ANAHEIM : Pool Injury Clouds a Vietnamese Dream

Vietnamese immigrants Cuu Phan and Bich Ngoc Luu want one thing most of all: the chance for their five children to succeed in the land of their parents’ dreams.

Now they fear that part of their dream may be fading. Their 15-year-old son, Duc Thuong Luu, suffered brain damage after he nearly drowned in his high school swimming pool during a physical education class last year.

Fighting memory lapses, Duc struggles through his classes. His grades have suffered. Once ebullient, he has become quiet. And so his parents have filed a lawsuit against Anaheim Union High School District, contending that the accident could have been avoided with better teacher training and more student supervision.

“His parents are extremely upset,” said the family’s lawyer, Kirsten B. Hicks. “They have worked very hard for their children. They believe that the way to succeed in America is through a good education. And now they are working diligently just to get their son through high school.”

Duc was a freshman at Anaheim High School when the accident occurred last April 7. His class was instructed to use the pool for that day’s exercise, but Duc did not know how to swim.

The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court on Feb. 2, said his teacher, Diane Taylor, failed to monitor the students. Taylor, the only adult present, was teaching one student to swim in the shallow end of the pool when Duc slid off an inflated inner tube and slipped under water, the lawsuit says.

A student spotted Duc on the bottom of the pool, motionless and purple, and screamed to alert Taylor, according to the lawsuit. But Taylor did not swim to the boy or call anyone to help, choosing instead to use a pool skimmer to prod the unconscious teen-ager to the surface, the suit said.

District spokesman Lee L. Kellogg acknowledged that the accident was “a tragic situation without question” but said that Duc’s teacher handled her class appropriately.

“There was no negligence on the part of the teacher or the district,” Kellogg said.

Hicks said Duc was hospitalized for several weeks. As a result of oxygen deprivation, he has difficulty retaining information and may have to be placed in a program of special classes.

Duc’s family spends many hours tutoring him in the evenings to help him get through his courses, Hicks said. Duc’s oldest sister has taken a leave from her banking job on the East Coast and returned home to help her brother.