Crime: From a Family of Bound Feet

Amid the inscrutable intrigue of old-fashioned tongmen and newfangled business operators in San Francisco's Chinatown, tiny Dolly Gee, 64, was empress of finance. For more than 30 years, she was manager of the Bank of America's pagodalike Chinatown branch. Inheriting the shrewdness of her late father, Chinatown's first banker, Charlie Gee, Dolly built the branch deposits from $2,000,000 to $20 million, dished out hundreds of loans that put a financial base under half of Chinatown's enterprises during years when Chinese could not even get life insurance. A high point in her career came in 1962, when she helped preside...