to Seattle in 1995 and spent most of that time driving commercial vehicles. Recently he's been looking for a new job; however, his most recent application didn't go so well.
"Oh, I was outraged," said daughter Emily.
She's talking about the email from an Everett company's human resources department seemingly mocking her father's English skills; it read:
"Let me tell you now, if you no speak English, I will send you home."
"I took a picture of it because I wanted to tell my friends, oh like, this happened to my dad. And I just decided to post on Twitter to let the community know," she said.
She didn't know just how big that "community" would get.
"The first night it was around Seattle area. When I woke up it was national," said Huynh.
Three days later, that tweet has nearly 50,000 likes and 23,000 shares. The man who sent the email was fired the next day.
"When he got fired, I was happy," she said.
Company owner Keven Bus emailed both Emily and her father Tuesday night letting them know he'd taken swift action, and profusely apologized. His message read in part:
"The manner in which Mr. ----- communicated with you was highly inappropriate and following our investigation, he is no longer an employee with us. Thank you for bringing this to our attention and I hope you will accept my sincere apology."
You can read his email to KING 5 here:
KING 5 has chosen not to name the employee out of respect for the Huynh family. They feel justice has been served and believe publicly bashing the former employee for his ignorance serves no purpose. They've accepted his written apology in which he pleaded for forgiveness.
"I think we got what we want. We just want more people to know that this actually happens," she said.
If there's an upside, the public response has been powerful, filled with words of encouragement, even several job offers for Emily's father.