His journey mirrors California’s own story of evolving attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community since the state legalized same-sex marriage 12 years ago — around the time Nguyen-Amigo came out to his parents.

“Over the last 12 years, we’ve seen a real cultural shift within Orange County,” OC Pride co-President Manny Muro said as rainbow flags fly around the county and events are held during this Pride Month. “Even in places that once felt unwelcoming, there has been growing openness to LGBTQ+ families.”

“It’s not perfect,” he added. “There’s still a lot of work to be done, and we’re living in a moment where LGBTQ+ people are under political attack.”

“Pride is not just about being celebratory,” Muro said. “It’s about being loud and confident and visible. That’s why Pride matters. That’s why coming out matters. The more visible we are, the harder it is to deny our humanity.”

Nguyen-Amigo distinctly remembers the moment he disclosed his sexuality to his parents, a recent high school graduate weeping between his mom and dad in their bed.

“It was Valentine’s Day, 2014. I remember it vividly,” he said. “Like it was yesterday.”

Nguyen-Amigo didn’t necessarily mean to tell his parents the truth right then and there. But a tidal wave of emotions pushed the words buried deep in his chest to the shores of his lips.

“Duy, you’re our son,” his father said, wrapping him in a warm embrace. “You can tell us anything.”

Except, it turned out, the forbidden words he was about to speak.

“Mom, Dad. I’m gay,” he said in Vietnamese between hyperventilating gasps.

At first, his parents said nothing as they quickly withdrew their hug.

“We were in shock,” his mom, Thuy Nguyen, recalled.

“Are you joking? What did I do wrong as a parent?” his dad, Hung Nguyen, remembers thinking to himself.

“The silence was deafening,” Nguyen-Amigo said. “I’m sure there was only about 10 seconds’ worth of silence, but it felt like an eternity.”

“I could see the look in their faces shifting from shock to confusion to anger,” he added. “I knew they would react that way, and that was the saddest part.”

Feelings of liberation and despondency clashed in Nguyen-Amigo’s chest like a head-on collision.

“I felt like a huge weight had lifted off my shoulders,” he said. “For the first time in 18 years, I could finally be free.”

“But, immediately, I had another burden to carry — my family’s reaction.”

Looking back, Nguyen described the moment like a “whirlwind,” a word the musician recently borrowed for the title of what he calls his “most vulnerable” single.

That emotional “whirlwind” is all too familiar to many LGBTQ+ Vietnamese Americans and their families, said Uyen Hoang, executive director of Viet Rainbow Orange County. The grassroots group based in Little Saigon supports LGBTQ+ Vietnamese Americans and their loved ones through research, education and advocacy.

“We kind of assume certain attitudes are held by the older generation, but you’d be surprised how many are open and want to learn,” Hoang said.

For the Nguyens, the learning process about Duy’s identity took more than a decade, including a complete break in communication with their son. In time, they reconciled their love for him with acceptance of his authentic self.

Now, Thuy and Hung Nguyen are at peace with Duy as a gay man.

“It’s normal being gay,” his dad said recently after taking photos with his son wrapped in a Pride flag. “If he’s happy, we’re happy.”

“You are who you are,” added his mom. “We love him for who he is.”

Both parents said it took research —  scanning the internet, reading the news, talking privately with extended family — to come to terms with Duy’s identity.

Mostly, they said, it took time.

“The coming-out process was not just for me, but also for them, too,” Nguyen-Amigo said. “It’s a learning experience that took some time. They slowly but surely came around.”

Still, his parents say their son’s identity is not something they bring up with their Vietnamese friends and family.

“We are very proud of him,” his mom said. “But it’s still not something we talk about in the community, even with other parents of gay children.”

Fighting for visibility

Gina Masequesmay, a sociologist at Cal State Northridge, traces the “emergence of queer Vietnamese America” back to the late 1990s.

“You could say the organizations, such as Ô-Môi and the Gay Viet Alliance, were started super underground,” Hoang said.

In her research, Masequesmay says that support for queer Vietnamese Americans differed from the support for LGBTQ+ people in the “American mainstream.”

It often lagged behind, Hoang agreed.

That divide came into sharp relief in 2013. As California legalized gay marriage, private organizers of the Tết Parade — the largest Vietnamese cultural gathering outside Vietnam — barred a gay rights group from marching.

Hoang refers to the event as “The Exclusion.”

The move drew backlash and led to the founding of Viet Rainbow.

The fledgling nonprofit, in one of the first open displays of LGBTQ+ support in Little Saigon, gathered 250 community members on the parade’s sidelines dressed in rainbows and wielding Pride flags.

But a year later, organizers of the 2014 Tết Parade doubled down, once again voting overwhelmingly to exclude LGBTQ+ participants.

“They had an opportunity to make what’s wrong right, and they chose the same path as last year, which is to exclude us from a cultural event that we are a part of. We are part of the Vietnamese community,” Hieu Nguyen, then co-chair of Viet Rainbow, said at the time.

By then, after a year of organizing, Viet Rainbow had momentum on its side.

“Folks came together to strategize,” Hoang said. “We went on media, ethnic media, to share our stories. We went to deliver public comments at Westminster City Council meetings.”

