Robert Pho always thought his son would follow in his footsteps and become a tattoo artist.
And then, Pho’s thinking went, his son eventually would help him run Skin Design Tattoo, a multi-state business known as one of the best in the trade of skin art.
Instead, it’s his oldest daughter, Reena Pho, who at 19 has relocated from the family home in Hawaii to practice her craft at the Skin Design studio at the Rodeo 39 Public Market in Stanton.
And right behind her is younger sister Reesa Pho, 14, who, for now, is practicing on fake skin (a silicon pad) and lives with her parents in Honolulu.
As for the baby in the family, 3-year-old Vanna, who knows?
What matters to the 51-year-old father of four is not what choices his children make, just that they make good ones.
He learned that lesson in the hardest of ways.
As a teenager Pho made bad choices – to carry a gun, to join a gang, to commit crimes. Those choices landed him in prison with a 14-year sentence at the age of 16.
Pho said those youthful decisions were driven by an urge to protect himself from the bullying and racist harassment he endured as an Asian immigrant in Southern California. He always fought back but he felt the sting keenly.
And, Pho said, his parents, who often argued, were strict and harsh, fueling his rebellion. They split up when he went to prison.
Pho said he’s not proud of who he was back then.
But he also doesn’t shy away from telling how his life changed when he learned to tattoo while in prison — and how his life kept changing later, through hard work and the support of his wife, Cristina. That better life has helped pave a better path for their children.
Over the past few years, Pho has been been lauded for what he’s overcome and for his talent as a tattoo artist and businessman. He’s been featured in newspaper and magazine articles, on TV news and online blogs.
He specializes in black-and-grey ink realism, creating skin art that looks like photographic portraits. But, really, he can do any style of tattoo.
Pho is so successful and in such demand that he can command a minimum of $4,000 to ink someone’s skin. He’s made as much as $350,000 for a full bodysuit.
He runs eight studios, including in Las Vegas, Nashville, and New York City, where he is working on opening a second location soon in the SoHo fashion district. His enterprise employs about 70 people, including his oldest daughter.
He hopes the trajectory of his life will inspire others to find their dream, believe in themselves and passionately pursue their goals.
Reena Pho knows she doesn’t have a backstory to match her father’s. She’s never been behind bars and never wants to. But – like father, like daughter – she’s skilled with a tattoo needle, earning anywhere from $1,000 to $12,000 a tattoo.
Her dad continues to nurture her career. And, while Reena Pho is fully licensed, she said, “I consider myself to still be an apprentice.”
Robert Pho said she already surpassed his expectations.
“It’s pretty much a dream come true to have your kids working alongside you.”
Earlier this month, the two joined tattoo artists from around the world at a convention in Ontario. Then the family spent time together in Orange County.
Reena Pho apprenticed more than a year under her dad, shadowing him in Skin Design’s Las Vegas studio. She moved to Orange County in March.
Pho sent his daughter to work at the Beach Boulevard location so she could become more independent. She’s distinguished not only by her relationship to the owner but by her strikingly long hair, which hangs down to her feet.
Her parents, she said, did not raise their children with the anger that the elder Pho said was part of his upbringing. Instead, she said, her parents have always been loving and supportive.
Who her father was as a youth is alien to her.
“I can never see him doing any of these things that he talks about,” she said during a recent chat as she waited for a late-afternoon client.
Sometimes, she added with a grin, “I think, ‘You’ve gotta be exaggerating.’”
He’s not.
Old ink, new ink
Robert Pho once memorialized the highlights of his wayward youth by inking them into his skin. That included the name of a gang he now won’t talk about because he doesn’t want to glorify them.
Years ago, he underwent the painful process of laser tattoo removal, swapping out old memories for new ones. These days, Pho’s torso, arms and legs display things he cares about, like his family.
The portraits include his parents, who fled Cambodia during the Vietnam War when Pho was 2. In 1980, after a couple of years in France, Pho, his parents, and younger sister were sponsored by relatives to emigrate to the United States.
They spent time all around Southern California, first in El Monte and then in Fontana, Ontario, Rowland Heights, and parts of the San Gabriel Valley.
In Cambodia, Pho’s father had been a professor. In this country, Pho’s father worked physical labor before saving enough to open a doughnut shop. His parents also ran a clothing factory in Los Angeles.
After Pho went to prison, and his parents split, they both chose to remarry.
Pho’s father was killed in New York City, in 2004, and Pho says he wishes he’d lived long enough to see his life after prison.
“I didn’t get to talk to him and show him how I’ve changed.”
Pho remembers vividly how unwelcome his immigrant family was made to feel. Often, he said, there were taunts from other kids and from grown-ups. They’d get kicked out of restaurants and told to go back to their own country.
