Court of Passage: Sport Eases Another Transition for Ly : Basketball: Game provides solace for Tustin volunteer assistant who has survived life in a labor camp and a recent shooting.

The lessons Cheavly Ly has learned haven’t come from books. There have been tests, difficult ones, but sometimes there are no answers.

Through his 19 years, Ly has endured a lifetime of suffering. Born in Cambodia, he survived three years in a labor camp, fighting off starvation, disease and the resignation that life was over.

Ly escaped to Thailand with his mother and two sisters and, in 1980, emigrated to the United States. He adjusted to his new country, but his home life deteriorated to the point where he had to leave. Basketball provided a creative outlet and he became a star on Tustin High School’s team.

Then, just when life seemed to have given him a break after 13 years of suffering, adjusting and learning, a stranger appeared and pulled the trigger of a shotgun.

Ly was shot three times while, of all things, playing basketball. The lessons go on.

“Everything happens for a reason,” Ly said. “I just have to try to learn from it.”

Ly is passing on some of the lessons that he has learned, the simple ones anyway.

As he recovers in hopes of playing again at a community college, Ly helps coach the freshman basketball team at Tustin. Working with the team has helped his rehabilitation as much as the hours of painful exercise, which doctors hope will restore the use of his right arm.

“I had to stay involved in basketball,” Ly said. “When I played, I was happy. I get the same feeling when I work with the players. All the bad things on my mind go away for a little while.”

The fingers on Ly’s right hand twitched as he spoke about the night of Oct. 19. His arm was stiff, as if it were in a sling, and, for now, useless.

On the inside of the forearm is a scar from a skin graft operation that stretches from his elbow to just above his wrist.

Ly was playing basketball with a friend in Magnolia Tree Park in Tustin on Oct. 19 when a young man approached them.

“He kept staring at us and then he started yelling,” Ly said. “He wanted to know what we were doing. I said, ‘We’re just kicking back.’ Then he left.”

About half an hour later, the man returned, this time carrying something behind his back. Because it was dark, Ly said he could not see the shotgun.

“The guy stopped about 20 feet from me and pulled out the gun,” Ly said. “I told him to be cool. Then he fired.”

Ly felt a burning sensation in his arm. He looked down, saw the blood and realized he had been shot.

Before another shot could be fired, Ly and his friend turned and ran. Because he was farther away from the man, Ly’s friend escaped quickly and was unharmed, Ly said.

Ly, though, was out in the open. Before he could get to cover, he was shot two more times and received minor wounds in the leg and shoulder.

“The whole time I was running, I was saying to myself, ‘Please miss me, please miss me,’ ” Ly said. “I just wanted to live.”

Ly headed to the house of a friend, Strawn Holmes, who lived near the park. Holmes, who was a teammate on the Tustin basketball team last year, called for an ambulance and then applied a tourniquet to Ly’s upper arm.

At the hospital, doctors had to take a skin graft from Ly’s thigh to repair his arm. He was listed in serious condition for four days and spent two weeks in the hospital.

Three days after the shooting, Tustin police arrested Paul Supancheck, 18, who was booked on suspicion of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

Like Ly, police officials are baffled by the case. Because Supancheck allegedly is a gang member, they initially believed the shooting was gang-related.

“Anyone who knows Cheavly, knows he would not be involved with any gangs,” said Peggy Lynch, an administrator in the Tustin Unified School District and a close friend of Ly.

“He had a good sense of what was right and wrong. He would never get involved with gangs.”

The police are still investigating the case and, for now, have not ruled out the possibility of it being gang-related.

“I have no idea why the guy did it,” Ly said. “The police said he was crazy. I guess that’s as good of an explanation as I’ll get.”

While in the hospital, Ly had visitors every day. A constant stream of Tustin students, teachers, administrators and parents made their way to see him.

Barry and Gayle Ackerman, the family Ly lived with after the shelter he was living in had closed, came to the hospital the morning after the shooting.

“We got to the hospital right away and there were already five Tustin kids there to see Cheavly,” Gayle Ackerman said. “He’s a much-loved person because he’s so nice to everyone.”

Said Barry Ackerman: “It (the shooting) isn’t fair. He’s been through too much already.”

Ly was 6 when the Khmer Rouge, a Cambodian Communist faction, came to power. Although he was aware of the war between the government and the Khmer Rouge, he had paid it little attention.

Ly’s family was forced out of Phnom Penh immediately after the Khmer Rouge toppled the government. Like millions of other citizens in cities and towns, they were sent to labor camps.

