THE SUNDAY PROFILE : A Son’s Duty : Lan Quoc Nguyen left Vietnam behind. But he will never escape the obligation he feels to help refugees and provide for his parents.

The Legal Assistance for Vietnamese Asylum Seekers office is almost invisible, tucked into a far corner of a strip mall on the edge of Little Saigon. Inside, it is spare, decorated only with posters extolling human rights and postcards painted by Vietnamese refugees living in Asian detention camps.

On a hot Sunday, Lan Quoc Nguyen is about to settle in for a typical day’s work as the supervising attorney for the Southern California branch of LAVAS. He and his staff will again pick up the often frustrating and labyrinthine job of reviewing case after case of a refugee who desperately wants asylum in a country--any country.

Nguyen, who escaped Vietnam by boat with his family and spent time in a Malaysian detention camp, believes this is his moral obligation. On top of his general law practice, he puts in 30 to 40 hours a week at LAVAS. And he volunteers even more time as a guest on radio and TV shows broadcast to the Vietnamese-speaking population in central Orange County, tailoring legal advice on everything from property law to traffic violations for an audience unfamiliar with federal and state laws.

There is no sense, however, that Nguyen is a careerist. His ground-floor Tustin law office is small, neat and functional--hardly the sort of sanctum designed to impress or intimidate. He dresses neatly but without flash. And although his passions are genuine, he has lived with them for so long--through years of his own persecution and confinement--that he speaks in matter-of-fact tones, with conviction but without missionary zeal.

Between his high-profile pro bono work and his commitment to upholding Vietnamese tradition by living with and supporting his elderly parents in Westminster, Nguyen says, smiling, that he is barely making it. “But I’m happy. That’s more important. I spend long hours, but I think it’s worth it. I do feel I have an obligation to the community to do this.”

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By the time he turned 14, life in Saigon had become intolerable for Nguyen and his family. It was 1979, and his father, a teacher, and oldest brother, a former soldier, were interned in “re-education camps.”

“Security was tight in the Vietnamese government at the time, and persecution was rampant,” Nguyen says. “Any intellectual family couldn’t do anything, and we had a black mark on our history because of (supposed political activities) by other members of the family. We were always under surveillance by the authorities.”

The rest of the family planned to escape by boat, but time and time again the attempts failed.

“You had to do everything secretly,” Nguyen says. “Get a boat, find petroleum, get food and water, find people you could really trust. Some of the people would just rip you off and run, and you couldn’t go to the police.”

Seven times the plans went awry before the Nguyens could even get to a boat. Family members were turned in to authorities, jailed and later released. Finally, on the eighth try, the seven boys and their mother sailed away on a small boat with several other families.

During seven days at sea, they ran out of fuel and water before taking on other refugees from a smaller boat with an abundance of both. After weathering a fierce storm, the boat landed at Malaysia. The Nguyens were immediately processed into a detention camp, where they lived for 10 months before transferring to a transit camp in Kuala Lampur. After two months there, they emigrated to the United States with the help of sponsors in Orange County.

Nguyen’s father was finally released in 1990 from the camp in Vietnam (the oldest brother had escaped with the others), but the government refused to allow him to join his family. He got a tourist visa to East Germany at about the time the Berlin Wall came down, Nguyen says. “When he arrived there he crossed into West Berlin, went to the nearest American embassy and applied for asylum.

“When I passed the bar, he was my first client. I was scared to death, because if I lost that case I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

Nguyen, a graduate of Hastings Law School in San Francisco, won his father’s case. And with the family reunited, he was free to “work fully on behalf of refugees without worrying about retaliation against (my family) by the Vietnamese government.”

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Nguyen’s experience as a refugee “is what I think drives him,” says Van Tran, who also works at LAVAS. “He’s seen as very committed, a very bright attorney who has a deep concern for the welfare of the refugees--his own people--as well as the community welfare.

“Lan is a person with a conscience, and that’s what I find appealing about him. He doesn’t forget his roots as a boat person. He’s definitely one of the key members of the future generation of Vietnamese Americans in this community, and we can expect him to contribute more as the years go by.”

Tony Lam, mayor pro tem of Westminster and the first Vietnamese American elected to public office in the United States, calls Nguyen’s commitment to pro bono work amazing. “He could be making a much better living at (his practice), but he spends so much time at LAVAS. I really credit him for that. He has a lot of passion and compassion. He’s already earned the respect and affection of the community here.”

The need for refugee advocacy, Nguyen says, is more urgent than ever.

The asylum-seekers, he says, would almost surely face persecution in Vietnam as political undesirables. And under a deadline agreed upon by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and U.N. member nations, the camps will close at the end of this year unless an extension is granted. Thousands of refugees may face forced repatriation.

Hunger strikes in protest of the policy are now common in the Asian camps, he says. Some of the about 50,000 refugees there, believing themselves beyond hope, have resorted to self-immolation, hanging or poisoning.

