A Tale of 2 Viet Immigrants Illustrates Dichotomy of Fate

Trinh Quang Do fled from Vietnam penniless 12 years ago, surviving a treacherous sea journey and months in a refugee camp.

Since then, he has become the model of the overachiever Americans view as the typical Vietnamese immigrant. He graduated from high school with a high-A average, attended college on scholarship and landed a $30,000-a-year job with Rockwell International. He has gone on to earn a master’s degree in electrical engineering.

But for Kieu Nguyen, a woman who arrived in 1988, the American dream has been less obtainable. She is dependent on welfare and without hope for her future as she struggles against a disease that is stealing her sight. Her husband has left her, and she worries constantly about her three children. Ashamed of her poverty, she asked that her real name not be used.

Their stories exemplify two extremes of the Vietnamese experience in America and a growing gap between the early immigrant arrivals and those who came later.

Do’s father was a captain in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and a high school principal, Do said recently at the Rockwell International plant in Costa Mesa, where he is a staff engineer. Because of his father’s position in the military, and because the family lived in an area frequented by Westerners, Do was familiar with Western culture from an early age.

When the communist government took control, Do’s father was sent to re-education camps, the family was stripped of its possessions and his mother became a merchant on the black market to feed her family.

Even though Do received good grades in school, a teacher told him that he would never be qualified to enter college because of his father’s “crime” against the regime.

Fearing that her 14-year-old son would be drafted to fight in Cambodia, Do’s mother illegally bought him a seat on a fishing boat out of Vietnam. Do remembers well the day his boat departed. It was May 19, 1978--the birthday of communist revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.

“To the communists, it was a day to celebrate the birth of the savior of our country,” he said. “To me, it was the birthday of the man who led our country down a hole of suffering. My leaving meant I was denouncing their lies.”

Do’s mother stayed to care for his father. Do boarded the fishing craft in the darkness with a cousin and her family.

The vessel, with room for 20 people, was stuffed with 60 passengers. It was a river boat, but the owner promised that it would hold together on the South China Sea. The trip that was supposed to last only three days stretched to nine before the refugees reached Malaysia.

During a fierce storm, one of the two rusty oil drums holding drinking water blew overboard, diminishing the already limited supply for the boatload of mostly women and children. The boat owner had filled the barrels from the Mekong River, where residents used the water to wash themselves, their clothes and their dishes. The river also served as a sewer.

“You just had to plug your nose, close your eyes and drink it,” Do said, “but the aftertaste lasted about 20 minutes.”

The rough waves also cracked the bottom of the engine compartment, and water entered the boat. To keep it from sinking, the passengers took turns scooping out the water.

“We were all so tired,” Do said. “I think back and don’t know how we did it when all we had for nourishment was a daily handful of rice and that filthy water.

“I sat next to a window as I scooped the water out, and the boat lurched so much from side to side that my face would almost touch the ocean. Each time, I felt I would be plunged into the sea and touch death.”

But Do lived to see Malaysia and, about seven months later, San Diego. After half a year, the family moved to Santa Ana, where Do struggled with the new language to graduate from Saddleback High School in 1982 with a grade-point average of 3.97.

The high marks garnered him scholarships to pursue a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering at UC Irvine. But Do’s happiness was overshadowed that year by news of his parents’ disappearance on the South China Sea.

After they also had managed to escape by boat, “I never heard from them again,” he said. Do’s grief increased his determination to make the best of the freedom his mother had bought for him.

In 1986, he graduated from UC Irvine with honors and was hired by Rockwell. Continuing school part time, he received a master’s degree three years later. Do said he has also applied to the MBA programs at UCI, Harvard, Stanford and Northwestern.

But Do has not worked hard only for his own future. He has also helped others in their quests for new lives. During his undergraduate days at UCI, Do became a member of the Pearl Project--a nonprofit student organization raising money to help refugees worldwide.

“Success doesn’t mean selfishness,” said Do, who now lives in Irvine. “A successful person should help his people.”

Kieu Nguyen can barely help herself.

Sitting on an old brown sofa in the family’s living room, Nguyen said she and her children did not want their names revealed because her eldest daughter is ashamed of their poverty.

“I’m sad when my daughter feels sorry for herself,” the 38-year-old mother said with a shaky voice. “But what can I do? I don’t know the language, I don’t have any skills, and my eyes are weak.”

Born into a farming family, Nguyen was sheltered first by her parents and then her husband’s family. Their household in Saigon was supported by salaries brought home by her husband--a second-class petty officer in the navy--and by his father, who drove boats for a private company.

“I didn’t make the money,” the thin woman said. “I only cooked the meals.”

When Saigon fell, her husband was taken to a re-education camp and released after three days. Her parents in the countryside promised to give the couple and their infant a piece of land to plant corn, so they left the just-renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

But she and her husband were never taught farming skills, and the rats ate all the corn. So the couple tried selling everything from chickens to rice. Nothing yielded profits as the bewildered couple either unknowingly ruined their wares or were cheated by the wholesalers and the police.

In the meantime, her in-laws had made it to the United States and had filed the necessary Orderly Departure Program paper work so that Nguyen’s family could join them. The couple and their three children were allowed to leave Vietnam in 1988.

After 10 months of living in Garden Grove with her husband’s sister, the family moved to Westminster, and Nguyen’s husband found work. Because of her inherited eye illness--an incurable condition called retinitis pigmentosa--she was restricted to her home and never familiarized herself with the outside world.

The disease qualified Nguyen to receive $667 monthly in federal Social Supplementary Income. In 1989, her husband discovered the attractions of a freer society and left. Without his support, Nguyen also qualified for $544 a month from the state’s General Relief fund to help raise her children.

Her income forced Nguyen to move her family to a Santa Ana apartment, where the rent is $590 a month. The apartment is old, and the crime-ridden neighborhood is not safe for her children--now 15, 12 and 6 years old.

The stress of adjustment and her husband’s abandonment has worsened Nguyen’s vision, and doctors now say she is going blind.

“She can’t see in the dark, and she is also very light-sensitive,” said Dr. Douglas R. Williams, a Huntington Beach optometrist. “Just going out for a walk is uncomfortable. As her condition progresses, there will be a further loss of vision.”

Williams recommended special glasses to filter out the light for Nguyen while she receives training on how to use public transportation and bank services and ways to handle emergency situations.

Nguyen said she has given up on her future and only lives for her children.

“Because of my husband and children, I left my own parents behind,” she said. “I come to this place only to have an unhappy family life. I miss my parents so much.”