COLUMN ONE : A House, Cash--and No Parents : The setup sounds like a teen-ager’s dream. But for ‘parachute kids,’ left here to go to school while their families remain in Asia, being home alone can also mean loneliness.

Craig, a high school senior, lives a fantasy most teen-agers only dream. He and his sister Zoe, 14, live in a sprawling San Marino ranch house, their one chaperon an elderly servant who speaks no English.

Their Taiwanese parents run a construction company in Taipei. Dad drops by every few months on business, but Craig has seen his mother only twice in three years.

What they lack in intimacy, Craig said, his parents make up with money: They pay all the bills and shower the youngsters with up to $3,000 each month. Craig, 18, spends his share on friends, late-night restaurant forays and such electronic toys as a home karaoke set. Zoe, whose closets bulge with the latest mall fashions, jokes about “my father, the ATM machine.”

That trade-off suits the teen-agers just fine, they said. But in unguarded moments, their words ring with resentment.

“If they’re going to dump me here and not take care of me, they owe me something. That’s my right,” said Craig, who has been on his own for four years.

Craig and Zoe are examples of a phenomenon so familiar in the Chinese community that there is a nickname for it: “parachute kids”--dropped off to live in the United States while their wealthy parents remain in Asia.

The parents, mostly from Taiwan, want their children in more open, less cutthroat U.S. school systems, in which the chances of getting into college are much greater.

Parents may place their children with distant relatives or paid caretakers, or simply buy a house for them and have them stay alone. Under these scenarios, the youngsters often live much as adults would, deciding when to go to sleep or attend school and whether dinner will consist of leafy greens or potato chips.

A 1990 UCLA study, using numbers from visa applications, estimated that there are 40,000 Taiwanese parachute kids ages 8 to 18 in the United States; smaller numbers come from Hong Kong and South Korea.

Americans remain largely unaware of the youngsters’ existence. But the trend has entered the popular culture of Taiwan, where one studio is making an action-adventure movie about a fictional parachute kid who enters San Gabriel High School, gets involved with an Asian gang and is killed.

The parachute trend also is well-known to educators in areas with large Chinese-American populations, such as Southern California. The San Marino school district had so much trouble with truancy among parachute kids that it passed a rule in 1991 that said students must live with relatives no more distant than a first cousin or get a family court in the United States to appoint foster parents. Otherwise they can be expelled or reported to social services or immigration authorities.

“We go to verify an absence, an innocent thing, and find junior high school kids living with no adult supervision,” said Sally Adams, the district registrar. “It’s an enormous problem.”

In some ways, the accomplishments of many parachute kids would make most parents envious. They often pull down outstanding grades and run a household, paying bills and sometimes cleaning, cooking or even supervising servants. Craig gets straight A’s, and Zoe is a student-government leader in intermediate school. Other students are on tennis teams or school newspapers.

But educators and the UCLA study have found that along with the increased responsibilities can come isolation and pain. Some of the children readily admit to feeling sad and left out.

Don Cooke, a vice principal at Arcadia High School, sees “a terrible problem. The kids we run into are very lonely, almost to a state of depression. They have no love or warmth in their lives.”

Living alone is a trial by fire that usually leads to one of two things, Cooke said.

“They either overcome their situations and become very successful, or they turn to another peer group for acceptance, and that’s often Wah Ching or Red Door,” he said, ticking off the names of two Asian gangs.

Three of 11 Arcadia High students arrested in February on suspicion of extorting protection money from younger children were parachute kids, police said. The youths, who have been linked to an Asian organized crime ring, partied and crashed at the home of a 15-year-old alleged gang member whose parents in Taiwan bought him a condo near school.

Strictly speaking, parachute arrangements are illegal. Under the terms of their student visas, minors must live with parents or legal guardians, often extended family, or they could be deported.

As a result, no one knows the actual number of youngsters involved. And although they acknowledge the existence of the parachute trend, most people are reluctant to talk about it on the record. All attempts to get parents’ comments for this story failed. Even though they knew they might be recognized from other details, students interviewed wanted their names changed. “My Dad would kill me if he even knew I was talking to you,” Craig said.

