- An elderly Asian woman fought back against an attacker in San Francisco last week.
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GoFundMe page made to support her raised close to $1 million. - Now, Xiao Zhen Xie says she's donating all of it to help support the Asian community.
An elderly Asian woman who fought back against an attacker in San Francisco last week is now donating the nearly $1 million raised on her behalf to the Asian community.
Xiao Zhen Xie, 76, was attacked on San Francisco's Market Street while waiting to cross at a traffic light.
Xie picked up a piece of wood from the side of the street and defended herself against the 39-year-old man that punched her in the face, police said.
Footage from after the incident showed Xie holding an ice pack to her face and the man handcuffed to a stretcher while bleeding from the mouth.
Her family started a GoFundMe campaign that was meant to help her pay medical bills. But on Monday she announced that she would instead be donating the more than $919,000 raised to the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.
"First of all, I would like to thank everyone that has donated and supported my family. Hate crimes towards Asians is nothing new. It has happened since the first Asian immigrants arrived in America. But during the pandemic, hate crimes towards the AAPI community have accelerated in an alarming rate," Xie's grandson John Chen wrote in an update in the campaign.
There has been a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans since the coronavirus pandemic started. Stop AAPI Hate, a reporting center that has been tracking cases from March to December of last year, said they received "over 2,808 firsthand accounts of anti-Asian hate" crimes.
"The AAPI community is bleeding from this violence and hatred. We as a community cannot stay silent nor be silenced anymore. That is why our family plans to donate ALL funds generated in this GoFundMe to help the AAPI community recover, and combat racism," Chen wrote.