What followed was the worst act of a government killing its own people ever recorded. Out of a population of 7 million, an estimated 2 million people died of starvation and disease or were murdered by the Khmer Rouge between 1975-79.

Cheavly Ly’s father, Ngeth Ly, a pharmacist in Phnom Penh, was taken from his family by the Khmer Rouge soldiers. He was labeled an undesirable. Like thousands of other Cambodians, he was branded a “parasite intellectual” by the Khmer Rouge because they wore glasses or spoke a foreign language.

Cheavly Ly, his mother and four sisters were sent to a labor camp, where they spent the next three years.

Ly’s sister died of starvation in 1976. She was 9. The rest of his family survived on a bowl of rice a day and what Cheavly could catch, scrounge or steal.

Ly learned to survive. He would fish in the river that was next to the camp or dig for sweet potatoes. Other times, he would steal supplies for his family.

On one occasion, Ly was caught stealing rice by soldiers. They were ready to kill him when Ly’s grandfather, who also lived in the camp, interceded.

“He pleaded with them not to hurt me because I was a boy,” Ly said. “The camp commander was away that day, so they let me go.”

Ly’s duties were to herd the cattle and buffaloes across the river to graze. He was alone most of the time.

“I would feel free when I was across the river,” Ly said. “It was like the rest of the world didn’t exist. Then I would head back to camp and my heart would start pounding.”

Ly received some hope when his father returned after being released in 1978. At that time, Cambodia and Vietnam were at war and the camp where Ly’s family was held was liberated.

Ly said his mother hired a guide to take her and the four children to Thailand, a 200-mile journey. Ly’s father remained in Phnom Penh, where he had relatives.

The trip to Thailand was on foot, through jungles, mine fields and the Khmer Rouge troops. They traveled with a group and Ly said many of the people died along the way.

Once in Thailand, Ly’s family lived in a refugee camp, where they were joined by his father four months later. In 1980, the family traveled first to the Philippines and then to the United States.

“I remember people talking in the camp about coming to the United States,” Ly said. “It was a dream because there wasn’t any hope. We survived to do it.”

Adjusting to a new country was both exciting and difficult.

“The first night we were here, I got to sleep in a bed,” Ly said. “I had never seen a bed before and couldn’t get to sleep. It was too comfortable. I ended up sleeping on the floor.”

But life wasn’t going to be that easy for Ly.

His parents got divorced and both remarried. His mother moved to Boston with two daughters, while Ly and his other sister stayed with their father.

They lived with their father’s cousin, who was also the family’s sponsor, in Santa Ana. Almost from the beginning, Ly and his stepmother didn’t get along and he grew increasingly despondent.

It was basketball that got him through the tough times. Ly fell in love with the sport when he was in the sixth grade.

His parents didn’t consider sports important and wanted Ly to give up basketball. But it was too late, Ly was hooked.

“He would live in the gym if you’d let him,” Lynch said. “If he could figure out a way to become an NBA player, his life would be complete.”

Ly’s father moved to Tustin in 1987 and Ly, who is 5-feet-11, won a spot on the varsity. He was a reserve as a junior and a starter as a senior. He averaged 17 points a game last season.

“The first time I met Cheavly, he was real quiet, but I could see that he was a good athlete,” Tustin Coach Tom McCluskey said. “You could tell he wasn’t real comfortable trying to fit in. Getting words out of him was tough. I think basketball helped him adjust.”

Lynch, who was the Tustin principal at the time, befriended Ly and the two would often talk. She said she tried to help him with his struggles at school and would listen when he needed to talk about the problems at home.

Ly’s relationship with his stepmother worsened. The more they quarreled, the more Ly became withdrawn at school.

In the winter of 1988, Ly moved in with the Ackermans, whose son played on the Tustin basketball team.

“Cheavly was very shy when he got here and wouldn’t even look me or my wife in the eye,” Barry Ackerman said. “We wanted to push and help him become more outgoing.”

With the help of Lynch, the Ackermans and friends, Ly has learned to become more comfortable in social situations.

“I think Cheavly has learned to trust people more,” Lynch said. “He has really come a long way.”

Ly moved out of the Ackerman house last summer and now lives with his father’s cousin in Santa Ana. He had been taking classes at Rancho Santiago College, but dropped out after the shooting.

He said he plans to attend Saddleback College next year and, if possible, try out for the basketball team.

Ly also is preparing for life if his basketball-playing days are over. He said he wants to major in business, but he is also considering coaching as a career.

“I’ve been very lucky,” Ly said. “Things haven’t always been good, but I’ve made friends and they’ve been there to help me. Life is going to get better.”