The mistreatment, along with working early mornings, baking doughnuts alongside his father before school, fueled resentment in Pho.
Around the age of 12, he got caught bringing a gun to De Anza Middle School in Ontario. The gun, he said, was for protection.
“I had to. I was getting bullied.”
At Rowland Heights High School, he joined a gang. By the start of his junior year Pho was convicted of attempted murder and street terrorism.
Pho could have spent decades in prison, but the judge reduced his sentence. He served two years in the juvenile justice system, at the Youth Training School in Chino, a place so notorious for its brutality that inmates called it “Gladiator School.”
When he turned 18 Pho was transferred to an adult prison.
Hard time, in and out
“Really scared,” at first, Pho found adult prison to be more organized than Gladiator School, with self-governing rules and a population segregated itself by ethnic groups.
He learned to tattoo by watching other inmates. He fabricated a contraband machine, using a motor off a Sony Walkman radio, a needle honed from a guitar string, and ink that he created by mixing the ashes made by burning a foam cup filled with shampoo, toothpaste and baby oil.
Pho’s first tattoo was self-made; he wrote the name of his gang on his knees. He soon improved.
In prison, his skills as a tattoo artist earned him protection, which lasted for the seven years he served. Out of prison, it would take two decades before Pho’s skills earned him a following.
Art had always been a refuge. As a child, when he was punished and sent to his room, Pho escaped by drawing, penciling renderings of his comic book heroes: Captain America, Superman, Spiderman.
Once out of prison, with a criminal record and no high school diploma, escape wasn’t as easy. Pho’s employment options were limited. He earned sales commissions via door-to-door soliciting and making cold calls. He worked as a typist.
Despite those struggles he reconnected with a Filipina girl he’d known in high school and who wrote to him in prison – Cristina. They married in 1996, giving Pho an instant family with Cristina’s son from a previous relationship.
For a time, Pho was making some extra money on the side doing tattoos for people in the neighborhood. An invitation from a paroled prison buddy brought him to North Carolina to help run the original Skin Design Tattoo studio.
By the time Reena was 2, Pho owned the business outright and had relocated to Las Vegas, where she grew up.
Still, for Pho, success felt distant.
His seven-days-a-week work schedule, and the fear of debt, prompted Pho to write a series of letters for his daughter — letters he didn’t show her until she was 12.
He later shared a couple of them on Instagram, explaining that they were written as an apology “to my daughter, wife, and to myself.”
He was, he said, contemplating suicide. “I thought I was failing them.”
In one letter, addressed to “My Baby Reena,” Pho explained his distress:
“My heart feels very hurt and my soul helpless and tired. I want to be a good Dad to you so bad but I’m missing out on everything that’s most important to me right now … watching you grow!”
But he persevered. And when skin art entered the mainstream, Pho’s business took off.
Passing
Reena remembers, as a little girl, hanging out in her father’s tattoo studio. She would watch him work in a shop corner, his foot on a pedal powering the tattoo needle and music playing in the background. And she would scramble through his supplies. Then she would sit and draw.
In middle school, kids would come up to her and say things like “Your dad’s Robert Pho!”
“It was so funny. I was, like, ‘They know who my dad is.’”
As a high school freshman she realized she wanted to try her hand at tattooing. At 18, she began a began her apprenticeship.
There was a rough patch with her dad. He came down on her for not paying enough attention to all aspects of the business; she’d ignored social media.
Yes, a 50-something father had to tell his teenager daughter to spend more time online.
“Talent alone now is not enough,” Pho said. “You’ve gotta stay active on social media.”
Reena Pho rededicated herself.
“I almost got fired. I didn’t want to get fired.”
Her dad, she said, is recognized not only for his artistry but for his entrepreneurship and his activism on behalf of tattoo artists. That’s his legacy.
“Now, I’m a part of it,” she said. “That’s very special to me.”
Her late-afternoon client, Rudy Castro, initially hoped for a session with Robert Pho, whom he had followed for a while. But Robert Pho was booked solid.
Castro looked at Reena Pho’s work online and liked her style.
“I just thought it was beautiful work,” said Castro, a corporate executive from Mission Viejo.
He had her tattoo the names of his four children in a half ring across his chest a few weeks ago. He came back for her to touch up a fading Aztecan shoulder tattoo he got when he was 18. And he may add to it.
He didn’t realize at first that Reena was Robert Pho’s daughter.
“I just didn’t make the connection,” Castro said. “I think that’s very cool. That’s very special.”
The funny thing is, Reena Pho does not have a single tattoo. She is not sure yet what her first should be, but she wants it to have special meaning.
She knows who she wants to do it.
That makes her dad smile.
“I look forward to that.”