“We also went to the big companies funding the parade and told them that funding a discriminatory parade could violate their company’s nondiscrimination clause,” she said.

Ultimately, Viet Rainbow convinced sponsors of the parade to pull about $80,000 in funding, which she said forced the organizers’ hands.

“Money talks,” she said. “We’ve been able to march ever since.”

Viet Rainbow’s inclusion in the 2014 Tết Parade marked a public softening of attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community in Little Saigon.

“Pride Month reminds us every year that visibility is not only a celebration, but it’s a testament to survival,” Muro said.

Getting By

Within weeks of the 2014 Tết Parade, Nguyen-Amigo came out to his parents.

His relationship with his dad immediately calcified, and he ran away from home.

His Filipino boyfriend faced a similar fate from his parents, leaving the pair of 18-year-olds to navigate life pretty much on their own.

“In each other, we found the only other person who ever truly accepted our entire identity,” Nguyen-Amigo said.

So, they married.

But their love story did not end happily ever after.

They were two 18-year-olds, without college degrees or vocational training, trying to make ends meet in Orange County.

Their stress, their youth, their romantic inexperience — each other’s first boyfriends before they married — all took an exorbitant toll on their bond.

“We couldn’t catch a break,” Nguyen-Amigo said.

He dropped out of Cal State Fullerton to take a low-paying fast-food job.

He re-enrolled. He dropped out again.

He had been a promising student, he said, but “life happened.”

“If we stopped working, we feared that we would end up reverting back to where we were at the beginning, back to square one, and we didn’t want that for ourselves,” Nguyen-Amigo said. “We had no safety net. We felt, at the time, that we were each other’s safety net. It was us against the world.”

A decade ago, there were few resources to support the Vietnamese queer community with long-term financial or emotional distress, Hoang said.

Nguyen-Amigo thanks his godfather for lifesaving emotional support. He also saw a therapist, but not one who was Vietnamese or understood the nuances of his family and cultural dynamics, he said.

Even today, Viet Rainbow, with its six staff members, is the only organization in Orange County exclusively dedicated to educating the families of LGBTQ+ Vietnamese Americans and advocating for Viet LGBTQ+ rights, Hoang said.

“There continue to be many places in Little Saigon that still feel too dangerous to go to as an openly queer person,” Hoang said.

“If you’re just standing in the corner of, say, a boba shop trying to blend in, it maybe isn’t as dangerous,” she said. “But it feels like you have to try to be stealthy.”

One place where Nguyen-Amigo said he began to feel safe as his full self was Garden Grove High, taking an AP psychology class.

“In that classroom, in that academic setting, I heard for the first time someone talk about being gay in a non-judgmental way,” he said. “I remember stepping outside of that classroom and breathing a sigh of relief. I guess I’m not weird. I guess I’m not crazy after all.”

His teacher ended up at his wedding.

More than a decade later, Nguyen-Amigo said he’s worried the Trump administration’s crackdown on DEI, including the president’s threat to withdraw federal funding from schools with diversity initiatives, could eliminate safe public spaces for LGBTQ+ students in a similar position to his.

“It’s not like we talked about the LGBTQ+ movement in math class or science class,” he said. “Looking back, I think I signed up for psych because I knew that topic would be brought up and I wanted to learn more about who I was.”

Hoang says the political climate for LGBTQ+ rights is “fraught everywhere right now,” but especially at the federal level, which can have a big impact locally by reducing the safe spaces for young people.

“There are certain walls that are not worth climbing with the energy that we have,” Hoang said of her six-member team. “We can’t change everyone’s attitudes. But we can focus our attention on local, county and statewide issues that are important for us.”

In recent years, for instance, Viet Rainbow pushed back against parental notification policies in local districts.

Gov. Gavin Newsom later signed into law a bill making it illegal to disclose students’ gender identities without consent.

Now, the Trump administration is investigating that law and threatening to pull funding from the state over it.

“We’re still seeing dangerous surges in hate,” Muro said. “There are always laws targeting LGBTQ+ people and attempts to roll back our rights.”

“June will always be Pride Month, not because it was granted by any administration, but because it was claimed by generations of LGBTQ+ people who refuse to be erased,” he said.  “Pride is not a holiday that was handed down by politicians. It was born from protest. The White House’s attempt to reframe that is a distraction and a dangerous one.”

‘My way’

While Nguyen-Amigo sees a tempest brewing on the horizon for LGBTQ+ rights, in his personal life, at least, the soon-to-be-30-year-old is sailing on calmer waters.

After divorcing his ex-husband several years ago, the eddies of his relational whirlwinds have slowed, and the currents of his music career have gathered pace.

Today, Nguyen-Amigo’s teen marriage live on not only in his hyphenated name but in his music career. His solo artist stage name is theoneDNA — for Duy Nguyen Amigo. And, the lyrics of his music harken back to his trials and tribulations with love.

“Whirlwind — but, I know I’m stronger than this,” he sings in the track named for the storm that followed his coming out. “This is a battle I must win, though it feels I’m hanging by a thread.”

