Bolsavik.com

If you want something kept secret, don’t tell anyone. Bruce Tran (pictured) hasn’t publicly announced his run for Mayor of Westminster yet, but it seems like he’s privately told so many people that one just blurted it out at a public meeting.

Tran was attending a community meeting put together by the Hội Đồng Liên Tôn, a group of Vietnamese religious leaders and activists. When he came up to speak, the moderator introduced him as a candidate for mayor of Westminster.

Tran spoke, and said nothing of his candidacy, but it’s too late. The Viet Herald daily newspaper wrote it down, and printed it.

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A Vietnamese woman in Westminster chased her boyfriend around his apartment complex with a knife, then barricaded herself in an apartment until SWAT shot and arrested her, reports the OC Register here.

It took almost half a day for the police to take down Shelly Lyn Doan, 48, of Westminster.

The manager of the Cinnamon Creek apartments (pictured; located smack dab in the middle of Little Saigon at the corner of Brookhurst and Bishop) called police at 2pm to report a woman armed with a kitchen knife chasing a man.

She then ran into his apartment and shut the door.

Cops went to the apartment and saw the woman, but couldn’t get her to come out.

So the police brought in the big guns. West County SWAT, a joint team of officers from Westminster and nearby cities, was called in. Hostage negotiators came as well, but they couldn’t get the woman to come out either.

Several times, Doan came to the window with the knife and waved it around, according to SWAT members.

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A Vietnamese-American neurosurgeon who failed to examine an emergency room patient until the next day was hit by a Riverside County jury with a $16.2 million medical malpractice verdict for leaving the man a paraplegic, reports The Desert Sun here.

Dr. Christopher Pham, D.O., was the neurosurgeon on call at Desert Regional Medical Center on November 2, 2003, when Trent Hughes, now 47, was brought in.

Hughes was off-roading in Glamis, Arizona, when he was when he hit a bump and began to experience searing pain in his lower back and numbness in his feet and toes, according to a press release by his lawyer here.

He was then airlifted to the hospital, where he was seen and diagnosed with a fracture with his spine.

The neurosurgeon on call that day was Pham. He was supposed to be in the hospital within 20 minutes of the call to evaluate Hughes’s condition, he didn’t show up.

In fact, Pham did not examine Hughes until the next day, and surgery was delayed to the day after that, two days after the injury.

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A Viet coach at a Sacramento Catholic school who allegedly engaged in “inappropriate sexual conduct” with a 17-year-old student has been charged with one misdemeanor count of “child annoyance,” says the Orange County D.A.’s office in a press release here.

Minh Anh Nguyen, 36, a volleyball coach at Christian Brothers High School in Sacramento, is accused of “exposing a 17-year-old female player’s vagina and breasts by moving her clothing while massaging her.”

At the time of the incident, Nguyen (pictured) was taking the girls’ varsity volleyball team to Orange County for a high school championship game to be played at UC Irvine. The team was staying at the Embassy Suites in Santa Ana.

According to the DA’s allegations, at approximately 10:20 p.m. on Dec. 4, 2009, Nguyen went to the student’s room “the pretense of giving her an athletic massage.” Nguyen told the student to lie on the floor and knelt over her with his knees behind her head.

He is accused of leaning over the girl to rub her hips and in the process his pants in the area of his private parts hit the student’s forehead. Both were clothed.

As Nguyen kneeled over the girl, he is further accused of pushing her sweatpants and underwear down, exposing her vagina. Then he allegedly lifted her bra and exposed her breasts.

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A Vietnamese-American captain in the San Jose Police Department has been named one of the four deputy chiefs, reports the Mercury News here.

The promotion of Captain Phan Ngo, who received his golden captain’s bars just last year, is particularly timely given the severely strained relations between the police and the Viet community over allegations of brutality and the perception of coverups in those cases.

In fact, Captain Ngo, 43, will be the only nonwhite member of the department’s top command staff - which will, however, remain all male. He will be the head of the Bureau of Technical Services,  overseeing such areas as dispatch, communication, fingerprints, records, and the IT people, among other things.

A long drawn-out controversy over the shooting death of mentally ill Daniel Pham, and the still ongoing lawsuit over the beating of San Jose State math student Phuong Ho, have made the normally tolerant Viet community vocally distrustful of the police. (When the Bolsavik first reported the Phuong Ho story for Nguoi Viet Daily News, numerous SJ residents, ranging the gamut of age, gender and political views, gave highly negative comments about the police. The Bolsavik ended up publishing only a couple of them.)

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The man credited with bringing community service and transparency to the Tet Festival is running to replace the termed-out Van Tran and is holding a fundraiser this Friday.

Phu Nguyen, former President of UVSA (Union of Vietnamese Student Associations), has declared his candidacy for the State Assembly 68th District. He will have to win the Democratic nomination before facing the Republican candidate.

His first public fundraising event is scheduled for Friday, January 29, 6pm, at Paracel Seafood Restaurant. See text of invitation here.

