Alumni & Student Stories

Celebrity Leaves Limelight to Work in Substance Abuse

Victor Vander Beng Hui Loo
B.A. Liberal Studies, 2004

Imagine having fame and success as an entertainer and choosing to leave it behind for a career of relative obscurity in social work. For most of his life, Victor Vander Beng Hui Loo was a model, singer and television actor in Thailand, Hong Kong, China and Singapore. He concedes he decided to do a little volunteer work purely as a marketing strategy for his celebrity career.

He chose a hospice setting, where most every weekend he’d play chess, chit-chat and sometimes feed those with terminal illnesses. "One day, I was feeding an elderly woman crackers and she turned to me and said, 'I can’t give you anything for your kindness, but I can give you happiness.'" His voice becomes soft as he describes this pivotal moment.

"I realized I enjoyed volunteer work more than show business," he says. He began convincing fashion designers and others in the limelight to contribute to struggling charities. He won a prestigious Millennium Face Award for being one of the most memorable faces in Singapore.  Beng Hui Loo was offered a contract with a cable television network in Singapore to host a reality show where families traded lifestyles in another culture for a week. He turned it down.

"I had been performing a long time and wanted to do something different. It’s fun to be in the limelight, but if you do it for 10 years, it can be kind of exhausting," he says. A native of Singapore, Beng Hui Loo had a bachelor’s degree from a university there. But he still had lots to learn before he switched careers.

Embarking on a New Journey

"You may have the heart to do something, but you also have to have the experience," he says. He elected to move to the United States before the millennium to continue with his life journey. He took classes at Seattle Central Community College that led to certification from the National Association of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselors and a license to be a Chemical Dependency Professional.

"We take a holistic approach, much like Antioch." – Victor Vander Beng Hui Loo He says he then was attracted to Antioch Seattle’s B.A. in Liberal Studies (completion program) for its prior learning credits. Because he was professionally trained as both a classical and pop singer, he chose to focus on balancing the two singing styles for his prior learning demonstration and paper.

Beng Hui Loo credits Antioch B.A. Core Faculty Member Mary Lou Finley with convincing him that throughout life he’d utilize his training as a performer. "Now when I give a presentation, I always try to make it entertaining," he says with a grin.

Helping Others Overcome Addiction

Today, Beng Hui Loo is Substance Abuse Treatment Program supervisor for Asian Counseling and Referral Service in Seattle’s International District. His work in the area of Asian substance abuse has won both state and local awards, most notably the 2004 King County Mental Health and Substance Abuse Exemplary Service Award.

"You don’t hear about substance abuse in the Asian population because we’re hard working, family oriented, passive and quiet, but the truth is there is alcohol and cocaine abuse among adults and alcohol, marijuana and meth abuse among teens. Asians with chemical dependency and mental illness experience three times the discrimination that the mainstream population does,” he says.

The words "treatment" and "chemical dependency" carry stigma and shame for the Asian community." We incorporate acupuncture so clients can come here for acupuncture and say they come here for classes rather than treatment," he says.

While Beng Hui Loo supervises a staff of about eight counselors and interns, he still provides direct service to clients. "If I take away direct service, I’ll lose touch and just be an administrator."

He may be a long way from his modeling and TV career in Singapore, yet Beng Hui Loo’s proud, new profession is helping others overcome their addictions.

"I believe humility is the cornerstone. I remain humble and modest," he says. 

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