LIVING THE FAST LIFE;

By Tram Quang Nguyen
from Gidra Summer 2001, reprinted with the permission of Gidra
photos: Paul Dang

He arrived as a refugee baby in America, transported from Vietnam with a family splintered by war. His mother and older brother escaped with him by boat, while she was pregnant with another brother. Two sisters stayed behind in Saigon. His father was put into Communist re-education prison for 12 years. At age16, when Randy finally met his father, it was the teenager who was locked up this time.
This was the same boy who joined his church youth group and stayed until he passed the age limit because he was so excited to be going to movies and picnics for the first time. Now at 23, the same Randy has also robbed so many Asian families in their homes at gunpoint and fought so many gang brawls he can't remember how many times he's done either.
I first met Randy downtown about two years ago, when he was working behind the counter of the Union Center Café. We didn't talk much, but he made a good Thai iced tea. I noticed the beginnings of some wild tattoos peeking out the back of his T-shirt. I thought he was an ex-troublemaker trying to turn his life around. But, as I learned, not all of Randy's troublemaking days were in the past.
A few months passed, and he left under murky circumstances. Apparently he wasn't cutting it, even with the café's supportive staff. I heard snippets of news about how he was hanging out with his gang, going to community college, trying to get a job. Then I lost track of him.
It wasn't until elections loomed in California for the "juvenile justice" initiative Prop. 21 that we caught up. By then, Randy was going on his second year out of prison and had a new job selling jewelry for a local wholesaler.
Randy already had two strikes on his record from a 1994 arrest for a home invasion armed robbery. He did five years in Juvenile Hall, the California Youth Authority's maximum security Youth Training School (known by inmates as "gladiator school"), and also at Chino and Soledad state prisons. A gangster from the age of 14, Randy talked about mistakes he'd made, and what it was like to be on the receiving end of a crackdown on juvenile crime. At the time he was cautiously optimistic about breaking from the cycle of crime and incarceration.
That was before elections. By March, when Prop. 21 underwent the ballot and passed, Randy was already back in jail.
The following conversation took place just before Randy's second arrest.