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Determined parents find ways to get their children into American schools and out of the Taiwanese system, where only 8% make it into four-year colleges. And for the boys, parachuting offers an escape from Taiwan’s compulsory two-year military service; although the draft begins at age 20, boys are prohibited from leaving the country once they turn 14.

Despite the paucity of hard data, interviews with students, school officials and researchers offer a glimpse into how the parachute world works.

Parents usually fly over on visas with their children, find them a place to stay, enroll them in school and then return home.

Many families buy homes in wealthy enclaves such as San Marino as a hedge against political turmoil in their home countries. Some place their children with extended family. Others pay “paper aunties and uncles” to take care of the children and masquerade as relatives to school officials, but often these caretakers provide little supervision or warmth.

“You’d be amazed at how many set up a 5-year-old with Aunt Suzie,” said Adams at San Marino. “They say it’s the aunt, but we don’t have any way to prove that.”

Some children are allowed almost unlimited spending but others have budgets.

Families have different ways to stay in touch. Some children fly home on vacations, but many live in the United States year-round. Some parents call weekly. Others install fax machines and make their children relay report cards to Asia. David, a high school senior in San Marino, must submit monthly financial reports. Sam, also a San Marino senior, has written his mortgage check since he was 13.

Other parents fly here periodically to transact business, check on the children and deal with school issues.

Zoe said that on one of his trips her father was called to pick her up from school after she paid for her cafeteria lunch with a $100 bill. Alarmed, the cashier sent her to the principal’s office, which mystified and embarrassed Zoe. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” she protested.

Cooke, the Arcadia High vice principal, recalls a student who came to school with “a bag of money.” Another youth had such a fat bank account that he purchased a BMW, a Lexus and a small sports truck, Cooke said.

The trend started 15 years ago amid political turmoil and new affluence in Taiwan. It has grown in recent years as parents feel more comfortable leaving their children in large Chinese-American communities in the San Gabriel Valley and elsewhere, especially if the children stay with family.

“I don’t want you to stress how the parents are bad,” said Patty, 18, who has lived with relatives since she was 12. “But I want to express the harsh reality and suffering. It looks happy on the outside, but inside the kids are hurting. I wish people wouldn’t do this to their kids.”

Patty said she feels most forlorn on Chinese New Year, when families traditionally gather for celebrations and lavish meals. Outwardly she is the picture of success: active on the swim and tennis teams, student council and school paper. She gets A’s and Bs and has been accepted by UC Irvine. But inside Patty wells with sadness.

She puts on a brave front for her parents, but “in my heart there was a dark place.” Now, her 14-year-old brother, who arrived two years ago, comes into her room at night sobbing, “Patty, I want Mommy.”

“Sometimes we hug each other and we cry; it’s all we can do,” Patty said. “But . . . we don’t tell anyone. We don’t want to put pressure on our parents. I have to stand strong.”

Patty said her aunt collects $300 a month in rent from her parents in Taiwan but complains that the money is not enough. The aunt once accused Patty of stealing money from her purse, the girl said. She also taunts Patty about her own daughter, who got into prestigious UC Berkeley.

Vicki, 18, who has lived in San Marino for six years with only an older brother, said she becomes very sad when she sees families together on the street but will not confess her loneliness when her parents call from Hong Kong. “You tend not to tell them how you feel,” Vicki said. “You don’t want them to worry.”

Ti-Jen of South Pasadena, on the other hand, said he has worked through his emotional problems and is fine. Five years ago, his Taiwanese parents, who run an import business, ensconced their then-12-year-old son in a home with a housekeeper who had his favorite meals waiting each evening.

At first he called home daily, running up $500 monthly phone bills. But slowly, Ti-Jen said, he steeled himself to his new life. Now he maintains a 4.0 grade point average and takes honors classes.

Most of his friends do not know that he lives alone, and he prefers it that way because he worries about theft. Ti-Jen uses his Mercedes-Benz 500 SL for daily jaunts and a beat-up Oldsmobile for when he and his close friend, Craig, make 3 a.m. runs to one of the many Chinese restaurants these night owls favor.

The buddies ditch class when they have been up late but boast that they still get A’s if they cram the night before a test. Used to the grind of Asian academics, where students attend school six days a week and often study until 1 a.m., they find American classes a breeze. And Ti-Jen does not let criticism change his ways, he said.

