Stefanie Loh - Who Is Chloe Kim?

Chloe Kim was born in Torrance, California, on Easter Sunday, April 23, 2000. She is a first-generation Korean American, which means that her father, Jong Jin Kim, and her mother, Boran Yun Kim, were both born outside the United States but moved to America before they had Chloe. Jong Jin moved from South Korea to the United States in 1982, carrying a Korean-English dictionary and $800 in cash. He picked Los Angeles as his destination because that was the only direct flight he could afford. He thought of America as his dream country and a land of opportunity.

With his $800, Jong Jin bought an inexpensive car and paid $150 for a weeklong stay at a motel. Then he found work as a dishwasher at a burger restaurant and also as a cashier at a store. He practiced English with his customers at work as he saved up money so he could go to college. Soon, Jong Jin was studying engineering at El Camino College by day while working at night as a machinery operator, to put himself through school. He worked as an engineer after college and met his first wife. They had two daughters togetherTracy and Ericabut the marriage did not last. After they divorced, Jong Jin moved to Switzerland, where his older sister lived. Thats where he met Chloes mom, Boran, when she was in town on a business trip. They fell in love, got married in 1998, and moved to California, where they had Chloe.

When Chloe was only four years old, Jong Jin took her snowboarding for the first time. They drove to Mountain High, a small ski resort in the San Gabriel Mountains, about two hours from their house. Father and daughter learned to snowboard together, but Chloe showed more natural talent than her dad. By the time she was five, Chloe was hitting small jumps and rails on a board that Jong Jin had bought online for twenty-five dollars. The little girl in the pink jacket and purple snowboarding pants rode fearlessly, always bouncing up eagerly to try again after every spill.

Even though he didnt know very much about snowboarding in the beginning, Jong Jin encouraged Chloes love for her new hobby and tried to come up with new ways to help her improve. Chloes dad was her first coach. I think his engineering background helped a lot, Chloe has said. Thinking about what you need to do to spin and all that stuff. When she first started, Chloe rode most naturally with her right foot forward on her snowboard. But whenever possible, Jong Jin encouraged his daughter to ride switch, which meant leading with her left leg forward. It felt strange at first, and it wasnt easy, but Jong Jin persisted, believing that it would help Chloe develop both sides of her body and make it easier for her to do difficult tricks. Today, after years of practice, Chloe is one of the best switch riders in the snowboarding world.

To keep Chloe safe and make falling on snow hurt less, Jong Jin cut up his wifes old yoga mats and stuffed them into his daughters snowboarding pants as cushioning. When Jong Jin heard that waxed snowboards would go faster, he melted candles onto the bottom of Chloes snowboard, hoping that would give her a little boost. (As it turns out, candle wax and snowboard wax arent quite the same thingthe board cracked after Chloes first run!)

When Chloe was six years old, she joined the Mountain High snowboarding team, mostly because it made snowboarding lessons a little cheaper. By the end of her first season, she was invited to compete at the United States of America Snowboard and Freeski Association (USASA) nationals in Lake Tahoe, on the border of California and Nevada.