Asians Orange County

Despite their fractional slice of the population, blacks in Orange County may face similar obstacles as blacks in Los Angeles in trying to obtain home mortgage loans, according to a computer-assisted study of federal records by the Los Angeles Times. Blacks make up only 1.6% of the county's 2.41 million residents, and they applied for only 1.1% of all home loans in 1990, according to the study of mortgage lending practices in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

The mother of two youths of Asian descent who were beaten by three men, including one who wielded a heavy metal anti-theft device known as the Club, is seeking to rally community sentiment against the growing number of hate crimes against Asians in Orange County. "You can't pick on someone just because of their race or color," said Jo Ann Kanshige of Fountain Valley, a Japanese-American whose sons ages, 15 and 18, were beaten in a June 15 incident where white attackers yelled ethnic slurs.

Fourteen Asian families living in a mile-square region near Irvine High School have recently been the targets of burglaries that police suspect were the work of Asian gangs. The crimes fit a trend of Asian gangs turning away from home-invasion robberies to the tamer crime of burglary, police gang experts say.

As early as grade school, Kailin Liang was typecast. Much of it, she said, was the result of her reluctance to draw attention. "When I was in elementary school, I was very shy, never said anything, so quiet and cute . . . that whenever they had special events where they needed someone to dress up as a Chinese doll, I would get picked," said Liang, a Chinese-American born in Taiwan and raised in Southern California.

As Joe Akiyama tossed bait into a pond, the shapes began to move. From under lily pads, multicolored, foot-long koi darted for the food. Suddenly the water became a moving mass of hues, like a watercolor painting changing shape. "They can recognize people; they're intelligent," Akiyama said, staring at the feeding frenzy. "They know who feeds them, and they swim over by your side." Akiyama and his wife, Sumie, are keepers of tradition.

Sunly Winkles began piecing her life together 10 years ago. Having lost her husband and four children in the Cambodian war, she arrived in Garden Grove from a refugee camp in Thailand. At age 31, she began again. Winkles, whose name then was Sunly Ping Kim Suor, became an immigrant caseworker who would dedicate a decade to helping Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees absorb American culture. It is her way of overcoming the painful memories of war and escaping to a new country.

Y. Fred Fujikawa's hands aren't what they used to be. His right forefinger is bent like a sickle from the painful arthritis that eventually forced him to retire from performing chest surgery. But the 81-year-old Seal Beach resident has a bull's-eye memory. Fujikawa was born on the Fourth of July, 1910, in San Francisco. His father had immigrated to the United States in 1900 and had lived a migrant life, working on the railroads and in fields.

Choong Hyun Baick is furious. Baick, 55, a surgical oncologist in Santa Ana, specializes in treating breast cancer. That has put him in the forefront of a major medical controversy: silicone-gel breast implants. "I am angry," the doctor said, because the Food and Drug Administration "is handling this thing all wrong. . . . And the more they talk, the worse it gets."

Thomas Yuen seems to have it all: a 9,000-square-foot home in a gated community in Newport Beach and a net worth of perhaps $70 million as co-founder of computer company AST Research Inc. But as he sits by a huge, calming aquarium with multicolored fish in his corporate office in Irvine, he says he would give it all to have healthy kidneys again. In fact, Yuen said his drive to start a small computer company in 1980 and build it into a Fortune 500 firm was to save his life.

A group of robbers armed with handguns invaded a house, ordered a family of six to kneel in separate corners and took $1,200 cash before a police helicopter scared them away, police said Thursday. Two suspects were arrested, but three to five other men escaped, police said. Hung Phan, 21, said his family was watching television about 9:40 p.m. Wednesday in the 14000 block of Nevada Drive when his father saw a shadow flicker by the front window.