Thuan Le Elston has been operations editor for the Opinion section since 2005. Previously, she was a news copy editor for USA TODAY and a news reporter for the Los Angeles Times. She was born in South Vietnam in 1966 and left a week before Saigon fell in 1975. She received a B.A. in journalism from Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. One of her few non-journalism jobs was a speaking role in Oliver Stone's movie "Heaven and Earth." She's married with four children. Her historical fiction novel, "Rendezvous at the Altar: From Vietnam to Virginia," published in September 2021.