Seafood Spoken Here : Pearson’s Port Draws Clients From All Climes

To most of her customers, Vi Pearson is known simply as “mom.” Or “the fish lady.”

For 24 years, Vi, short for Viola, and her husband, Roy, have sold live crabs, lobsters and fresh fish at Pearson’s Port, a dinky “shack,” as they call it, floating on pontoons at the edge of Upper Newport Bay.

The couple built their market just off Coast Highway when Roy, then a machinist, dropped out of California’s aerospace industry for the life of a commercial fisherman.

If the Pearsons wanted a quiet existence, they didn’t exactly find it.

The shack has turned into a mecca for many of the Vietnamese refugees who arrived in Orange County and wanted fresh fish like they enjoyed in the old country.

“They became our biggest buyers,” Vi said. “And we were the only market around that had live crabs in tanks, and crabs were a staple of their diet.”

The Pearsons’ enterprise has also become a near United Nations where, on a typical weekend, Samoans, Chinese, Filipinos, Vietnamese and Latinos eagerly examine the shop’s tanks full of seafood.

Vi has won both loyalty and affection.

“I’ve been coming to her to buy fish for six years,” said Kathy Nguyen of Santa Ana. “Even when I lived in San Jose, I would come down and visit my family and then come here and buy her fish. And, we like her a lot. When I see her, I usually hug her and call her mom.”

For Vietnamese who resettled here 20 years ago, it was a difficult transition into American culture, especially without their staple foods that had sustained them in their homeland.

Vi recognized their need and asked a friend to circulate fliers with the port’s name and address at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, where thousands of Vietnamese refugees were going as part of their processing and for relocation throughout the United States.

But serving up fish is only one aspect of running the market. Communicating with the customers is quite another.

“I wanted them to feel at home, so I took a Vietnamese course at Orange Coast College,” Vi said. “I learned how to say ‘fish,’ which is ca, and also numbers so I could tell them how much our fish cost per pound.”

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It was a convenient match for the Vietnamese and the Pearsons.

The port sells seafood that Vi’s husband and son Tom, 34, who also became a commercial fisherman, catch in local waters. She has spent more than two decades cutting up an average of 1,200 pounds of fish a week.

Tom Tran and his wife, Pham Ly, of Garden Grove recently stopped by the Pearsons’ and picked up their weekly batch of fresh fish.

“You know, for the Vietnamese, this is how we like to buy our fish,” Tran said. “For us, you don’t put it in the freezer.”

Tran said he and his wife were going to go home and cook canh chua (sour fish soup) with vegetables and noodles.

Vi and Roy Pearson, both 69, prospered but never moved their tiny store, which sits in the shadow of the Coast Highway bridge over the bay.

Tom Pearson, who is one of six children, recalled that the shack was loosened and washed away along with dozens of boats during a big storm that pounded the coast in 1983.

“The Coast Guard called us the next day and told us they found our shack floating out to sea,” he said. “They said they tied it up at Lido Island, and that’s where we could find it.”

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With Tom and Roy’s daily catches of fresh fish, shrimp, and stone, spider, and northern red crabs, the family made a name for itself.

Years ago, they also served cooked seafood, recalled Tom’s wife, Terese.

“We actually cooked up dozens of crabs in a cooker and served them steamed to customers,” she said. “We had them banging away with hammers on the shells out there.”

But with the growth of Little Saigon, a commercial hub for thousands of Southeast Asian people who settled in Orange County, the Pearsons began to lose customers to a host of Asian markets that also began carrying fresh seafood.

So, Vi learned Spanish, hoping to fill yet another commercial and cultural niche.

“Vi’s our gimmick,” said Terese Pearson. “We have people coming in from all over and from many countries and they always want her. They say, ‘Where’s the lady? Where’s the fish lady?’ ”

Reyna Alas, who is from El Salvador, said she enjoys chatting with Vi while examining each tank, checking for a good fish.

“I think she’s a good person,” said Alas, of Costa Mesa. “Here, the fish is always fresh and a lot of people from my country like to eat fish.”