John Nho Trong Nguyen was once a prominent member of parliament in South Vietnam. Today he is considered to be one of the outstanding judges in Orange County. He has been celebrated as a role model for Asian Americans, and as an extraordinary teacher.  To counter prevailing culture in Orange County he speaks to children at elementary, middle and high school about his experiences as a refugee, and his becoming a Superior Court Judge.   

“I give the children a message of hope and something to dream about, to chart the course of their own future in the belief in the role of the courts, the system of justice based on the respect for the constitution and law,” he said.  

Like so many refugees from Vietnam, John Nguyen has an extraordinary story to tell. The day before Saigon fell on April 30, 1975, he boarded a helicopter from the roof of the American Embassy at 11:30 p.m. bound for Guam and the Philippines.  The next day the North Vietnamese Communist army entered the city and broke through the embassy’s walls.   

In the days and weeks after his flight, millions of South Vietnamese escaped from their country on rickety boats and by other means. They are now scattered in sixty different nations around the world. 

This was John Nguyen’s second escape. When Ho Chi Minh’s Communist forces, called the Viet Minh, defeated the French in 1954, the Geneva Accords partitioned Vietnam at the Ben Hai River near the 17^th parallel.  People were given the choice to move north to the Communist area or to the south.  More than a million people moved south. Among them was John Nguyen’s family including 8 children, parents and grandparents.  He was 16 years old then.  

The Geneva Accords called for elections in 1956 to determine the future of Vietnam.  They were never held, although the pro-western state in the South did prepare for the polls, according to Nguyen. Hostilities opened in 1959.  One year later, the ruling Communists in North Vietnam established the “National Liberation Front of South Vietnam,” the Viet Cong, which then launched a guerilla war against the government in Saigon. 

The Nguyens, formerly rice farmers, were poor, making a meager living as carpenters, masons and with other menial work. John Nguyen was the first of his family to receive advanced education graduating from Saigon University with an engineering degree in forestry.   

He was trained to build roads and bridges while maintaining the forests but served instead the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) as an infantry officer in the Central Highlands.  In 1967, he was elected to the National Assembly of (South) Vietnam on a platform advocating social and economic justice through land reform for farmers who had leased fields from French absentee landlords; he also served as Associate Justice on the Constitutional Special Supreme Court of South Vietnam. 

His journey from the U.S. Embassy’s rooftop 35 years ago eventually took him to a refugee center set up at Camp Pendleton. Nguyen soon found a job as a handyman’s assistant while attending California Polytechnic University in Pomona, Cal., graduating with an M.B.A. degree in 1981.  He earned his “Juris Doctor” (JD) from Western State University College of Law in 1988, passing the bar examinations that same year. 

While working full time, Nguyen and his family and friends sponsored more than one thousand refugees from Southeast Asia to resettle in the United States. Many of these immigrants have since become successful in a variety of fields, according to Nguyen, who has in the meantime involved himself heavily in charitable work, giving pro-bono service to the poor, to victims of human rights abuses in Vietnam and to various non-profit organizations. 

In 1995, California Attorney General Dan Lundgren hired Judge Nguyen as Deputy Attorney General with the responsibility of prosecuting fraud against citizens. 

Governor Gray Davis appointed Nguyen as a trial judge at the Orange County West Justice Center in 2000.  He was elected in 2002 for a six-year term.  When he ran in 2008, he was reelected by a margin of 80.5 percent, endorsed by both parties. He has also taught at Chapman University School of Law, Whittier College of Law, and Western State University College of Law as an adjunct professor. 

Nguyen’s honors include a “Doctor of Laws” degree from Whittier School of Law, and an “Honorary Doctor of Laws” degree from Western State University College of Law, which also inducted him into its Hall of Fame and established a scholarship for needy Asian-American Law Students in his name.  

The Orange County Asian American Business Association named him a role model. The National Pacific American Bar Association and the National Conference of Vietnamese Attorneys gave him their trail Blazer awards. The Orange County Women Lawyers Associated named him “2008 Judge of the Year.”  

His biography submitted to the League of Women Voters in 2008 included this telling statement from a teacher who had served as a juror in Nguyen’s court: “I write to thank you for the great experience I had in your court.  Your instruction to me and the other potential jurors in this case was a college semester of learning in two days. Your teaching skills are as exemplary as those of a judge.” 

Federal Judge David O’Carter stated that Judge Nguyen “epitomizes the American dream.” He is an example to the youth of America of all cultures.