When my attorney sent me the article, she wrote one sentence in her email that I could not forget.
“This is a huge national story.”
I read it again.
What stopped me was not just the word huge.
It was national.
On September 2, 2026, The Associated Press and PBS FRONTLINE published their joint investigation into fraud—and what happens to the people who survive it.
The investigation interviewed 58 fraud victims across the United States, ranging in age from 32 to 90. Some had lost thousands of dollars. Others had lost millions.
I was one of them.
The story examined a question that had become deeply important to me: not only why people fall victim to fraud, but what happens afterward.
What happens after the money is gone?
What happens when victims ask for help?
What happens to a family?
What happens to the shame?
What happens when someone survives the crime but cannot find a way back to life?
I had already read the AP version and written about what those 58 victims meant to me.
I was not alone.
But later, when I saw how PBS FRONTLINE presented the story, I began to see something else.
This story was much bigger than I had understood.
And the word national reminded me of something I had once said myself.
Several years earlier, after Governor Newsom vetoed SB 278—a fraud-prevention bill we had worked hard to support—a reporter asked whether I would continue.
I answered almost without hesitation:
“If California won’t do it, we’ll take this fight nationwide. Maybe one day, even around the world.”
It sounded brave.
But after the words left my mouth, I asked myself:
Alice, who are you?
Who are you to say nationwide?
Who are you to say the world?
I was retired.
I was a mother.
A grandmother.
A woman in her seventies who had lost her life savings to a scam.
I had no national organization behind me.
No political power.
No media platform of my own.
I did not even know how an ordinary person could carry her voice beyond California.
So I did the only things I knew how to do.
I wrote.
I wrote my Chinese-language blog.
I wrote my English-language blog.
I began writing my memoir, Still Alive.
I reopened more than eight hundred pages of conversations I never wanted to see again, and page by page, I walked through them once more.
I also began making my own documentary.
If someone was willing to listen, I spoke.
If a reporter wanted to ask questions, I answered.
If I had an opportunity to walk into a legislative hearing, I walked in.
I did not feel that I was “going national.”
I knew only one thing:
I could not stop.
⸻
Two Days
There was something else I did not understand at the time.
AP photographer David Goldman spent two days with me.
Two days seemed like a long time for a news story.
He filmed me practicing tai chi.
He photographed me tending my roses.
He captured pieces of my ordinary life.
He even photographed me while I was driving.
I cooperated with everything, but I never thought much about why so much needed to be documented.
I assumed he was simply gathering photographs and footage for the story.
Only later did I begin to understand that the AP/FRONTLINE investigation was part of something larger than the article I had first read.
Then I opened the FRONTLINE website.
There was a video.
I was practicing tai chi.
I watched myself on the screen.
Slowly, I raised my hands.
I turned.
My weight shifted from one foot to the other.
My arms opened gently with my body, then returned.
One movement followed another.
I was breathing.
My body was still moving.
Then I took another step forward.
I had done these movements countless times.
There was nothing unusual about them.
But that day, as I watched myself on the screen, I suddenly remembered another moment.
In 2022, after more than $700,000 of my life savings was gone, the person who had taken it all asked me one question near the end of our long conversations:
“Are you still alive?”
That question later became the beginning of this memoir.
But now I was watching myself on the FRONTLINE screen.
I did not answer him.
I no longer needed to.
The answer was already there.
I was breathing.
I was moving.
I was practicing tai chi.
I was still tending my roses.
I was still writing.
I was still speaking.
I was still alive.
⸻
One Person—or a System
But FRONTLINE showed me more than myself.
It allowed me to look at what had happened to me from a different distance.
In 2022, all I could see was a phone.
Inside that phone was one person.
Justin.
He talked with me.
He asked about my life.
He listened to the stories of my past.
Later, he became my “teacher.”
He told me what to do next.
The first investment.
The first profit.
The next opportunity.
The next target.
The next transfer.
At the time, I had no idea how large the world on the other side of that screen really was.
All I knew was that I was talking to one person.
Only after everything collapsed did I begin asking:
Who was he?
How did he find me?
