"It was scary. We were hiding all the time," said 38-year-old Lee Pao Xiong, photographed at his Maplewood home to mark the 30th anniversary of the evacuation of Laos. "There were raids and rocket attacks all the time. I can never forget it," said Xiong, recalling his experiences as a nine-year-old boy in Laos prior to his evacuation in 1975. Xiong, who currently heads the Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia College, is still startled at night when he hears loud noises or bangs.