For a first-time candidate, Phu has quickly amassed an impressive array of endorsers. Even though there’s another Democrat in the running, many top Dems have endorsed Phu, including: the only OC Democratic Congress member, Loretta Sanchez; the only OC Democratic State Senator, Lou Correa; and one of two OC Democratic Assembly member, Tony Mendoza.

Phu is the second Viet to declare for the seat. Tran’s 2006 opponent and current OC Board of Education member Long Pham is also running on the Republican side. (If Pham doesn’t win the primary, Phu’s likely Republican opponent will be Costa Mesa mayor Alan Mansoor, and Mansoor’s colleague on the Costa Mesa City Council, Katrina Foley, has endorsed Phu.)

Phu Nguyen was UVSA President in 2001 when the organization (or rather a handful of key figures in the organization) modernized the Tet Festival and raised $80,000 doing it in Westminster, at the empty lot where the Vietnam War Memorial now stands.

The following year, the group held another successful Tet Festival at Garden Grove Park. The year after that, with Phu still at the helm, the group made a successful presentation before the Garden Grove City Council (where Tran was a member at the time) to win approval of a long term contract for the UVSA to hold the Tet Festival at Garden Grove Park.

The UVSA’s winning proposal includes two features that have become the signature aspects of the festival ever since: Donation of half the proceeds to community groups; and financial transparency.

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The only Viet to ever play or coach in the NFL will not come back as part of the Dallas Cowboys’ coaching staff next season, reports the Dallas Morning News here.

Dat Nguyen has elected not to sign a contract extension after serving as the team’s assistant linebacker/defensive assistant from 2007-2009.

He was not in Fort Lauderdale as the team was getting ready for the Pro Bowl on Sunday. Earlier in the day, the team’s owner Jerry Johnson had offered all assistants the same extension to 2011 that he had agreed with head coach Wade Phillips.

In a later story here, the Morning News reports that Nguyen left to find an opportunity to move up to linebacker coach.  The paper quotes coach Phillips: “He just felt like he couldn’t move up the way he wanted to with us. He wants to coach linebackers himself.”

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Several Viet businesses in the Spokane area were fronts for a multimillion dollar drug ring busted by federal agents, reports the Seattle Times here and the Spokane-Review here.

And they would have continued their marijuana trafficking, if it weren’t for a single-vehicle crash that brought the ring, already under suspicion, to the fore.

At the center is Luyen V. “John” Doan, who’s been held in Spokane County Jail since February. Last week, Doan pleaded guilty to federal drug and investment charges and will give up more than 15 properties in Stevens, Spokane and Kootenai counties, including a home on Diamond Lake, a boat and a 2007 Mercedes-Benz.

He’s not the only one. Of the 30 people charged in the case, 18 have pleaded guilty and will cooperate in federal trials of the others. The Seattle Times reports:

“Federal prosecutors say Doan, 43, headed a drug operation that distributed thousands of pounds of marijuana throughout Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Montana.

“As his wealth accumulated, documents allege, Doan removed himself from the drug ring, employing dealers through businesses he owned or invested in, such as Lefty’s Steakhouse and Sports, the Teriyaki House, and Trick Shot Dixie Outlaw Saloon and BBQ [pictured].”

Doan himself is listed as an employee of Lefty’s Steakhouse and Sports.

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Why is this woman on a stretcher? Is that the South Vietnamese flag she has wrapped around her head? And why is nobody paying attention?

Upside down and inside out, I’m about to show all you folks, what’s it’s all about.

This picture was taken last Sunday, at a ceremony held at Westminster’s Vietnam War Memorial. January 19 was the anniversary of the Battle of the Paracel Islands, a 1974 naval battle in which many South Vietnamese died trying to defend a group of islands off the coast of Quang Nam from Chinese forces. The Chinese won, the North Vietnamese failed to raise a peep, and the islands have been in Chinese hands ever since.

The anniversary ceremony was held on Sunday, organized by an alliance of many groups, most prominently the association of former navy men.

And then Bùi Kim Thành showed up. As she always did at everybody’s event, she came wrapped in the colors of the South Vietnamese flag, grabbed a seat in front, and demanded to speak. Basically causing a disruption, just like she did back here.

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A Vietnamese-Canadian taekwondo Grand Master, in Haiti on business, is among the thousands still missing following the devastating earthquake that hit the island nation, reports the International Taekwondo Federation here.

Trieu Quan Trân, 59, CEO of his construction consulting business, was staying at the luxury Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince as when the building collapsed.

Trân was seen entering his room on the hotel’s third floor some 10 minutes before the earthquake hit. “My husband is trapped in the rubbles of the Montana Hotel and our family is still awaiting news from the rescue teams”, his wife My Nguyen Tran said.

According to his niece, who put up a call for help on CNN’s iReport here, an associate of Tran was rescued and is recovering in a Montreal hospital.

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