AIDS Group Gets a Boost From Show

Attendance was low but the stakes high at a $50-per-person benefit dinner and fashion show staged by Vietnamese designer Pierre Saint Tran on Sunday night.

Forty guests, mostly his friends, had come together at the Kono Hawaii restaurant in Santa Ana to raise money for the AIDS Response Program of Orange County, a United Way agency offering education about acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

“Pierre wanted to raise $1,200, enough money to have 10,000 of our ‘Teens & AIDS’ pamphlets translated into Vietnamese, then produced and distributed,” said Werner Kuhn, who represented the AIDS Response Program at the event.

“He simply strolled into our Garden Grove office two months ago and said he wanted to help.”

The program teaches prevention and “risk reduction” to high-risk groups, as well as to the general public, Kuhn said, citing the 480 diagnosed cases of AIDS in Orange County. “The teens are the years when the young, with their minds still open, begin to engage in high-risk behavior. We can’t wish (their desire to experiment sexually) away, but we can educate them to be careful, to form committed, monogamous relationships. They need reliable information about AIDS.”

Kuhn said he hoped to see the pamphlet translated into Spanish and Vietnamese by the end of the year.

Saint Tran, 28, smiling through his disappointment at the poor turnout (which he said was caused by his not allowing enough lead time), said he hadn’t heard of any Vietnamese in his Westminster community who had AIDS, but, he “still wanted them to understand the disease.”

“If there was some kind of pamphlet they could read, parents could sit down with their children at dinner and talk with them about it. Education is prevention.”

Westminster Mayor Elden F. Gillespie, a guest with his wife, Evelyn, at the affair, said he believes that AIDS is not a problem yet among Vietnamese because of the community’s “high moral standards, family ties and strong beliefs.”

“But the Vietnamese are new to this country. After they’ve been Americanized, they’ll start to have problems,” he said. “The pamphlet is a good idea. I support it. The city of Westminster (with a population of 73,341) is 10% to 12% Vietnamese.”

The AIDS Response Program is operating on a $160,000 annual grant from the state and its own fund-raising events, including raffles.

“We’ll be spending upwards of $200,000 this year on AIDS prevention education in Orange County,” Kuhn said.

Philanthropy on behalf of the AIDS Response Program has been slow going in Orange County, he said. “There seems to be more (society) interest in raising funds for the AIDS Services Foundation, an agency that provides direct services to those with the disease.

“We feel no competition. We understand the concept of providing funds for the afflicted is a more traditional way of giving. There is a gut reaction that comes from seeing your money go directly toward care.”

Before the fashion show, which was co-directed by Saint Tran and his fiancee, Christine Halan Phuong, 22 guests dined on chicken dumplings and teriyaki steak in the nightclub’s paper-lantern-lit showroom.

Saint Tran’s fall and winter collection featured many sleek, bare, body-hugging gowns. “I design . . . to show off the beautiful body that ladies get from their visits to the gym and to show off the accessories they like to wear,” he said.

Saint Tran said fashion design ran in his family: “My mother designed traditional Vietnamese dress in Saigon for the First Lady of Vietnam.”