His authenticity has garnered him attention in the Southern California avant-garde, both as a solo artist and as part of his band, Neon Pacific (formerly known as New Tradition).

His career reached new heights earlier this year when Neon Pacific performed for a month in Disney California Adventure’s Lunar New Year festival.

Nguyen-Amigo stood in the Happiest Place on Earth as the frontman of his band and his heritage.

“I still get choked up thinking back on it,” he said. “There are certain things in my culture that I don’t necessarily agree with, but I choose to focus on the aspects of Vietnamese culture that strongly resonate with me.”

“For the most part, I love my culture,” he said. “It’s my culture. It’s such a beautiful culture. I’m so proud to be Vietnamese and to give back to my community through music.”

Music is also how he reunited with his parents, who own the Mon Amour banquet hall in Anaheim.

Occasionally, Nguyen-Amigo sings there, his lyrics activating his parents’ empathy in ways his spoken words never did.

“In his songs, you can hear his suffering. You can hear the obstacles he’s had to overcome,” his mom said. “But you can also hear his happiness. His inner peace.”

“I couldn’t be prouder of him,” his dad said.

For a long time, Nguyen-Amigo said he struggled to serenade the crowds at Mon Amour.

“I felt that, if anything, whenever I performed in front of a Vietnamese audience, I had to remove so much of myself,” he said. “And that didn’t make sense to me. Music is supposed to do the opposite of that, right? It’s supposed to complete me.”

His catharsis arrived recently when he decided to perform a bilingual rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”

“I sang the majority of the song in Vietnamese, and the last chorus, which is probably the most impactful chorus, I sang it in English, in front of a predominantly conservative crowd,” he said.

As he gazed at the dancing couples, he made peace with himself.

“The message just hit me so hard,” he said. “I will live my life my way.”

Andrew Holguin of Midway City was convicted March 27, 2024, of second- degree murder with a sentencing enhancement for gang activity. Holguin was convicted with co-defendant Christian Huerta, 25, who was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, has served his time in the June 20, 2019, killing of 45-year-old Duc Le.

Holguin was facing 25 years to life in prison, but received the lesser sentence on Friday, his attorney, Roger Sheaks, said. Holguin, who has been in custody since July 25, 2019, has nearly six years of credits behind bars, Sheaks said.

Holguin and Huerta faced more years in prison on a charge of participating in gang activity, but in a non-jury trial he was acquitted of that.

Another suspect — Jeffrey Andrade — remains at-large and a fourth defendant was tried as a juvenile.

Le’s body was found at about 10 p.m. June 20, 2019, on Locust Street just south of Westminster Boulevard, police said.

Half of Le’s ribs were broken along with his jaw, Deputy District Attorney Lisa Harris said in her opening statement of the trial.

The assailants “saw an easy target” in Le, a “homeless man sleeping on a couch,” Harris said.

One witness saw “them punching and kicking and at first didn’t know a human being” was the target, Harris said.

Then the witness saw the attackers “drag him across the street” and through a construction site as “his hair came out of his scalp,” Harris said.

At some point, something “came over” Holguin and he “bashed (Le) over and over again with his skateboard, and if he wasn’t already dead yet he certainly was now,” Harris said.

The victim was born in Vietnam before emigrating to the United States, Harris said.

Prosecutors said Le had mental health issues and would drift in and out of homelessness.

Officers responded around 11:30 a.m. to the store, located inside a busy plaza at Westminster Boulevard and Goldenwest Street, after a man, believed to be in his early 20s, began to spray multiple people with bear spray. Over 50 customers and employees were forced to evacuate after fumes from the mace reached the air conditioning vents and spread throughout the store, according to the Westminster Police Department.

Three people were directly hit by the spray, including one person who was pushing a cart with a 3-year-old. The child came within inches of the spray, police said.

“We are taking this very seriously,” Deputy Police Chief Cameron Knauerhaze said.

Bear spray contains high levels of the compound Oleoresin Capsicum, also known as ‘pepper spray.’ Normally used to ward off bears and other animals, when activated, a large volume of spray can be emitted and spread at further distances. Making the inflammatory effects much more intense than traditional mace used for self-defense, Knauerhaze explained.

Orange County Fire Authority officials treated the victims, including several police officers who were exposed while evacuating others, at the scene.

Surveillance video appeared to show the man spray the victims without any prior interaction or incident, police said. Witnesses said the male suspect wore glasses and a green jacket with white flowers.

The man is being accused of three separate charges, including burglary, unlawful use of tear gas, and child endangerment. He fled before police arrived, leaving behind a large can of bear spray at the grocery store.

Police ask anyone with more information to call 714-548-3783 or 714-548-3767.

THE ARREST: Man suspected of harming and killing cats in Santa Ana

COMMUNITY OUTRAGE: Around 100 people protest in Santa Ana after suspected cat killer released on bail

Alejandro Oliveros Acosta of Santa Ana was charged Monday with two counts of animal cruelty and a count of grand theft of a pet, all felonies, as well as a misdemeanor count of possession of methamphetamine, according to the criminal complaint. Acosta was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday in the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana.