“When I get lonely or pissed off, I complain (to my parents), ‘You dumped me here. You come here and live with me or don’t tell me what to do,’ ” Ti-Jen said.

The children describe how living alone has made them more mature, more independent, but they roll their eyes as they say this, their voices a singsong parody of an adult trying to persuade a child.

Would they send their own children abroad? Most say no. They describe themselves as strong and understanding, able to cope with the strain. But children with normal vulnerabilities might not handle it as well, they say.

Glenn Masuda, a psychologist at the Asian Pacific Family Center in Rosemead, said he has counseled parachute kids who have run away or become prostitutes.

Masuda also warns that grades are not always a good barometer of trouble. He sees teen-agers who have run away from home and still show up for class, students who get A’s but dally with gangs. In his experience, however, bad grades mean that a teen-ager is already pretty far gone.

Younger students hunt for attention. Kim Woo, a resource teacher at Garvey Intermediate School in San Gabriel, describes a quiet, well-behaved boy of 13 who was arrested on charges of stealing at a Target store. “Everyone was shocked,” Woo said. “He’s so good here. But he just wanted his parents to notice him again.”

Others seek physical closeness with any adult who reminds them of home: “I can be yelling and screaming at them, but it doesn’t matter--they’ll be clinging on to me because I’m Chinese,” Woo said.

Helena T. Hwang and Terri H. Watanabe, in their 1990 master’s thesis for UCLA, studied psychological problems among 23 parachute children.

“Even the most well-adjusted students struggled with loneliness, depression or identity issues,” they wrote. “The problems and stresses of normal adolescence are made worse by the lack of parental supervision and guidance as well as the necessity to adjust to a new culture, language and value system.”

Although the concept of separating children from parents is alien to the mainstream American idea of family life, Asian cultures view adolescence and family relationships differently, the study noted. Chinese culture places a high value on children obeying their parents, and it is not uncommon in Asian societies for children to be sent away to live with relatives. Also, adolescence is seen as the beginning of adulthood, a time to shoulder responsibilities.

Parents in Asia might think that their children are getting supervision rarely available in the United States. In Taiwan, Masuda said, teachers visit children in the evening and provide moral support and guidance outside class; Taiwanese parents might assume that their children are getting the same from U.S. teachers.

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When they moved to the San Gabriel Valley six years ago, Craig and Zoe lived with family friends for two years. But the children disliked the father, who they said had a terrible temper. Their parents bought them the house after they complained. A visit reveals that by now they are old pros at living alone.

Their elderly housekeeper, who lives in the guest house out back, shuffles around in little slippers and casts suspicious glances at the children, but mainly leaves them alone. In the little-used living room hang Impressionist paintings and old Chinese scrolls lined with calligraphy. Neither Craig nor Zoe can read them.

Craig sleeps wherever he lays his head down at night, making nests for his tall, slouchy frame, surrounded by pillows and his humidifier.

The back room is filled with his toys: violent Japanese comics translated into Chinese, laser discs, a cellular phone, a word processor, two TVs--one for cable and one for regular channels, he joked.

Yet he also finds himself hewing to the traditional Chinese values of his parents.

“Americans are spoiled, they have too much freedom,” said Craig, who has amassed 17 units of college credit. “But we have learned our values from Chinese, and even if we don’t practice, we know them.” He ticks them off: respect for elders, learning, laws and the value of money.

Although Craig is a loner who socializes primarily with Ti-Jen, Zoe is a popular extrovert. At first, she cried because she missed her parents and knew no English. Now, Zoe has lost so much Chinese language that Craig often has to translate his mother’s twice-weekly calls.

Tall and leggy in white tennis shorts, with her long hair pulled back in a ponytail, Zoe appears unaffected by her parents’ absence; she is active in school and gets A’s.

Her room is her refuge. She spends hours on the phone gabbing with girlfriends. With no one to nag her about what and when to eat, she lives mostly on sodas and potato chips, which are always arrayed around her bed.

Does she miss her family? The question stumps Zoe. “We really don’t know what people run to their parents for,” she said, pirouetting around the room as she demonstrated a jazz step, “because we’ve never had them here.”