No Problem Catching On : UCLA: Receiver Nguyen and his family have been toughened by the ordeal of their emigration by boat from Vietnam.

UCLA wide receiver Mike Nguyen, the first Vietnamese-born non-kicker to appear in a college football game, has had to overcome obstacles many athletes couldn’t even imagine.

Nguyen, whose name is pronounced “Win,” was 2 1/2 when his family fled South Vietnam on a boat two days before the Communists overran Saigon in 1975.

Nguyen’s parents were separated for a while during the escape, but his father, Hung, a naval officer, turned off the power on the ship until his wife, Hoang Tran, was allowed to board.

Although Nguyen was too young to remember the ordeal of leaving home, his mother, Hoang, has vivid memories.

“It was more scary than you can imagine,” she recalled. “A lot of times when we look back it’s really unreal. We’re just grateful to be alive. We were lucky to get out of there.”

Hoang was grateful to be alive, too, after she had been knocked unconscious by a bomb blast when she was 6. She was walking in a field near her home in a Mekong Delta village when the bomb exploded.

“The scariest time was not when I got hit, because I wasn’t aware of that until later on,” she said. “The scariest time was when I was laying there, kind of half conscious, all night long. I saw all this light in the sky and nobody around. You kind of wonder if you’re really alive or you’re really dead.”

After fleeing war-torn South Vietnam, the family went to the Philippines and Guam before arriving at a refugee center at Camp Pendleton. They moved to Oakland, Ore., where Hung and his wife worked as domestics for $150 a week and free housing.

As the family struggled to make a new life, Hung was injured in a motorcycle accident in 1982. He was in a coma for 2 1/2 years before dying at 39.

Nguyen was 10 when his father was injured.

“You can’t really imagine what it was like unless you go through it,” he said. “It was hard for me to see him lying there like that. He could recognize me, but he couldn’t speak.”

Six months after her husband was injured, Hoang was injured in an auto accident and had to have back surgery.

“It was very, very difficult time,” Hoang said. “We left our country and came over here and we really didn’t have anyone. And when the tragedy happened to my husband, I was pretty new in America and I didn’t know the English language and I didn’t have the skills to be a good provider for my family.”

After her husband’s death, Hoang moved her three children to Portland and opened a translation service and an employment agency, which serves the area’s large Southeast Asian refugee community. She also is attending law school part time.

“In order to survive any place and make a life for yourself and your family, first you have to work really hard,” Hoang said. “Hard work is part of the Vietnamese culture. I’ve tried to teach all my children the same values my parents taught me.”

Nguyen has adopted his mother’s work ethic.

Nguyen, who held two part-time jobs while attending high school, graduated with a 3.9 grade-point average in 1990. He worked at a soft-drink bottling plant in Portland last summer and was chosen as an outstanding employee.

Nguyen has two younger sisters, Susan, 18, a sophomore at Oregon, and Melissa, 17, a high school senior. Both have 4.0 grade-point averages. A high school cheerleader, Susan was selected for the cheerleading squad at the University of Arizona, but transferred to Oregon to be closer to home.

“Mike has been an excellent role model to help me raise his two sisters,” Hoang said. “I think his sisters have followed his footsteps and they all turned out wonderful.”

As his mother struggled to adjust to life in a new country, Nguyen quickly adapted to American culture. Although he doesn’t speak Vietnamese, he speaks English fluently.

“I fit in better than a lot of other Vietnamese people that had come over,” Nguyen said. “To my friends, I was more like them.”

But Nguyen hasn’t forsaken his heritage.

“We try to remind him very often of what his roots are and where he comes from and of the Vietnamese culture,” Nguyen’s mother said. “We’ve tried to teach him about our culture and its values.”

Nguyen, 6-feet and 179 pounds, is larger than most Vietnamese. Nguyen’s mother says she comes from a tall family.

At Franklin High in Portland, Nguyen played football, basketball, baseball and ran track.

He led the Portland Interscholastic League in receiving for three consecutive seasons, set eight school records and accounted for 1,523 all-purpose yards as a senior. Nguyen also caught 53 passes for 745 yards and 10 touchdowns, rushed for 389 yards and had 389 yards in punt and kickoff returns.

“He wasn’t a natural receiver,” said Frank Geske, who coached Nguyen in high school. “We thought he’d be a free or strong safety, but he just worked at it and worked at it. Mike doesn’t drop the ball and he has quickness. He can cut on a dime, and that sets him apart.”

Nguyen’s mother, who had never seen a football game until Nguyen began playing, feared he might get hurt.

“It took me a long time to really understand football,” she said. “At first I was really concerned that he might get hurt, but I realized that he could go out and play in the street and really hurt himself. It took me a while to understand it, but now I enjoy it.”

Recruited by every Pac-10 school except USC, Nguyen selected UCLA over Stanford.

“It was really difficult to say no to a free education at Stanford,” Nguyen said. “But I thought I could get the best of both worlds at UCLA because UCLA’s a really balanced school athletically and academically.”

Nguyen appeared in one game as a freshman in 1990, but was granted a redshirt season after suffering an injured right hand. A redshirt freshman last season, Nguyen caught three passes for 33 yards.

UCLA’s third-leading receiver, he has played a key role this season, catching 20 passes for 240 yards, second best on the team.

With star wide receiver Sean LaChapelle hampered because of a rib injury, Nguyen started his first college game in the Bruins’ 19-7 loss to Stanford two weeks ago, catching four passes for 45 yards, including an 18-yard third-down reception that kept UCLA’s 84-yard, 14-play touchdown drive alive. He had a team-high four catches for 39 yards during last week’s 30-17 defeat at Washington State, then caught four for 54 yards Saturday against Arizona State.

“Mike Nguyen has made some great catches this year,” Coach Terry Donahue said. “He’s made some catches that I never knew he was capable of making. . . . He’s made some tremendous plays.”

Does Nguyen have a sense of pride at being the first Vietnamese-born, non-kicking college football player?

“There is, but it’s not a prominent thought in my mind until people remind me,” he said. “I see myself as any other kid out there trying to do a good job.”