Police have fielded multiple calls over the past several weeks about pet cats being snatched and harmed, Officer Natalie Garcia of the Santa Ana Police Department said when Acosta was arrested last month. Several residents pointed to Acosta as a suspect, she added.

Investigators searched his home on the 2300 block of West Wilshire Avenue, where they found evidence of “dozens” of dead cats, Garcia said. The number of pets killed was too numerous to estimate more specifically, she said.

Acosta is also suspected of abducting a Bengal lynx cat named Clubber from the feline’s home in Westminster last month, Garcia said. That cat was reported stolen March 19.

The owner saw the suspect lure Clubber — possibly with food — before he snatched the feline and fled in a white pickup truck, police said.

According to Jimmy, the new sandwich, which he started serving on May 2, is already a smash. “It’s been crazy since we started serving it,” he shared. “We went through a lot of sandwiches this past week.”

Mama Hieu’s hot chicken sandwich features an ample chicken breast that undergoes a 72-hour marination in a brine of buttermilk, oyster sauce and a secret seasoning blend. After being fried to a crispy, golden hue, the breast is dipped in spicy chili oil and seasoned with a chili blend mix.

“The gỏi is what really sets it apart” from other hot chicken sandwiches, he explained. Mama Hieu’s gỏi, a Vietnamese salad, serves as the sandwich’s characteristic slaw topping, composed of shredded green and red cabbage, carrots, cilantro, pickled red onions, mint and dill, with the latter two herbs providing a cooling, herbaceous contrast. The “slaw” is then tossed with a buttermilk nước chấm dressing, dolloped atop the breast and sandwiched between plush Martin’s potato rolls.

ALSO READ: Here, try this: Shatteringly crisp egg rolls in Westminster

“That’s what makes it a Vietnamese hot chicken sandwich,” added Le.

While hot chicken sandwiches, specifically the Nashville variety, have made cameos on more and more menus in recent years, ranging from mom-and-pop eateries to chains like KFC and Los Angeles-based Angry Chickz, the dish’s roots stretch back to Prince’s Hot Chicken in Nashville. Legend has it that, sometime in the 1930s, a scorned lover of Hornton Prince, chef-founder of Prince’s Hot Chicken, helped light the fuse that sparked an American culinary phenom.

Still in operation after nearly a century, Prince’s Hot Chicken explains on its website, “While we don’t know if Prince came home one night with a faint hint of perfume or a smudge of lipstick on his collar, we do know that after another one of Prince’s nights out, his scorned lover wanted revenge. And using Prince’s love of fried chicken as bait, she concocted the perfect recipe,” doctoring his Sunday morning chicken “with a wallop of spice.” The revenge dish failed at its mission of vengeance, but succeeded in creating a culinary hit. Price put the hot chicken on his menu, and a legend was born.

From Nashville to Westminster’s Little Saigon, hot chicken sandwiches can be found on many a menu, with eateries like Mama Hieu’s making it their very own. The Vietnamese hot chicken sandwich costs $15 alone; a combo, with either fries or tater tots, runs $18.

Find it: 9090 Bolsa Ave., Westminster, 714-261-6110

Owners of 360 PACE announced Wednesday, May 7, they have withdrawn their application to CalOptima Health, Orange County’s insurance plan for the poor, and to the state Department of Health Care Services for the new center after spending millions on the nearly completed site.

In an emailed statement, 360 PACE attributed the decision to “the ongoing financial burden of maintaining an operational facility without active participants” as well as “regulatory delays pushing us past our anticipated July 1 launch into 2026 or later.” The company would not answer any questions beyond the statement.

The CalOptima board of directors on Feb. 6 rescinded its 2023 endorsement of 360 PACE based on allegations of health care fraud against what staff members called an “affiliate,” 360 Health, which conducted mass COVID testing for the county. CalOptima officials left the door open to reconsider its action upon further investigation, but 360 PACE gave up.

CalOptima’s endorsement was needed to secure state and federal approval of the 360 PACE center, which is 95% complete in Westminster’s Little Saigon at a cost of more than $5 million.

The center would have been based on a state model as a “program of all-inclusive care for the elderly,” or PACE. That model operates as a one-shop stop for health and other services aimed at keeping senior citizens at home rather than at a nursing facility.

PACE programs are funded by Medicare and Medicaid dollars and must be approved by the state Department of Health Care Services and the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“This was a difficult choice,” company officials said, “as 360 PACE had invested years of its time, millions of dollars and developed a program that would provide culturally competent care to underserved seniors, especially Vietnamese and API populations in Orange County.”

They continued, “despite having a facility ready to serve the community, we’ve faced numerous regulatory delays and bureaucratic hurdles that made timely progress extremely challenging.”

The company could no longer afford to keep the center operational after sitting vacant for four years, they said. “The emotional and financial toll on our team has been substantial,” they said.

Some members of 360 PACE were linked to 360 Health, which operated county “super sites” for COVID testing during the pandemic under the name 360 Clinic.

