The latest from the LA Times:Tide Turns for Rescued Sailor as Offers of Boats and Aid Pour
In[NL][PARA][PARA]Offers of free boats and financial help poured in
Wednesday for a Vietnamese-born sailor who says he spent nearly four months
drifting at sea after a Santa Catalina Island voyage went horribly
awry.[NL][NL]Richard Van Pham’s saga may never be fully confirmed–he lived
and sailed alone, and many details of his life remain uncertain. But his
unlikely tale of survival–he says he subsisted on tuna, sea turtles and
rainwater as he drifted aimlessly with a broken mast, motor and
radio–captivated and amazed recreational sailors and others across the
Southland. Several said they’d like to give Pham another boat.[PARA]
“He has an inner strength that is not based on education or money, but on
personal strength,” said Erwin Freund, a 49-year-old Amgen scientist who
hopes to donate a 25-foot Coronado Sloop to Pham, who lost nearly all his
possessions when he abandoned his disabled 26-foot home, the Sea Breeze,
about 300 miles off Costa Rica.[NL][NL]Freund said he has sailed for two
years and is “super-cautious, overcautious” about safety, never leaving his
slip without his Global Positioning System and radar equipment. But, faced
with the conditions that sidetracked Pham, he would have
faltered.[NL][NL]”His boat was not properly equipped. He did not have the
proper gear. But he maintained a positive attitude where I would have
panicked,” said Freund. “He’s someone who is really a role
model.”[NL][NL]The diminutive Pham recounted his harrowing tale from a hotel
room Tuesday, proudly sporting a crisp baseball cap from the Navy frigate
McClusky, which rescued him off the Central American coast last
week.[NL][NL]An Elusive History[NL][NL]That story, like the 62-year-old
Pham, proved elusive Wednesday. Although he says he lived for several years
on his boat in Long Beach’s downtown marina, city records show he paid to
stay there for only four days in May. Addresses on identification cards that
Pham carried show that he had bounced around downtown Los Angeles and
MacArthur Park since 1998, living the life of a drifter.[NL][NL]When he left
for what he says he intended as a three-day jaunt to Catalina, Pham filed no
float plan, so no one knew where he was going. When he disappeared for
nearly four months, no one reported him missing. Wednesday, as offers of
help poured in, Pham was swept into a broadcast news vehicle after meeting
with a Travelers Aid social worker at Los Angeles International
Airport.[NL][NL]Pham had arrived at LAX at 9 p.m. Monday on a flight from
Mexico City. Sailors aboard the McClusky had taken up a collection to
provide him enough money for a ticket back to Los Angeles after they rescued
him. After he arrived, he was kept overnight in the custody of the
Immigration and Naturalization Service in downtown Los Angeles, said
Francisco Arcaute, a spokesman for the INS.[NL][NL]A man found alone in a
boat in a highly trafficked drug corridor raises obvious suspicions, and
officials were eager to ensure that Pham’s record was clean.[NL][NL]”We had
multiple questions on this individual, given the circumstances of his rescue
and whatnot,” the spokesman said.[NL][NL]On Tuesday, INS officers ran his
name through law enforcement databases, but no pending charges or
immigration irregularities were found, the spokesman said. Pham was finally
allowed to leave sometime Tuesday afternoon and was taken to Travelers Aid,
the spokesman added.[NL][NL]A Navy spokesman said the McClusky sailors were
on a counter-narcotics mission and would have spotted anything untoward.
Still, Pham’s story is spectacular, and his solitary nature ensures that
many parts of it cannot be entirely corroborated.[NL][NL]According to that
account, after arriving from Vietnam in 1976, Pham built a life as a
successful entrepreneur. He opened three furniture stores, in North
Hollywood, Culver City and Los Angeles, and an auto repair business. But
about a decade ago, he said, an auto accident left him in a coma for six
months. When he regained consciousness, he had lost much of his memory and
was forced to relearn even the most basic tasks.[NL][NL]”My memories before
the accident, they are gray, with no pictures,” Pham explained.[NL][NL]Pham
said the accident also drained his savings. He slowly built a new life,
living on disability checks and “traveling a lot.”[NL][NL]”I had a
girlfriend for a while, but she didn’t like that I traveled so much,” he
said.[NL][NL]His dream was the ocean: “I love nature. I love the ocean. I
wanted to sail it every day.”[NL][NL]For the past few years, he said, he
took mostly short trips, to Catalina and the Channel Islands. But he also
took one six-month round-trip voyage to the coast of Chile. And he had
carefully calculated that it would take six months to cross the ocean to his
native Vietnam.[NL][NL]It was on yet another of his trips to Catalina, he
said, that his misadventure began: a hook that secured his mast to the boat
snapped and his radio failed. From that point, Pham drifted for 2,500 miles,
never catching a glimpse of land or a single boat or plane, he said. He had
a two-month supply of water, rice and canned beans and tomatoes. But when
they ran out, he was forced to collect rainwater and eat from the
sea.[NL][NL]He caught plenty of tuna, hooking them easily without bait. He
cooked one seagull, but although he thought it looked like a chicken, “it
tasted worse.”[NL][NL]Turtles Top Menu[NL][NL]Best of all, he said, were the
sea turtles, docile giants that swam right next to his silent boat. He was
able to tie a rope around their front legs, then winch the creatures–which
weigh several hundred pounds–onto the deck.[NL][NL]The turtles swam by only
on occasion, Pham recounted, so he would trap them and save them alive until
he needed them. When they moaned from the heat, he sprayed them down with
water to cool them. He cooked the meat on a makeshift grill fed by wood
paneling he tore from the boat.[NL][NL]Pham was finally spotted by a U.S.
Customs drug-hunting plane, which directed the McClusky, a 453-foot
guided-missile frigate, to the dilapidated sailboat.[NL][NL]When they found
him, he asked only for help repairing his boat and some vitamin B
supplements. When sailors were forced to sink his vessel as unsound, he
fetched few belongings, his green card among them, the ship’s captain
recounted.[NL][NL]It was those details that touched strangers
Wednesday.[NL][NL]Dan Emberson, a Los Angeles actor and “adventure guy,”
said he read Pham’s story and cried.[NL][NL]”You hear survival stories all
the time. But people on Mt. Everest have money, resources and family. This
guy had nothing,” said Emberson, who was trying to pool donations from
fellow actors at the Playhouse West Repertory Theater. “If there’s anybody
worthy of my time, it’s someone like this.”[NL][NL]’Like Robinson
Crusoe'[NL][NL]”I’ve never heard of a story like this before. It’s a lot
like Robinson Crusoe, but with a Vietnamese person,” said Hiep Cao Nguyen,
35, of Garden Grove.[NL][NL]What awaits Pham is unclear. Tuesday night, he
said he might settle into an apartment for a short while to regain his
bearings. Then, he added, he will probably drift some more.[NL][NL]If Freund
catches up with him, Pham might do his future drifting aboard a 1968 sloop
that seems to be more seaworthy than Pham’s boat ever was. It has five
sails, a radio, flare kit, first aid kit, man overboard pole and float, and
quite a few spare ropes, Freund said.[NL][NL]”It’s pretty neat,” Freund
said. “I’d like him to have it.”[NL][NL]*[NL][NL]Times staff writers John L.
Mitchell, Vivian LeTran and Patrick McDonnell contributed to this report.
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