Ha Vasko
For a Vietnamese émigré accused of robbing only Chinese people, familiarity breeds contempt.
But then Hanoi-born Ha Vasko, 68 — a slight woman whose toothpick frame vanishes into her brown drab Rikers Island jail uniform — is not your typical pickpocket.
The serial thief usually flies Delta from Melbourne, Fla., where she lives richly with her golfing American husband in a $400,000 waterfront home, to New York City’s cacophonous Chinatown with only one thing on her mind.
“I hate the Chinese. I rob them. They cheat, and they are greedy and are on welfare. I take their money to give to people who need money,” Vasko said in an exclusive jailhouse interview.
Her one-woman crime spree began last June when she lifted $500 from the fanny purse of a Chinese woman at Canal and Mulberry streets, and ended on March 21 when she jostled three victims for $350, authorities said. She was arrested four times in the nine-month period.
Vasko — who readily admits she has Chinese blood, with roots in Hong Kong and southern China — claims she burned through $60,000 her husband gave her to help strangers and friends in need. She paid off one uninsured pal’s $38,000 medical bill in Georgia.
That sum, she says, was on top of the $5,000 to $6,000 monthly allowance she gets.
Long-suffering hubby John Vasko could easily post the $124,500 bail to set her free, but she says he wants to teach her a lesson and let her stew in stir for her most recent felony arrest.
Vasko says she understands why her husband isn’t springing her.
“He’s very, very mad at me. He told me not to go,” she said of her latest larcenous trip to the Big Apple.
“He a good, good man, and he could get any woman but he sticks with me.”
“She is very charitable. She always has been,” said Vasko’s husband, who spoke to The Post after returning from his usual Friday golf game. “She has good intentions.”
Married for 41 years, the pair met in 1972 at the end of the Vietnam War. He was a civilian engineer working on military satellites, and she was working behind a Hanoi bar.
The former refugee recalls how she grew up impoverished with a single mom and a mentally ill brother.
“I was 5 years old when I saw my mother on the bed. She was crying because she was hungry. I stole an apple and then a piece of bread. The police came, and I spent two days in jail,” she said.
After they married, the Vaskos moved to tony Westport, Conn., where she ran a Sichuan Chinese restaurant for 30 years.
Ha Vasko, who went to court last week with her lawyer to set a psychiatric hearing, can’t recall what sparked her racist obsession with the Chinese and her compulsion to lift their wallets.
The diminutive mother of two with wiry black hair has likely pulled at least 100 jobs over the past several years, an NYPD source said.
“She usually uses a prop like a jacket or an umbrella to cover her hands when she dips into the pocketbooks,” the source said.
Vasko gleefully gave her own demonstration to a reporter.
“It’s easy. I go like this,” she said, arching her arm into a nosedive. “People are stupid. They usually don’t zip their handbags.”
On at least three occasions, police said, Vasko returned to her stealing grounds just minutes after walking out of Manhattan Criminal Court on prior charges of jostling, grand larceny and possession of stolen property.
She simply can’t help herself.
“It was late last year. She was with her attorney,” the police source said. “They had just left court, and she was with her lawyer in a livery car in Chinatown. She gets out of the car with the attorney. They go their separate ways, and she goes right back to work pickpocketing.”
On a return trip to New York for a court date in December, Vasko promptly walked out of Manhattan Criminal Court and to neighboring Chinatown, where she filched $50 from a woman’s purse at Bowery and Grand streets, authorities said. She then moved on to Hester Street, where she was caught lifting a man’s wallet containing eight credit cards.
Worried that she might be late to the airport and miss her plane home, she allegedly told arresting Police Officer Vincent Cheung: “I have a flight to catch. I’ll give you all the money in my wallet, which is over $1,000, or I can write you a check if you let me go.” He didn’t, and she got slapped with a bribery rap.
In January, after another court date, she returned to the scene of her crimes and was busted for jostling three women on East Broadway.
She’s been lucky so far. With her kindly, grandmotherly looks, she’s managed to get out of serious legal jams, including two shoplifting misdemeanor arrests in Melbourne, one in which she wheeled out a shopping cart of six hot-dog packs and 11 bags of buns from a Publix supermarket in October 2008.
But since the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office of Crime Strategies Unit has targeted her as a “persistent offender,” her luck might be running out. If the DA’s Office decides to prosecute the last case as a hate crime — using her statements about despising the Chinese — she could face up to four years in prison.
Additional reporting by Brad Hamilton