Top Students Lead Dual Lives in Asian Gangs

Gripping a lead pipe he picked off the street, Phuoc Nguyen and more than a dozen of his friends swaggered along the dusty railroad tracks, preparing to do battle with a group of Latino youths who, they said, had been hassling them at school.

Police arrived before the fight broke out, and immediately targeted Phuoc because he was armed for attack. Only weeks earlier, the 13-year-old, who describes himself as a former gang member, had been detained by police and suspended from school for allegedly beating two students at another campus, school officials said.

As punishment, Phuoc was ordered by the Westminster School District to complete a two-week program for troubled youths--not exactly the kind of place you’d expect to find a straight-A student whom school officials have described as one of their academic stars.

“I have two lives,” said Phuoc, a recent graduate of Helen Stacey Intermediate School in Huntington Beach, whose mother agreed to let him be identified for this story. “I want to do good in school, but I like to hang out and go places with [my gang friends]. What I don’t like is doing bad things, but sometimes it’s hard to stay away because they say, ‘Come on, come on.’ ”

The vast majority of Asian honor students are not gang members, and the vast majority of Asian gang members do not excel in school. But police, school officials and gang experts say they have begun to notice a contingent of students--almost all of them Asian--who maintain both gang ties and top grade-point averages.

“We’ll hear that an Asian gang member is arrested for home invasion, and then realize that the kid is a straight-A student,” said Sheri Jones, principal at Stacey Intermediate. “Their attitude is, ‘When I come to school, I get good grades, so what’s your beef? What I do after school is my own time.’ ”

The youths are walking anomalies, living dangerously and impulsively when they are among friends, but often taking on dramatically different personalities at school by earning top grades, academic awards and teachers’ admiration.

No one can estimate the number of Asian gang members who are top students, but school, police and other officials in Orange and Los Angeles counties say the phenomenon is not rare.

“We see a lot of very intelligent kids from well-to-do families getting involved in gangs,” said Bill Howell, a deputy with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department who specializes in Asian organized crime. “I’m not going to say the majority are Rhodes scholars, but I will say that it’s not uncommon at all to see a kid in a gang with a straight A grade-point average and a scholarship to college.”

In recent years, Asian gang members and gang wanna-bes who also excel in school have made news in Orange County. Before he murdered fellow honor student Stuart A. Tay, Robert Chan, a candidate for class valedictorian and destined for an Ivy League education, bragged to his friends that he was a member of the notorious Chinese gang, Wah Ching.

Chan was sentenced to life in prison without parole for orchestrating one of the most shocking slayings in recent county history. It’s uncertain whether Chan was actually a member of the gang, but authorities say he was a suspect in the 1992 beating of a teen-ager who apparently bad-mouthed Wah Ching.

Once a highly regarded UC Irvine biology student with aspirations to medical school, Dan Trung Hoang now waits behind bars at the Orange County Jail facing a minimum of 15 years in prison after his April 6 conviction for attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and committing crimes for the benefit of a street gang.

A jury concluded the 20-year-old former honor student from Anaheim’s Katella High School acted in association with a street gang named Alpha Kappa Piru, though Hoang denies the affiliation.

To those who don’t know them, these young men’s futures appear paved with gold. But many high-achieving students are drawn into gangs because they seek the thrills, acceptance, power and material possessions that good grades don’t always bring.

Authorities say that despite their gang affiliations, some Asian gang members still strive for top grades because they are under pressure from their parents to succeed.

“Asian immigrant families tend to push their kids very hard to excel in school,” said Bruce Davis, a gang investigator with the Garden Grove Police Department. “As long as their kids are doing well in school, they think everything is OK.”

Problems arise, counselors said, because many Asian students came to the United States as young children and have adopted American beliefs, while their parents still adhere to traditional Asian customs. Some high-achieving students have estranged or distant relationships with their parents and feel unwelcome or misunderstood at school, experts say.

“They may be bright, but their emotional support is weak,” said Sam Ho, a gang counselor at the Vietnamese Community of Orange County. “They’re not accepted by their family because they’re too Americanized, and they don’t feel accepted at school because they’re Vietnamese.”

Ho said many Asian parents also don’t understand how American schools work and are little help when their children run into racial tension, unfair treatment and other problems at school.

Hoang went from a diligent premed student to a convicted felon as a result of a Nov. 15, 1994, incident in an Irvine supermarket parking lot. After Hoang and four of his friends argued with people in three other cars, one of the antagonists punched Hoang’s friend, a juvenile, in the face, court records show.

Hoang grabbed a gun that his friend had stashed in the car, got out and pointed the weapon at the driver of one of the other cars, court records show. But Hoang dropped the gun when he was tackled by several others.

Hoang’s friend then grabbed the gun and shot two men. As Hoang drove off, his friend fired more shots from the back seat of the car, hitting one of them again, court records show.

Hoang was convicted of three counts of attempted murder with gang enhancement because the jury believed he conspired to kill the men to uphold the honor of the AKP gang his friend belonged to, officials said. Hoang testified that he acted in self-defense and wasn’t a member or associate of any gang.

“I’ve received dozens of letters from his teachers, friends and other people who are just shocked that he’s connected to something like this,” said Frederick McBride, Hoang’s newly appointed attorney. “In their letters, these people paint Dan as an honest, intelligent, hard-working and good-natured person. My belief is that if you had known him, you would not believe how this could happen.”

Some Asian community activists believe many Asian youths are mistakenly labeled as gang members because they hang out with gang members or dress a certain way. They contend that’s why so many Asian teen-agers--some of whom are top students--are pegged as gang members.

