Time at ranch frees girls of sibling duties

It was a chilly winter night when a family of seven arrived at Santa Ana’s Catholic Worker shelter. For two weeks, the children and their pregnant mother slept in the backyard of the overcrowded shelter, with only a pillow and blankets to cushion the concrete floor.

The youngest children at the time, Ivy, now 4, and Gary, 3, were hospitalized after they became sick with pneumonia.

Nearly two years later, the family lives in a four-bedroom Garden Grove apartment, though the children prefer to sleep together in one big bed with their mother rather than the bunk beds in their rooms.

Mary, 12, Honey, 10, and Mimi, 9, all help with the hefty responsibility of caring for such a large family, but they also have big dreams about their future. Mary and Honey have Oscar ambitions, hoping to develop into comedic actresses.

Mimi wants to teach kindergarten, helping kids learn to count “so when they grow up, they have a good education.”

Their mother, Bei Thi, was the daughter of a black serviceman and a Cambodian woman in Vietnam. Termed an “Amerasian,” a child stigmatized as a “child of war,” she was denied education in Vietnam and could not read or write.

She made a living selling noodles from a street cart, which gave her the basic skills necessary to count her earnings.

Thi immigrated to the United States 13 years ago and soon was married. Her husband began a habit of petty theft to help the couple and their children survive, eventually graduating to more serious theft.

He was arrested nearly two years ago, and his children now visit him once a month in prison.

On a recent Monday morning, Thi is home caring for her seven children and making big bowls of Vietnamese soup with chunks of chicken, fish, rice noodles, green onions and chili oil in broth.

She is trying to learn English and hopes to get a driver’s license and a job soon.

In September, she will resume taking English classes four days a week.

This summer, Mary, Mimi and Honey got a break from their chores with five days at the Circle V Ranch Camp near Santa Barbara. They will come home today.

At camp, the girls can be their age without the responsibilities of caring for siblings. “They can just have fun,” Thi says in Vietnamese with the girls translating. “It keeps us thinking about the positive things.”

Mary, Honey and Mimi will be among the 12,000 children who will go to camp this summer, thanks to $2.1 million raised in the Los Angeles Times Summer Camp Campaign last year.

Donations this season will ensure that just as many deserving children get the camp experience next summer.

The annual fundraising campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which this year will match the first $1.2 million in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar.

Donations are tax-deductible. For more information, call (213) 237-5771. To make donations by credit card, go to latimes.com/summercamp.

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Unless requested otherwise, gifts of $50 or more will be acknowledged in The Times.