CalOptima’s concern over 360 PACE was sparked by a whistleblower lawsuit filed in May 2024 that alleged 360 Clinic schemed to illegally solicit kickbacks from doctors and defraud federal health programs. The suit alleges 360 Clinic double-billed government agencies for the tests and plotted to get kickbacks from physicians for referrals.

The litigation by former employee Laura Garcia also accuses 360 Clinic officials of conspiring to send patients to medical services either owned by the firm or by relatives of company officials, a violation of federal and state regulations against physician self-referrals.

In Wednesday’s email, 360 PACE said a comprehensive, independent audit of 360 Clinic, ordered by legal counsel and led by a former FBI special agent, was conducted over the past three months and found full compliance across all areas.”

However, 360 PACE did not respond to a request for a copy of the audit and the name of the auditor.

CalOptima had no comment Wednesday on 360 PACE’s withdrawal.

Doan Hoang Curtis was just a toddler on April 30, 1975, when she was airlifted with her mother from the Defense Attaché Office in Saigon to the U.S.S. Hancock, which was waiting for evacuees in the Gulf of Thailand.

Curtis arrived at Wednesday’s commemorative event in Westminster holding the baby dress she wore on her emergency flight out of Vietnam 50 years ago — a delicate white gown with a ruffled neckline and small embroidered flowers in orange, yellow, green, blue and red.

Such an innocent dress with such a haunting story.

“All I remember from that entire week was how terrified I was to get in that helicopter,” Curtis said. “I wasn’t quite 3 years old, but that became a defining moment in my life.”

Alongside her on Wednesday stood several U.S. Marine Corps veterans involved in extricating U.S. officials and allies from the DAO building and the U.S. Embassy onto the U.S.S. Hancock.

They might’ve saved Curtis’s life.

U.S. forces evacuated more than 7,000 people from Saigon in the final two days of the war in a mission known as Operation Frequent Wind.

Walter Sweeney, a Marine Corps corporal, evacuated people from the DAO building and then processed refugees on the U.S.S. Hancock.

“All these years gone by, and I had never met anyone we got out,” Sweeney said. “Then, I met Doan and her mother. It’s just such a beautiful thing to see the lives they have made.”

Curtis became a documentary filmmaker. Her latest project, “Turning Point: The Vietnam War,” is a five-episode series about the fall of Saigon that’s now streaming on Netflix.

Her success has given Sweeney some solace from what otherwise was a harrowing chapter of his life.

“We lost two of our own at the DAO building on April 29, Cpl. Charlie McMahon and Lance Cpl. Darwin Judge,” Sweeney said. “Meeting Doan and her mother gives meaning to what we did — and especially what they sacrificed.”

Retired Col. Steve Hasty, then a staff sergeant in the Marine Corps who served alongside Sweeney, McMahon and Judge, also found comfort in Wednesday’s event, where hundreds of community members gathered to pay tribute to South Vietnamese and American veterans.

“This is the welcome home we never got in 1975,” Hasty said.

Today, Westminster is the center of the largest Vietnamese community in the United States, and every year it commemorates the fall of Saigon in 1975, remembered by Vietnamese Americans as Black April.

“April 30, 1975, for so many of us, is not just a date on the calendar,” said Councilmember Amy Phan West, the child of Vietnamese refugees. “It is a date that changed our lives forever.”

City Manager Christine Cordon, also the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, noted the 50th anniversary was “especially monumental” with the commemoration happening in Little Saigon, the heart of the community built by the tens of thousands of refugees who found themselves in Southern California.

Those gathered at Sid Goldstein Freedom Park near City Hall remembered the lives lost in the war, but also expressed gratitude for the lives rebuilt in the United States.

“We honor the hundreds of thousands who died so that the Vietnamese people could reach Westminster and write new chapters in the Vietnamese American story,” said Mayor Chi Charlie Nguyen, who was among the many refugees who risked the open ocean on small boats to leave Vietnam. “We cannot forget their service.”

During the ceremony, veterans hoisted canopy-sized South Vietnamese and American flags as they sang the anthem of the former South Vietnam and the Star Spangled Banner.

A flame was lit in a cauldron at an altar built at the base of the park’s permanent Vietnam War memorial to “honor the sacrifice of all the people lost in the last days of the war,” said Henry Le, a South Vietnam Air Force pilot who, after fleeing to the U.S. as a refugee, served 17 years in the U.S. Navy.

“I joined the U.S. Navy because, even though we failed to save Vietnam from communism, I still believed in this country’s ability to maintain peace around the world,” Le said.

Thomas Ho, a retired radiologist from La Palma, was 17 at the time of the fall of Saigon and escaped the country by boat about five years later.

His father, a South Vietnamese government official, died after three years imprisoned by communist forces after the war.

“My family was shattered by the war,” he said. “I still have a brother and a sister in Vietnam.”

Ho said he was filled with “mixed feelings” on Wednesday morning.

“Looking back, I’m very sad about that time in my family’s life,” he said, “but I’m very grateful to the American government for allowing me to start a new life, a better life here.”

His name was Danh Nhut Quach, and he opened his pharmacy on Westminster’s Bolsa Avenue in 1978.

Danh’s Pharmacy became one of the first Vietnamese-owned businesses in what has since grown into the largest Vietnamese commercial district outside of Vietnam.

