Refugee in 4-Week Holding Pattern

He speaks only Jerai, an obscure tribal dialect found in a corner of Vietnam’s Pleiku district.

So for nearly a month, a homesick Vietnamese refugee stranded at Los Angeles International Airport slept on benches and spent his days silently dreaming of getting out of Los Angeles.

Then the man, yearning to see relatives in one of Vietnam’s Montagnard villages, was embraced by an unexpected “family” -- airport police, airline employees and others who work at the Tom Bradley International Terminal and who offered him food and shelter.

The 47-year-old villager has been stuck at the airport since Sept. 20, when he and two other refugees arrived from Charlotte, N.C., to start the first leg of an overseas trip they hoped would eventually land them in Ho Chi Minh City.

Visa problems prevented them from boarding their flight, although the villager’s two friends were eventually able to catch a plane to Cambodia by way of Taipei, Taiwan.

But the Montagnard was stranded after he lost his refugee passport and his North Carolina identification card, which were necessary to board an international flight.

The refugee’s dilemma is similar to that of Tom Hanks’ character in the recent film “The Terminal,” in which a visitor to the United States is stranded because of a political coup in his native country.

“But this one’s a true story,” said Lacy Smith, superintendent of terminal operations at LAX. “This isn’t a movie.”

On Friday, Smith and other Bradley Terminal employees and airport officials continued to feed and house the stranded villager and to try to replace his missing travel documents.

Airport administrators have withheld the man’s name and refused to allow his face to be photographed at the urging of U.S. immigration officials and refugee resettlement experts.

Because of the Montagnards’ close cooperation with the United States during the Vietnam War, disclosure of the man’s identity “would endanger his life further” in Vietnam, said Nancy Castles, public relations director for Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency responsible for running LAX.

“He’s been advised by many, many people that he is putting his life in jeopardy by returning to Vietnam,” Castles said. “He’s been told it’s dangerous. But he’s obsessed about getting home.”

Castles, who has driven the man to an airport maintenance facility so he could wash up in a shower area used by LAX employees, said the Montagnard was part of a group of 900 Vietnamese refugees resettled in North Carolina in 2002.

He and his two companions worked as laborers through a Charlotte-based resettlement organization that Castles said had asked not to be named. But the trio became homesick for Vietnam and saved up to buy plane tickets.

Because they were Montagnards, the Vietnamese Consulate in Washington refused to issue them visas to return home. And because they lacked the proper visas, China Airlines would not allow them aboard its Taiwan-bound plane Sept. 20, Castles said.

Airport Traveler’s Aid workers noticed the three stranded Vietnamese several days later and arranged a place for them to stay at a downtown Los Angeles mission and then in the Vietnamese community in Orange County. But both times the trio quickly returned to the airport.

Along the way, however, the 47-year-old lost his refugee passport and identification card. He was left behind after his companions were able to exchange their plane tickets to Vietnam for tickets to nearby Cambodia and were allowed to take off.

When Airport Police Sgt. Vince Garcia spotted the villager sitting in a Bradley Terminal waiting area, he summoned a Vietnamese-speaking airport telecommunications department worker. Although translation proved difficult, the man’s story began to come to light. By this week, his life was starting to get easier.

Airport police officers began collecting money to pay the man’s way to San Francisco in case he needed to go there to obtain the proper visa. They found a place near a police security checkpoint where he could sleep at night and officers could watch over him.

LAX administrators contacted U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to get a duplicate refugee passport for him and arranged for a cot for him to sleep on in a little-used room in the Bradley Terminal.

Airport visitor information center representative Geraldine Garcia and her co-workers brought food from home for the refugee. Others treated him to meals at terminal restaurants.

“They bought him food twice a day for 3 1/2 weeks -- cops and airport people. He always picks rice and chicken, and sometimes Mongolian or beef broccoli,” said Faviola Ochoa, a server at the Hamada restaurant.

“Poor dude. He doesn’t speak one word of English. He just points. I’m rooting for him to get home.”

Traveler’s Aid officials said this stranded-traveler case was like no other in LAX history.

“It’s been the most unusual situation we’ve dealt with, and we’ve been at this airport since 1950,” said Christine Okinaga, Traveler’s Aid director of volunteers.

“He’s stubborn,” she said. “He refuses to go to a hotel. Since he’s been here almost a month, he feels comfortable here.”

On Friday, the refugee was clearly appreciative of his benefactors. He was spending his time watching planes take off and reading his Bible and a small book designed to teach children English.

Smith, the Bradley Terminal’s superintendent, said he planned to move the man to a more comfortable room during the weekend, after a movie crew shooting “Otherwise Engaged,” starring Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Costner, finished filming and moved out. The hope is that the man will soon receive his replacement refugee passport. He plans to go to Cambodia, which shares a border with Vietnam.

Smith said his unexpected guest’s situation was not unlike that of Hanks’ character in “The Terminal” -- a movie Smith had not yet seen.

But now, he said, he doesn’t have to see it. He’s living it.