An East Dallas Gambling Queen's Big Payoff - Dallas Observer
On a weekday afternoon in mid-June, Minh Tran guides a late-model Infiniti through Northeast Dallas, checking in on his old haunts. Tran is a slim but sturdy 62-year-old with wispy, jet black hair framing a round face. His morning workouts — a tightly packed hour-and-a-half of swimming, running, pull ups (palms in and palms out), crunches, more running and sauna — keep him visibly fit. That energy propelled him through an unlikely seven-year stint in law enforcement. He was on the tail end of a long and comparatively lucrative career in the tech industry when the 9/11 terrorist attacks persuaded him to trade in his $90,000-per-year job as the Houston-based vice president of a computer software firm for the... Tran, 49 then, was too old for his hometown Houston Police Department, which had an age limit of 35 for recruits. recruiters were more interested in how many pull ups he could do. He went on to finish second in a class of 37 recruits on his physical fitness test. His fellow cadets, most 25 years younger, jokingly called him "Grandpa Tran" as he blew past them on long-distance runs. That energy never flagged during his seven years as a cop. Source: www.dallasobserver.com