Long gone are the strawberry fields of Westminster, paved over by double-decker mini malls brimming with Vietnamese commerce.

A 1.25-mile stretch of Bolsa Avenue now teems with more than 700 Vietnamese storefronts doing close to $1 billion in annual sales.

And, Orange County’s Little Saigon commercial district has become so much more than that in the 50 years since the fall of Saigon and the resulting influx of Vietnamese refugees.

While Vietnamese-owned businesses are easily found across the county, thousands are clustered throughout Westminster and Garden Grove and parts of Santa Ana, Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach — the geographic area Little Saigon has grown to include today.

Within the enclave, nearly 11,000 small businesses employ close to 50,000 workers and have an annualized payroll of more than $2 billion, according to a 2024 economic and demographic study out of Cal State Fullerton.

Today’s Little Saigon is more than twice as big as the original district designated by Governor George Deukmejian in 1988.

And, as first-generation business owners pass the torch to their children and grandchildren, today’s leaders of Little Saigon say the area’s next iteration could be limitless.

“Over the next 20 years, I see Little Saigon continuing to evolve as the largest and most influential Vietnamese ethnic enclave in the world, and it’s only becoming more attractive,” said entrepreneur Tâm Nguyễn. “Our aging strip malls will be redeveloped into beautiful, attractive, modern facilities. We’ll have new, culturally sensitive modern housing options. Little Saigon will be denser and more walkable.”

One can already see a glimpse into the future that Nguyen envisions in the form of Bolsa Row.

It’s a mixed-use development on six acres at the eastern edge of Westminster’s Bolsa Avenue, replete with 200 luxury apartments that opened in 2022 and 26,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space that will open later this year.

Bolsa Row is meant to be more than a draw for Vietnamese shoppers, said developer David Nguyen. It’ll also be a culinary hub featuring the diverse cuisines of Orange County.

“We’ve gotten a good amount of interest from Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Western-style restaurants,” Nguyen said.

“Our clientele are not just Vietnamese folks anymore,” Nguyen added. “We’re seeing a mixture of different ethnicities coming from far and wide to visit Little Saigon. It’s such a dynamic place.”

Yet, Bolsa Row, with its signature clock tower at the southeastern corner of Brookhurst Street and Bolsa Avenue, is an homage to Saigon’s Bến Thành Market.

“Bolsa Row is an architectural love letter to Vietnam,” Nguyen said.

Brittany Morey, a UCI professor who studies ethnic enclaves, said it’s not unusual for them to maintain a strong sense of home even as their demographics and services evolve to become more diverse.

“Enclaves such as Little Saigon are deeper than just the number of, say, Vietnamese people living in those zip codes,” she said. “These places draw on a shared history, a shared meaning, that doesn’t easily change even as the people living there do.”

Today, Little Saigon’s population is nearly 30% Hispanic, and many of the census tracts that define the region are home to more people of Latin American descent than Asian descent.

About a mile south on Brookhurst from Bolsa Row, a Sabrosada taquería shares a parking lot with Kei Coffee House, one of the trendiest Vietnamese coffee shops in Orange County.

They’re examples of two family-owned businesses formed in the same place but made in response to diasporic phenomena from around the world.

“We’re seeing a lot of fusion businesses, especially around the concepts of food,” said Tim Nguyễn, president of the Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce. “In Little Saigon, there is Vietnamese-style food infused with Latin American flavors, and Latin American foods infused with Vietnamese flavors.”

Even as the demographics of Little Saigon morph, the area it has come to define maintains a particularly special significance for the Vietnamese community, Morey said.

“I think the business landscape of Little Saigon will continue to change over time,” she said, “especially as more Latinos move into the area, but the place will always have a unique meaning for the Vietnamese community,” she said.

From Alpha Beta to ABC

While Bolsa Row, on the eastern edge of Westminster’s Bolsa Avenue, offers a glimpse into the area’s commercial future, what’s colloquially known as the ABC plaza on the street’s western edge continues to be a glimpse into Little Saigon’s past.

An Alpha Beta supermarket used to anchor the shopping plaza on the southwest corner of Magnolia and Bolsa. Now it’s the Siêu Thị ABC Supermarket.

The switch from one market to the other in the mid-1990s signaled the changing demographics and consumer purchasing power of Westminster at that time.

The city grew up in the baby boomer wake of World War II. By the 1970s, its economic engine was sputtering

“A lot of the strip malls downtown were rundown or vacant,” Westminster City Manager Christine Cordon said.

That made it an affordable place for Vietnamese refugees, like Quach, to start businesses.

“Westminster just happened to become the heart of Little Saigon because there was more land availability and more affordability,” said Frank Jao, Quach’s neighbor who became the area’s preeminent real estate developer.

As they opened shops in Westminster in the 1970s and ‘80s, Vietnamese immigrants tried to recreate the way business got done at home, Cordon said.

Out of the aging strip malls, they built bustling marketplaces.

Next to the ABC supermarket are smaller storefronts where many vendors peddle goods from the sidewalks, emulating that “bazaar-type feeling” that Cordon, Westminster’s first city manager of Vietnamese descent, says is so familiar in Vietnam.

