An Entrepreneur Quiet Gay and Immigration Activist Comes Out to Get Married

 Peter Wagner, left, and Alfred Cheung kiss after they are married by their friend Gloria Woo on the Lyon St. steps in San Francisco, CA Saturday, October 19, 2013. Peter Wagner and Alfred Cheung's wedding will allow Alfred, an immigrant who arrived from Hong Kong more than 20 years ago, to finally bring his business and nonprofit out from the shadows.

•  Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle 

 Alfred Cheung is a tech entrepreneur, but until now you wouldn't have read his name in the industry blogs or financial press.

It's not that he's operating in "stealth mode" - building up a business before making some splashy debut. He's operating in the shadows, forced out of the public eye by the uncertainty of his legal status.

Cheung oversees an organization with eight full-time San Francisco employees - but he's also an immigrant without a green card. For the last three years, he couldn't risk seeking out the publicity that attracts new customers. He couldn't raise funding to expand operations.

You're only reading about him and his ventures now because everything changed on Saturday evening.

Around 5:30 p.m., Cheung walked down a makeshift aisle along the Lyon Street Steps, flanked by the cypress trees of the Presidio and the mansions of Pacific Heights. His 15-year-old dog, Mojo, carried the ring and a friend played the violin.

In the middle of the flight above Vallejo Street, with friends looking on, Cheung wedPeter Wagner, his boyfriend of six years and an American citizen. Thanks to the Supreme Court's decisions on same-sex marriage this summer, the union should put Cheung, 40, on the route to citizenship.

That means he finally feels comfortable promoting his products, getting the word out about software designed to help charities and government agencies.

"Besides marrying someone I love, I have optimism about my future clearing up," he said. "It's like coming out of the closet again."

Immigrant rights. Same-sex marriage. Tech entrepreneurialism. And an arthritic yellow lab that gave its owner away. Just try to dream up a more San Francisco story than that.

But Cheung's personal saga also illustrates how our inflexible immigration policies can work against the very things this nation and region claim to cherish: ambition, innovation and job creation.

'Don't rock the boat'

The tale begins back in 1990, when Cheung relocated from Hong Kong, then a British dependency, to attend high school in the U.S. territory of Guam. He traveled on a British passport, and received a student visa and Social Security number, Cheung said.

He then majored in business at the Pacific Union College in Napa, where his dorm room was burglarized during a school break. His passport, Social Security card and other papers were stolen. Shortly after the unsolved burglary, his bank account was drained.

But after college, he applied for jobs with his Social Security number and the overstayed student visa didn't raise red flags. Over the years, the advice he received was "don't rock the boat," let the immigration issue be, so long as it isn't a problem. He took no steps to formally apply for citizenship, which would have put him at risk of deportation.

Cheung landed a job as the database manager for then-California Assemblywoman Carole Migden. He went on to become director of strategic business information and technology for the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Community Development, under mayors Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom.

Cheung was instrumental in pushing several city departments into the 21st century, upgrading from filing cabinets to managing city documents online, said Anna Yee, a colleague at the time. It was a typical display of initiative for Cheung.

"He always had something going on the side, like 10 ideas he was pursuing," said Yee, now deputy director of the Chinatown Community Development Center. "I'd have to tell him, 'Alfred, pick one.' "

These types of projects sucked up most of Cheung's time through the first half of 2007, preventing him from getting to the gym for months. He was eager to get into shape again, and on the first day back, he set the weight at the amount he'd been bench pressing before. He pushed up on the barbell and, suddenly, felt the air squeezing out of him.

As he attempted to wiggle out from under the weight, a handsome guy walked by, realized what was happening and lifted the barbell. Cheung slipped out from under it with a bright red face, mumbled a quick "thank you" and rushed away as fast as he could.

But a few days later they ran into each other again and began to talk.

"Since you owe me your life," Cheung recalls the man teasing, "you have to marry me."

It was Peter Wagner, Cheung's husband as of Saturday.

Offer revoked

By the turn of the decade, Cheung was ready to leave the public sector and find new challenges in the tech industry. He was in the process of accepting a job as a chief information officer at a health care company, but the background check for the executive position turned up a problem: His immigration status couldn't be confirmed. The offer was revoked.

Suddenly the boat was rocking on its own. Worried about drawing any more attention to the issue, Cheung tacked in another direction. He used his personal savings to co-found a nonprofit, Tekmeca, designed to provide government agencies and charities with technology tools and advice.

What he realized during his own time in government is that many software products designed for businesses, like customer relationship management tools, are square pegs for the round holes of other organizations: They might fit, but only if you force them. "We set out to develop technology that takes away the burden from the nonprofit," he said.

They built a database product, Total Grant Solution, customized to help government and charities manage documents and data more efficiently. They set up an online service, GoodMojo, to match up people who want to do charity work, nonprofits looking for help and residents in need.

And on Saturday night, Cheung swung open the doors to a new cafe near Telegraph Hill, Think Space, where they held the wedding reception. It will serve coffee and food during the day, and provide a spot for nonprofit events and hackathons in the evenings.

'A deep breath'

Tekmeca operates both for-profit and nonprofit arms, but as a whole it's set up as a "social enterprise." That means the goal is to make enough money to be self sufficient, rather than continually reliant on fundraising like traditional charities. Profits are reinvested into programs. In the last three years, Tekmeca has pulled in close to $1 million in revenue, Cheung said.

The organization licenses its software to the Mayor's Office of Housing and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. "It monitors and tracks the entire cycle for us, and it allows our grantees to upload documentation and invoices," said Gloria Chan, spokeswoman for the latter department, which issued a public request for proposals before deciding on Tekmeca.

She added that it's a big step up from their old process for managing millions of dollars in grants: pushing around paper.

Tekmeca is now in discussions with several other Bay Area cities.

Cheung said he never lied in setting up these ventures. He used his real Social Security number, and paid all the required taxes and fees.

What happens following Saturday's wedding, held next to artist Hung Liu's "Migrant Heart" statue, remains to be seen.

The Supreme Court decisions mean that same-sex married couples in California are afforded the same rights as heterosexual ones.

"A person can now apply to have his or her immigration status adjusted to that of a lawful permanent resident and get on the path to citizenship based on a same-sex marriage," said Robin Goldfaden, a senior attorney focused on immigration issues at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights.

It's a complex area of the law and the details of each case matter. But these petitions are generally granted after marriages to U.S. citizens if there's a record the individual first entered the country legally. There should be in this situation, since Cheung said he was given a Social Security number and student visa.

He is hopeful his immigration status will quickly be resolved - and that the artificial constraints on Tekmeca will soon fall away. Cheung wants to publicize the product, hire more people, sell more software and help more nonprofits and government agencies.

"It's kind of like seeing the light at the end of a tunnel," he said. "It's like feeling that invisible burden getting lifted away, and being able to take a deep breath."

It would be a shameful statement about our national priorities should the alternative scenario unfold: The U.S. government sending Cheung back to a land he hasn't seen in nearly two decades, separating him from his husband, organization and life, despite everything he's built and everything in store.

by James Temple a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. E-mail: jtemple@sfchronicle.comTwitter: @jtemple