As Orange County superintendent of schools in charge of overseeing 450,000 California students, Stefan Bean carries the weight of a request from his late wife, Janet Soares, to “take care of the kids.”

Born in 1971 in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, Bean was abandoned on the streets of Saigon, Vietnam, after polio left him paralyzed from the waist down when he was just 2 years old.

He was eventually taken in by an American family that fostered 150 children, many of whom had disabilities of their own. But before that, as North Vietnamese forces approached Saigon, Bean narrowly escaped death during Operation Babylift, an April 1975 mass evacuation of children out of South Vietnam to the United States and other Western nations.

“The orphanage staff put my braces, and all my possessions, on one plane out,” Bean told host Siyamak Khorrami on a recent episode of EpochTV’s “California Insider.”

“I got mixed up and put on another plane.”

That mistake saved his life, as the flight he should have been on crashed after takeoff, killing almost everyone on board.

Bean found himself in the care of a compassionate foster mom.

“She brought in over 150 foster kids in that household,” Bean said. “Many of those children had disabilities like myself. Many were abused.”

His foster parents ended up adopting 10 of their foster children, including Bean.

From kindergarten to fifth grade, he had to undergo approximately four major surgeries that would leave him out of the classroom for long periods of time. For instance, in fifth grade, doctors had to straighten his spinal cord because he had scoliosis.

“I had to wear a body cast for 9 months—full body cast, just lying there,” he said.

Bean, who attended public school in San Diego, was bullied at school. But in sixth grade, there was a turning point. He met a teacher, Donald Geisinger, who noticed that he had a certain talent. After Bean gave a presentation on the unlikely topic of deodorant, Geisinger brought that talent to his attention.

“You have the gift of communication,” Geisinger told Bean, giving him permission to give oral presentations for the rest of the school year.

That was the moment when Bean started to believe in himself.

Orange County Superintendent of Schools Stefan Bean. (Courtesy of Stefan Bean)

In eighth grade, Bean was invited to give a speech in front of 15,000 people in Washington.

“Just because an individual is disabled, they’re not broken,” a 14-year-old Bean told the audience in his speech, which was directed at youth. “So don’t be afraid to approach them. They’re not going to fall, they’re not going to break. They just want to be treated just like anybody, like any other student.”

He received a standing ovation.

Another pivotal point in Bean’s life was when he met an inspirational Paralympic athlete who came to speak at his school.

“He took me on field trips, and I remember watching him drive with the hand controls in the vehicle,” he said.

Bean told himself that he would be like that when he got older.

As a student at the University of Southern California, Bean met Soares, his future wife.

“I asked her out three times ... and she said no all three times,” he said.

Three years after graduating from the private university, he saw her at a mutual friend’s wedding.

“The sparks flew that night, and she actually made the first move,” Bean said.

During their first date, Soares saved Bean’s wheelchair after it rolled down a hill.

“I see my wheelchair rolling down the bank, and it goes into the Kern River,” Bean said.

The next thing Bean saw was Soares standing up and running down the bank. She jumped in the water, reached down, pulled Bean’s wheelchair out, and brought it back up to him.

Eventually, they got married and had four children together. But after doctors discovered multiple tumors in his wife’s brain, she was given six months to live. Through faith, those six months turned into six years, Bean said.

Bean’s wife died in November 2020. During one of their last conversations, Bean said, his wife asked him to “promise to take care of the kids.”

“I’ve realized that I think she meant to take care of all the kids—all the kids that you can impact, all the students,” he said.

Now, in addition to his own kids, Bean is taking care of 450,000 children as Orange County superintendent of schools.

Before switching careers and entering education, inspired by his wife, Bean had built a successful business. But eventually, he had an epiphany: He was not giving back to his community as his adoptive parents had done.

In 2024, he was sworn in as superintendent. In a full-circle moment, Geisinger, the teacher who had made Bean aware of his communication talents, was the one who swore him in.

As superintendent, Bean created the 5-3-1 Strategic Plan, which is built around five key initiatives, three objectives to support Orange County districts, and one big goal—all planned to be implemented by 2030.

The five key initiatives are enhancing career and technical education for vulnerable students, fostering emotional intelligence, integrating artificial intelligence, ensuring student and school safety, and innovation.

The three support objectives include support for instruction and literacy, leadership support for districts and charters, and system support and specialized guidance.

“If we can all, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on, put students first, then we can leave the politics out of it,” Bean said. “When you have all this noise around you, all these political issues, all of these arguments about which approach is the best, then it just confuses our actual mission of putting students first.”

Bean said politics is getting in the way of how great educational leaders are chosen.

“We may be missing out on an individual that has brilliant ideas just because of their political affiliation,” he said.

“Because of politics, we may be missing out on a wonderful program. I’m a believer in school choice. If a charter school has an innovative approach, then let them approach education in that way if it’s a success for kids. But politics prevents that from happening.”