“There’s a sense of pride in maintaining this type of aesthetic,” she said.

“This is a very organic way of doing business,” added Assistant City Manager Adolfo Ozaeta. “And, it’s working.”

On a Monday afternoon in April, the strip mall’s immense parking lot was packed. Every storefront was crowded with shoppers.

“Even as we think about redevelopment, we don’t need to change this,” Ozaeta said.

A blend of old and new

The city recognizes that part of Little Saigon should and must change as first-generation residents, like many who do business in the ABC plaza, age out of commercial life, and younger residents bring new ideas and tastes to the marketplace.

In 2021, Westminster, along with leaders from Garden Grove, Santa Ana and other agencies, created a 66-page blueprint for investment in Little Saigon on how to boost business and tourism in the area among consumers throughout Orange County and beyond.

In Today Plaza, halfway between the ABC plaza and Bolsa Row, the mix of old and new businesses is crystal clear.

Gen Z shoppers, phones in hand, line up in front of Bake and Che, one of the trendiest dessert shops in town. There’s also a second location in Garden Grove and a third coming in Rosemead.

The shop has a substantial online presence, with nearly 12,000 followers on Instagram, where practically every day the store’s social media team posts a trendy reel featuring a beverage or sweet baked good.

Cordon says Bake and Che is an example of a newer-wave Vietnamese business that’s marketing to a younger and wider audience.

“We’re seeing newer businesses, especially trendy restaurants, come into life,” she said. “We have a lot of new tech-savvy businesses, for example, that might be completely cashless. That’s very different from a lot of the original Little Saigon businesses that continue to be cash-only.”

Just steps away within the same plaza is Thạch Chè Hiển Khánh, another dessert shop that’s been there for years. It’s not a chain, and the shop doesn’t appear to have a website.

Still, it’s one of the plaza’s bigger draws and one of Cordon’s favorite places to pick up a sweet snack.

“Right now, when you look at the types of businesses of Little Saigon, there’s this really interesting balance as this transition of generations unfolds,” she said.

What’s next for Little Saigon?

Moving forward, Cordon would like to see Little Saigon become more of a tourist destination.

She admits that it won’t be easy to achieve given the development limitations around Bolsa Avenue, where a scarcity of parking along with an array of mobile home parks, wholesalers, manufacturers and auto repair shops could limit the retail corridor’s walkability and expandability, Cordon said.

But, a rethinking of the Bolsa corridor’s sense of place has been top of mind for Cordon since she took her office over three years ago.

“How do you enhance marketing of Little Saigon so it’s not just a business district, but a cultural attraction, as well? We’re working on creating an identity for Little Saigon that starts with how the signs look, how the streets look, maybe making some facade improvements, making Bolsa Avenue more pedestrian-friendly,” she said.

Garden Grove City Manager Lisa Kim echoed that idea for the part of Little Saigon in her city.

“As we see this transition of generations, we continue to be respectful of tradition, but also understand that this next generation of consumers is looking for something different, particularly a trendy foodie experience,” she said.

“In Garden Grove, our tourism corridor is very robust,” she added. “Everyone thinks of Disneyland first. But, we also have a lot of visitors that come and stay at our hotels just to dine locally in Little Saigon or to visit family there.”

The Bolsa Row developer, David Nguyen, who helps run a family-owned firm out of Westminster, said he is not wary of competition. He welcomes it.

“A Class A apartment building in the middle of Little Saigon — you can understand that kind of raised eyebrows when we built that,” he said. “But, investors see it’s doing well.”

“I want there to be more development in Little Saigon, and I think there will be more investment,” he added. “You’re starting to see a flow of money come in from overseas and also from financial institutions around Southern California.”

Even Jao, a leader in the area’s commercial market for nearly 50 years, has in recent years played around with ideas of redeveloping the Asian Garden Mall, the area’s signature landmark he opened in 1987, or at least adding a parking garage behind it — but nothing has come of that just yet.

“I see two new major sources of competition,” Jao said.

“One, we are seeing more developers introduce capital from Vietnam for projects in Little Saigon,” he said. “The homeland has transformed itself and is doing pretty well to be able to send capital here. Two, we’re also seeing more people who are not of Vietnamese descent take an interest in developing Little Saigon.”

Cordon says she is not holding back from moving Little Saigon forward into a new phase of redevelopment.

“We’re starting a big push right now, pointing out Bolsa Row, for example, that our city is a viable place for investors to do well,” she said. “I’ve been out to different real estate panels, engaging with investors and showing them the steps we are taking to welcome new development.”

“When I think of Little Saigon 10 to 20 years from now, I envision a place that’s more walkable, where there’s better traffic improvements and better access to ride shares,” she added. “The one- and two-story-tall strip malls might even build up. We’ll see an intensification of business, and more visitors who are not just Vietnamese people.

“There will be a fully marketed identity with new street signage, maps and other markers that showcase Little Saigon as a cultural destination.”

About 50,000 found themselves at Camp Pendleton following the war. In time, they moved out into communities throughout Southern California, with a large number settling in Westminster, giving birth to Little Saigon. Waves of refugees, and then immigrants, followed.

