Jul 3, 2026 By Katherine Mansfield 5 min read

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final story in a monthlong series of profiles of the people who live and work in Washington, Greene and Fayette counties, in celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Myndi Tran recently returned from a cross-country roadtrip.

It wasn’t the first time Tran had hopped in the car in Phoenix, Arizona, and driven eastward until she hit Washington, Pa.

“I’ve done many road trips across the U.S.,” said Tran, 26. “I think I’ve been to 13 countries. I just like exploring the city and exploring the country, and really, just exploring in general is probably the best thing I know how to do. I just go on adventures.”

She has seen a good deal of the world, but one of Tran’s most meaningful adventures was a trip to Vietnam. Last year, Tran and her mother spent time eating local food, touring museums and riding motorcycles in and around Ho Chi Min City and Saigon. The trip was particularly meaningful because it wasn’t a vacation. It was a return.

“My mother is actually a Vietnam War refugee,” said Tran. “We went last year for a couple weeks, visiting family – I haven’t seen them since I was, like, 13, so probably 12 years ago. It was a lot of fun. It felt welcoming. It’s still home. This is where a lot of my family is from, extended family is from, so it’s really nice to see them again.”

While overseas, Tran visited the Venerable Thich Quang Duc Monument, which depicts a Buddhist monk sitting peacefully amongst flames.

The statue is a memorial to the monk who died by self-immolation in 1963, whose likeness was made world-famous by photographer Malcolm Browne’s photograph of the death event.

“It became one of the most renowned photos of the century,” Tran said. “The people still there today, even 60 years later, still cry, and they put their food, and always clean off the statue, and provide flowers like every single day, and bring incense for him. So even 60 years later, he is still renowned in that area.”

The memorial is, Tran said, the most impactful place she’s visited.

Following her visit to Vietnam, Tran returned to Washington, where she’s putting down roots. Tran was born in Phoenix, moved with her mother to Bridgeport, West Virginia, when she was 10, and in 2018 the two relocated to Little Washington, which served as Tran’s home base during her collegiate years (she graduated in 2022 from West Virginia Wesleyan with a bachelor’s degree in biology and a minor in ecology and environmental science), and is the place she now lives and cooks (she especially loves making Asian food like Vietnamese pho and Thai curries), and, of course, explores.

Her favorite way to immerse herself in a community: geocaching.

“It’s, like, trying to find little treasure chests, basically, using GPS coordinates,” said Tran. “It actually started as a way for me to get out of the house, because I was just not doing well at the time. It gave me an incentive to just be somewhere.”

Over time, she said, she roped college friends into geocaching, which “became something that we all did together after we were done studying. I’ve kept up with it. It forces me out into the community.”

Geocaching’s led Tran to her favorite hangout, a series of trails along the water near Reservoirs 3 and 4 in Washington, and to her job as park secretary for Washington Park, which she landed after calling the park office regarding a proposed geocache location.

“Working here has, like, really changed the course of my life,” she said.

Tran delights in putting on events like Spark in the Park – “We’re in the business of curating memories for people for years to come. I really, really, deeply enjoy doing that for people,” she said – and helping create a third space for the greater community.

“I wish there were more spaces that are kind of like ‘third places’ for people. In this day and age, a lot of people have school, or they have their job, or they have their house, but there’s not really too many places now where you can just come as a community to just hang out. Especially since COVID … I think people became a lot more lonely and a lot more isolated. The park provides that third space,” she said.

In the week leading up to the Fourth of July, Tran worked extra hard in record-breaking heat to decorate Washington Park in red, white, and blue, and prepared to welcome the wider community for a knockout celebration of our nation’s 250th year.

“I am first-generation Asian-American. My parents – they fled from the Vietnam War. It is a different upbringing than I think most people who live around this area,” said Tran. “There’s a lot of pressure: You’re not living for just your own dreams, like the American-made dream, right? It’s not individualistic, it’s much more collectivistic. You’re living for your parents as well, and the sacrifices that they have made getting you here and providing you the life that they could never have. Life brings different opportunities every single day. I’m just grateful to be here. I’m really proud to be here, given those opportunities.”