Tricia Nguyen

Tricia Nguyen is the CEO of Southland Integrated Services, a Garden Grove based nonprofit providing community health services to underserved local communities. In this interview Tricia speaks about her family’s immigration story and how she and Southland Integrated Services are supporting outreach to nearby Vietnamese and Asian American communities.

KEYWORDS: Orange County, Little Saigon, Westminster, Vietnam, Vietnamese, Health care, seniors, refugees,

Interview Transcript

My dad came over here in 1979, and he sponsored my mom, my grandma and I over in 1986. And ever since we were sponsored, we’ve lived in Westminster. So I’ve been living in Orange County since ‘86. I think when all of us in Vietnam migrated to the United States, I think Orange County, because we have the Little Saigon area, it just feels like right at home. So everybody migrates. This is the place to be, just like when you go to Vietnam, Saigon is in the middle of the town, it’s where everybody wants to be. And I think when my dad came over—originally, he was in Kentucky, so he lived in Kentucky, but he figured we would not survive in the weather. I’m glad that he didn’t move us to Kentucky but he moved here. And so ever since then, I just liked the weather, I just liked the atmosphere. You just feel right at home, when you first come over. You don’t feel you don’t need to assimilate and there’s no need to learn English right away. Because the people, most of the time you bump into somebody who can speak your language. 

[Outreach to Vietnamese]

Our organization basically started out as a refugee resettlement, immigration services because we lost our country in 1975. So four years later, a group of volunteers decided to form this nonprofit to help the Vietnamese that just recently immigrated from Vietnam. And we’ve been doing social services [from] about the 1990s, late ‘90s. The board just figured that we don’t have a clinic, a community clinic, so they opened a health center. So we provide medical [and] dental for the community. Fast forward to now we actually have a very comprehensive, federal qualified health center [FQHC]. Similar to UCI, how you hear FQHC. So we’re one of the FQHC in Orange County, we’ve got this designation as a federal qualified health center in 2015. So we’ve been providing very comprehensive medical, dental, behavioral health, occupational therapy, pediatrics, women’s health—anything, you name it, acupuncture services. So we do a very comprehensive—we do transportation, we have [a] seniors program, we have youth. So it’s like a whole scope of services, whatever it takes. 

[Impact of COVID on Your Community]

I don’t know, where do we begin? So we got the shutdown order I think in mid-March. And I have three locations—actually, one of them is the health center. But the other two locations are non-medical sites. And so because of that, we decided [we] have to switch everybody to telework within two days. We have a huge event this Saturday, to actually pull together all the food, dry goods, resources to disperse to the elders, because I know that they’re the population that cannot get out of the house, they’re isolated. They have no contact, right. It’s really hard because I have a grandma who’s 93 and a half. My mom, who’s immunocompromised, she’s 74. But she has multiple sclerosis, she’s bed bound, she has hypertension, asthma, and all that. So even for them, I don’t even get to see them often because I want to protect their safety. And because of that, we feel all the seniors are being isolated. And we want to do what we can to actually give them that socialization as well as goods deliver[ed]. But you can tell when you see COVID, you learn about your friend’s personality, your family members, it’s very interesting. When I have staff I think they’re great, [but] through COVID I’m like, “oh, they’re no longer.” And then the people that are not that good, right? And through COVID you see, their personality shines out, and they become very helpful. So I think [for] me, any disaster, anything hits, you can tell who’s your soldiers. Who’s your positive, your great folks. And you can tell people who you [used to] think they’re great, and then until this happen[s and] they become selfish, and they just do things for themselves. So I think it is overall, there’s no silver lining, but I see that you learn a lot from people[s’] personalities, and how they live and how to care for each other through COVID.

[Final Thoughts for the Community] 

It’s understanding the intergenerational. Every culture, every generation has its positives. You want to learn and you want to incorporate all the good, right. You throw away the bad and incorporate all the good. And I think the culture is very important where your parents are coming from, your ancestors. The kids now need to learn that and appreciate it, because I think the younger kids, less and less, are not very into history. They don’t know the hardship that the parents or the generations that went through. Like for me, I’m in the mid-40s, so I hear all these war stories. I hear from my dad, who went to the war, I hear my great—at least you have that generation. But I feel the people younger than 40 now, they don’t have that history and appreciat[ation] for the culture.

Interviewers: Anne Lim and Christine Nguyen

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