Her chaotic escape from Vietnam flashed in her nightmares for years. Dead bodies draped with newspapers lay in the streets. A helicopter plunged into a school bus. Mortar fire exploded and tanks rolled as Saigon fell.

Decades later, Mary Truong often recounts her horrifying journey as the new leader of the state office to aid refugees and immigrants, and her supporters say her experience renders her uniquely qualified for her role. But advocates for immigrants are urging her to do more to persuade the state to invest in those her office aims to help.

Truong carries out most of her work behind the scenes, finding ways to welcome refugees to Massachusetts in a time of harsh political rhetoric, such as President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to suspend immigration from “terror prone’’ regions.

“I am like anybody else: Wait and see what he’s going to do,’’ Truong, the executive director of the state’s Office for Refugees and Immigrants, said about Trump. “But it shouldn’t be about politics. It should be about helping refugees and immigrants.’’

Truong said she hopes to serve as an inspiration for the roughly 2,000 refugees who arrive in Massachusetts every year fleeing war and other perils.

In the 1970s she was the fifth of nine children to parents who overcame poverty to build a sugar cane refinery and other businesses in a town southwest of Saigon. Her father, one of 15 children, was known for showering her mother with gifts like embroidered dresses.

Her mother, a town communications official, was a kindhearted woman who gave her children dolls of different races, so they could imagine a world outside Vietnam.

Mary was known as Tuy Ngoc then, and the Vietnam War still seemed distant from their town in Tay Ninh province.

Then one day in 1970, gunfire ripped into the front seat of her family’s station wagon, with Truong in the back. Her little brother screamed as his blood poured through the seat cushions. Her mother, wounded, fell unconscious.

The Viet Cong-hired assassin’s bullets were meant for her father, a staunch opponent of communism. Her brother recovered, but her mother died from complications related to her injuries two years later.

The night before Saigon fell in April 1975, her father gathered the children in the living room. Pack one or two things, he told them. They were leaving for America.

Truong, then 14, packed a doll, an English dictionary, and her pajamas, and worried aloud about leaving everything behind.

“Nothing else is more important ... than being together and alive,’’ she recalled her father telling her. “What’s most important is for the family to be together and be happy.’’

Before dawn the next day, the Truong family crammed into that same station wagon and navigated mortar explosions, tanks, and sniper fire on the route to the beach. There, they climbed onto a leaky boat, ducking gunfire, and floated for two to three days until a US Navy ship finally rescued them.

Unlike today’s refugees from Syria — who can face two years of background checks to come to America — her family spent a month in camps in the Philippines and Guam and then settled in Pennsylvania with the help of an American family friend and a local church.

Truong knew little English beyond what she had picked up from watching Disney movies and “Lost in Space.’’ She had lost her mother, her home, and soon, even her name, when constant teasing in high school prompted the school principal to ask her to call herself Mary instead.

At first, the family had to rely on government assistance, but her father quickly found a janitorial job at a museum so he could support his family. She recalled him struggling to push a bicycle through the snow to get to the supermarket.

They were so poor that a matron from a wealthy family offered to adopt two of her sisters. Her father declined.

“No matter how rich or poor we are we have to stick together,’’ she recalled that he told them.

All nine children went to college, she said, and seven have advanced degrees.

Truong moved to Boston for college and waitressed to put herself through the University of Massachusetts in Boston. Later she became a vice president at Bank of America and then switched to marketing and other roles in health care, including at Carney Hospital. She is married to Nam Pham, a refugee who also once ran the state refugee office, but now serves as the assistant secretary of business development.

Truong took over the Office for Refugees and Immigrants in the summer of 2015. It is a mid-level agency with little power: Most of the agency’s $20 million annual budget is federal funding specifically for job training, English classes, and other services for refugees, leaving the state with less than $2 million a year for citizenship classes and other programs for immigrants.

Truong, a petite and softspoken 55-year-old, says she is trying to raise money for financial literacy classes for refugees. And she hopes to meet with them so they can see through her what is possible in America.

“With time, you can make it,’’ she said in an interview in her Downtown Crossing office. “As long as you’re still alive, right? As long as you’re safe.’’

After Governor Charlie Baker balked at accepting Syrian refugees last year, Truong and others eased the governor’s concerns by explaining the strict vetting process for refugees. And she created a welcome kit that includes a letter from Baker and other officials welcoming refugees in multiple languages, including Arabic. More than 180 Syrian refugees have since arrived in Massachusetts, according to the State Department.

Truong says she is also proud that over 35 percent of immigrants find work within the first few months in Massachusetts, which she said is one of the highest rates in the US.

Some are prodding Truong to urge the state to increase funding for citizenship classes and other services to help immigrants in Massachusetts.

“There is very little state money invested in her office. It should be a lot more,’’ said Eva Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition.

But others say disruption is not Truong’s style.

“Mary’s strength is that she’s committed to the task of the daily work of the office,’’ said Westy Egmont, an associate professor and director of the Immigrant Integration Lab at Boston College. But he added, “She’s not a person who’s going to ask for change.’’

Marylou Sudders, the state secretary of health and human services who recommended Truong for the job, praised Truong’s dedication to immigrants and refugees.

“I think Mary is a person who discharges her responsibilities with sort of a quiet elegance and doesn’t seek publicity,’’ Sudders said. “And I think it’s something that I very much appreciate about her.’’

Refugee arrivals in Massachusetts in calendar year 2016

723 from Africa

46 from Latin America and Caribbean

22 from East and Southeast Asia

845 from Near East and South Asia

190 from Europe and Central Asia

SOURCE: Department of State

Total

1,826

Most of the agency’s $20 million annual budget is federal funding specifically for job training, English classes, and other services for refugees, leaving the state with less than $2 million a year for citizenship classes and other programs for immigrants.

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Maria Sacchetti can be reached at maria.sacchetti@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @mariasacchetti