Authorities admit that students sometimes are misidentified, but they say Asian gangs are becoming so pervasive that they attract even those students who would seem to have other options.

Phuoc, for example, has been an academic standout since he was young, bringing home top grades and skipping the seventh grade at his teacher’s urging. His sister remembers how he used to do his oldest brother’s high school homework when he was barely out of elementary school.

“Phuoc didn’t want his brother to get in trouble at school,” said Loan Nguyen, Phuoc’s 18-year-old sister. “No one asked him to do it. He just did it. That’s how smart he is.”

But Phuoc acknowledges he is also drawn to gangs. And even though he claims he has “walked out” of his gang, Notoma Boys Junior, he still regularly hangs out with its members and keeps himself plugged into gang activities.

On a recent afternoon, Phuoc was at a friend’s house when he dialed a number that connected him to what he described as the “gangster line.”

“Yo, this is NBJ--Notoma Boys Junior. Don’t [expletive] with us,” Phuoc hollered into the telephone. He then called back the number, pleased to discover his message would be recited to the next caller.

“It’s just for fun,” Phuoc said after hanging up the phone.

Almost everywhere Phuoc goes, he is reminded of the power of gangs--at school, at the mall, at parks, at the skating rink and even at home.

“It’s hard not to stay out of trouble because teen-agers want to be cool,” Loan Nguyen said. “Phuoc’s a good student, but right now, he doesn’t know what he wants to be.”

Phuoc said he earns good grades to please his parents, but he sees little other incentive to study. Asked if he feels he has a bright future, he responded: “Right now, I feel life sucks. I’m depressed and unconfident.”

Mai Nguyen, Phuoc’s mother, struggles to hold back tears as she talks about her children, who are turning to gangs one by one.

“I cry all the time, because I know my kids are involved in gangs,” she said through an interpreter. “I stay up every night waiting for them to come home. I’m hoping from now on, Phuoc will be better. But it’s really difficult to control him because he listens more to his friends than his family.”

Neil Snowden, an assistant principal at Westminster High School, said he recently worked with an Asian student who initially was put in the school’s highest freshman honor classes because he placed at the top of his class on standardized tests.

The boy, however, started acting up in class and came to school drunk one day. After threatening another student, he was suspended. When he returned, he threatened someone else and was expelled. The boy is now a runaway.

“I’m certain he was involved in gangs because tattoos started appearing on his arm and his back, and they looked like fairly new tattoos,” Snowden said. “During the day, they call themselves, ‘school boys’ and ‘school girls’ and after school, they become ‘players.’ ”

In another case, an Arcadia 17-year-old with alleged ties to the Wah Ching gang spent 22 days this spring in various juvenile facilities in connection with the brutal assault on an Asian teen-ager. Those charges were dropped for lack of evidence, but the youth was already on probation for an earlier group assault and battery of another young man.

At the same time the tall, lanky teen-ager was building a criminal record, he was earning top grades at Arcadia High School. In addition to maintaining a 3.5 grade-point average, he scored 1320 out of a possible 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, ranking him in the top 4% of all students who took the test, according to the New Jersey-based Educational Testing Service, which administers the exam.

He is also college bound, with aspirations of becoming an engineer like his father. He was accepted to UCLA, UC Irvine and other universities, but decided to attend UC Santa Barbara because of its strong engineering program, the youth said.

“He’s a smart kid, but he’s still tied in with the gangs,” said Chris Kuk, a Los Angeles County probation officer who works exclusively with Asian gang members. “I have reservations about his future.”

As he sits slouched in a chair at the Los Angeles County probation headquarters wearing a black jacket and hoop earrings, the youth said he had little difficulty being a gang member and a top student.

“I have two groups of friends--school boy friends and gang friends,” he said. “I studied because I wanted to please my mom with good grades. But I also wanted the respect and name of a gang.”

He said the reason he joined Wah Ching shortly after he transferred to Arcadia High is simple.

“I was jumped by six guys when I first got to Arcadia High,” he said. “A guy came up to me and asked me if I wanted him to back me up if I got jumped again. I said OK. One thing led to another. I joined the gang because it was the way to make friends.”

At Arcadia High and other schools in the San Gabriel Valley, gang members get the girls, get respect and drive the best cars, he said.

“It was like a hobby,” he said. “I look at it as an extracurricular activity. I just turned it on and then turned it off.”

But the “hobby” had its price: The young man said he was distraught watching his mother weep when she visited him at various juvenile facilities. “She kept blaming herself. She would say, ‘Just take care of yourself, we’re doing everything to help you.’ ”

Snowden said some Asian gang members are able to keep up their “honor student persona” throughout high school and end up at top colleges. Others, however, lose interest in school when they become too heavily involved in gangs.

“Going to school is hard work. There’s a lot of responsibilities like getting up in the morning, doing your homework and keeping up in class,” Snowden said. “Once kids see that life as a gang member is more attractive, school is no longer attractive to them.”

One 22-year-old former gang member who attended Ocean View High School in Huntington Beach lost his chance to win a wrestling scholarship from the University of Iowa when he was sentenced to three years in prison for attempted murder.

“I joined a gang because things were tense with my own family,” said the young man, who was released from prison last year and did not want to be identified because he still fears members of his former gang. “I couldn’t turn to my own family for help, and the gang seemed like they would be there for me.”

As a teen-ager, he said he and his fellow gang members committed robberies, home invasions, burglaries and even murders of rival gang members.

“We did it for money and power,” he said. “I blocked out all my mental feelings, and after a while, I could commit crimes without any feelings.

“I lost my soul. There’s two people inside of me. One is a ruthless killer, and the other is a lost, sensitive person.”