“Many of them would rather die than return to Vietnam,” Nguyen says. “Legal abuse over there is so rampant. Under international law, they’re no longer recognized as official refugees. It’s an unfair rejection of their refugee status. So it’s not really an immigration problem now; it’s a human rights problem. That’s where we come in.”

Nguyen and his staff at the Westminster office of LAVAS, which is headquartered in Virginia, have confronted massive and sometimes impenetrable bureaucracies on behalf of about 230 clients with contacts in Orange County.

“Essentially,” Nguyen says, “we work on a specific person, but along the way we also engage in some (general) advocacy, speak out on the part of refugees and asylum-seekers.”

The process most often begins, he says, when someone comes to the office to ask for help in getting a friend or relative out of a camp.

If Nguyen determines a case has promise, he files appeals for refugee status with the review board in the country where the asylum-seeker is being detained, with the U.N. High Commission for Refugees or with the U.S. State Department, depending on how far previous appeals have gotten.

Nguyen and his half a dozen associates only handle cases that have been rejected at least once. They win about 80% of the cases they take on in the Hong Kong camp and about 45% in the Philippines camp. The percentages vary among countries, Nguyen says, because some authorities make their job easier than others.

To see for himself how things work, Nguyen traveled at his own expense to the Philippine detention camp known as Palawan in 1992. Joining international volunteers there, he began processing cases from the day of his arrival, often working outdoors in stiflingly hot and humid weather.

“Palawan is one of the best camps in the region,” he says, “but the living conditions are still very difficult. Families live in a very small space: 12 feet square for a family of three or four, with all the facilities there. They cook there, and much of the food is rotten. All communications with the outside world are censored. There’s no work, and people have nothing to do.”

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It is Wednesday morning, and Nguyen is half an hour from his departure to Long Beach, where he is due in court. At the moment, however, he is wedged into a corner of a tiny studio at the offices of Little Saigon Radio and Television in Santa Ana.

During his weekly call-in show from 9:30 to 10 on KWIZ (96.7 FM), he usually answers about 20 calls on legal matters. On this day, he will also explain in Vietnamese how property taxes work.

“I’m going to be talking about how people can apply for a reduction on their property taxes,” he says. “A lot of people don’t know they can do that. Next week, I’m going to talk about what to do if people get stopped for a DUI.”

He gets no pay for the radio show or for the 15-minute legal advice TV spot he does biweekly on KRCA Channel 62. In the eight months since their start-up, they have become among the stations’ most popular shows.

“I find his programs very, very educational,” says LAVAS co-worker Tran. “There’s a great need for that in our community because . . . many of us are newly arrived, and we may be intimidated by the legal system here.”

Diem Do, who hosts shows on Little Saigon Radio and Television dealing with youth and human rights issues, says he and Nguyen often exchange ideas about their programs and occasionally appear together.

Nguyen has come a long way, Do says, and many of his listeners can relate to that. “He came with nothing, had lost everything, came to a strange land not knowing the language, being on the bottom of society, having to fight his way up. He has a lot of good ideas, and he’s a man with a good heart. I think what he’s been through helps him relate better to a lot of people.”

Nguyen says he enjoys his time in the broadcast booth, partly because it involves research. “I can’t just get a lot of this stuff off the top of my head. It helps me learn.”

That thirst for knowledge, and the passion to use it, drove Nguyen even before his arrival in Orange County.

“When I was in the camp,” he says, “I always had a desire to become one of those people who helped. It’s very emotional for a boat person to return to a camp and do that. During my time in the camp, my education was still in my mind. And when I was in law school, I did research in international law. The refugees were my major concern.”

And will continue to be, Nguyen says: “Even though they say they’re closing the camps, there may be some people still there. So we’ll continue to work.”

And Nguyen will continue to divide his time.

“The guy’s really intelligent,” Do says, “and he could be really successful in his (private law practice), but he diverts his time and energy to so many other things. He’s managed to find the time to do that. Money is not the only thing in his life.

“I think all that he gives back to the community is what really enriches his life.”

Lan Quoc Nguyen

Age: 30

Native?: No; born in Saigon, Vietnam. lives in Westminster.

Family: Single. One of seven sons of Hoi Thuc Nguyen and Lan Thi Pham, whom he supports.

Passions: Helping Vietnamese asylum-seekers and immigrants, reading, visiting friends.

On bringing his father to the United States: “When I passed the bar, he was my first client. I was scared to death, because if I lost that case I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

On reuniting with his father after an 11-year separation: “My mother and brothers went through a lot, but we didn’t know what he went through during those years. We had to fill each other in. It took a long time to get used to it.”

On his commitment to helping asylum-seekers: “I spend long hours, but I think it’s worth it. I do feel I have an obligation to the community to do this.”