How did he know what to say to me?
Where did the money go?
Years later, the AP/FRONTLINE investigation showed me a number I had never imagined.
According to the AP/FRONTLINE investigation and blockchain analysis by TRM Labs, the scam network connected to my case received at least:
$800 million
between January 2022 and September 2024.
The first time I saw that number, I hardly knew how to comprehend it.
More than $700,000 was already a lifetime to me.
It was the savings my husband and I had accumulated through years of hard work.
Behind every dollar were years of our lives.
Work.
Family.
Children.
Retirement.
And the life we had once believed we could live out in security.
More than $700,000 had been enough to destroy my world.
But now I was looking at:
$800 million.
Suddenly, I understood that I had been standing too close.
Standing inside my own story, I could see only my own loss.
My own shame.
My own pain.
My conversations with Justin.
But as the camera slowly pulled back, I saw more than one Justin.
I saw a network.
More than $700,000 was my life savings.
$800 million was a scale I had never imagined.
And at that scale, I was far from the only one.
That was when I began to understand something I had been trying for years to put into words:
I thought I was dealing with one person.
Only later did I understand that I was dealing with a system.
⸻
A Different Kind of Next Step
During the scam, I moved forward one step at a time without being able to see the entire process.
By the time the larger picture finally appeared, I was already inside it.
After the scam, I also moved forward one step at a time.
But this time, the “next steps” were different.
They were giving something back to me.
My voice.
My choices.
My life.
I testified.
I spoke with reporters.
I wrote.
I advocated.
I continued telling my story.
And I still did not know where those next steps would eventually lead me.
⸻
“The Work Is Not Finished”
More than two years later, my lawsuit with the bank was settled. The legal case had come to an end.
The next day, I prayed.
After everything that had happened, I thought perhaps I could finally tell myself:
Enough.
You can stop now.
But as I prayed, I felt something very clearly:
The work is not finished.
Continue.
I did not know what “continue” meant.
Continue writing?
Continue speaking?
Continue advocating for legislation?
Continue making my documentary?
I did not know.
I only knew that, for me, it did not feel like an ending.
Not long afterward, PBS FRONTLINE and AP found me.
I did not go looking for them.
I did not have a plan that said:
Next step: Go national.
I certainly never imagined that, through my own efforts, I could somehow bring AP or PBS FRONTLINE to my home.
They came.
I opened the door.
And once again, I told my story.
⸻
National
That is why the words my attorney wrote affected me so deeply:
“This is a huge national story.”
National.
I had once said that word myself.
At the time, I had no idea how it could possibly become real.
Years later, I was still the same Alice.
I had not suddenly become someone powerful.
And yet, somewhere along the way, without my even knowing how to make it happen, the story had traveled farther than I had.
The woman who had once sat alone in front of her phone was now part of a national investigative story.
The loss that had once seemed as large as my entire world was now connected to a scam network that had received at least $800 million.
The person I once thought I was talking to turned out to be part of something much larger.
And my story, too, had become larger than I had understood.
Not because I had made myself bigger.
But because the camera had finally pulled back far enough for me to see.
⸻
The Story Is Still Moving Forward
Even now, the story is not over.
On September 29, PBS FRONTLINE’s documentary Scammed is scheduled to air.
I do not know what will happen after it does.
I also do not know whether the words I once spoke—“Maybe one day, even around the world”—will somehow come true in a way I could never have imagined.
I no longer need to know.
Over these years, I have slowly learned that sometimes we do not need to see the entire road before we begin walking.
Sometimes, all we know is this:
There is another step.
Years ago, after SB 278 was vetoed, I said:
“If California won’t do it, we’ll take this fight nationwide.”
Afterward, I asked myself:
Alice, who are you?
Today, I am still the same Alice.
I am still practicing tai chi.
Still tending my roses.
Still sitting at my computer, writing my story one word at a time.
But now, when I read again the words my attorney wrote to me—
“This is a huge national story.”
I no longer ask:
Alice, how could you possibly do that?
I think only of the word that came to me that day in prayer:
Continue.
And I am still continuing.