In 1980, the Vietnamese population in Orange County was about 19,300 – around 1% of the county’s population at the time.

As of 2022, Little Saigon had grown to span several cities and roughly 7% of the county’s population was of Vietnamese descent.

As the community marks this 50th anniversary, our reporters have been asking how the fall of Saigon shaped the Vietnamese American experience today and how the immigrants shaped Little Saigon and Orange County, as well as California and beyond.

Having lost everything, they built a Little Saigon

“It was chaos,” said Linh Vo, reflecting on the day, now remembered as Black April, when her life changed forever. She was just a 13-year-old girl. “The whole country was collapsing.”

She fled with her parents, two of nine siblings, one of whom was pregnant, running with the crowds of people to boats that waited in the harbor to make their escape.

Vo never could have predicted that her family’s story would come to epitomize one of the largest diasporas of the 20th century. Reporter Jonathan Horwitz spoke with Vo and several other members of the Little Saigon community about making new lives in Orange County and the Little Saigon they built, which has influenced so much from our favorite foods to who represents us in politics, and the difficulties the community still faces 50 years later.

Read the story

Power brokers

Speaking of politics, reporters Hanna Kang and Kaitlyn Schallhorn took a look at how Little Saigon became a political force, electing representatives to every level of government and reshaping American politics along the way.

Read the story

Cultivating a culinary legacy

After a wave of South Vietnamese immigrants created a thriving district in OC, a new generation of chefs and restaurateurs ventured outside of Little Saigon, helping shape the culinary conversation in Southern California. Reporter Brock Keeling spoke with some about what they’ve got cooking.

Read the story

Leaders of Little Saigon

One was a developer, one was an elected leader. Frank Jao and Tony Lam contributed a lot to shaping Little Saigon. Reporter Andre Mouchard talked with them about the community that has grown strong in Orange County.

Read the story

More to the story:

•  Little Saigon prepares to commemorate 50 years since the fall of Saigon, what you need to know
• Little Saigon has a shortage of mental healthcare providers, a clinician helps lead the way forward 
• 50th anniversary: A look at the fall of Saigon and the impact on California
• While Orange County has the largest Vietnamese diaspora outside of Vietnam, refugees built smaller Little Saigons across the United States.
• These artists found voice and creativity in Vietnam, years after fleeing Saigon’s fall as refugees
• Photos: Fall of Saigon through the eyes of AP photographers

On Wednesday, he’ll reflect on a wider arc of the Vietnamese diaspora as his city commemorates the 50 years since Black April, when South Vietnam lost the war.

In one of several commemoration events planned in Orange County, Westminster leaders will lay a wreath at the city’s Vietnam War memorial to honor the lives lost during the war.

“The event is to remember those who fought for freedom but never found it,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen was the oldest of six children raised on a farm near the coastal town of Vung Tau, southeast of Saigon. His early years were good, he said. Childlike.

“I went to school, and I enjoyed school,” he said.

Then came war and communism.

“I still vividly remember every moment of April 1975,” Nguyen said during a recent interview at Quan Hy Restaurant in Westminster’s Today Plaza. His gaze might as well have been as far away as Vietnam.

“I was with my mom and siblings when the communists came in,” he continued. “I was 11 years old. My father had been in Saigon in the army. He came home briefly before the communists took him away. They said he’d be gone three days.”

Three years went by. Then four.

His dad remained imprisoned in communist reeducation camps. Following the war, communist forces imprisoned hundreds of thousands of former military officers, government workers and supporters of the former government of South Vietnam.

“When my dad was taken away, I had to drop out of school to work the farm and provide for my family,” Nguyen said. “Then, in April 1979, my mom told me I had to leave Vietnam.”

“She was worried about the draft,” he said. She didn’t want her oldest son taken into the very communist army that his father had tried to destroy.

So, at age 15, she arranged for Nguyen to leave the country on a dinghy.

“It was no more than this big,” he said as he reached his arms from the coffee table toward the restaurant entrance about 20 feet to his right. “I remember there were more than three dozen people on that boat.”

They set off from Vung Tau at night with only one clear destination — international waters.

“When I left, I felt I had nothing.”

As he looked into the dark waters, darker thoughts penetrated his mind, Nguyen said. “I decided I would kill myself after a day at sea.”

He planned to jump off the dinghy and drown.

“I saw no hope,” he said. “But, for some reason, as I prepared to jump, something held me back and told me not to do it. That’s why I’m here today.”

Nguyen spent four nights and three days at sea until that dinghy reached the shores of Thailand.

After the fall of Saigon, approximately 2 million Vietnamese people eventually fled the country by boat. It’s estimated that between 200,000 and 400,000 of those refugees died at sea.

“Wednesday’s event is for them, the soldiers who died on the battlefield and those who died in the camps,” Nguyen said.

He was part of the City Council in 2019 when it voted to become the first city globally to recognize Black April Memorial Week.

“April 30 is always an emotional day,” Nguyen said. “Even more so this year as we reflect on what our community has accomplished in 50 years.”