His friends dead, he wanted out -- but it wasn't that easy
Glenda Luymes
The Province Thursday, September 20, 2007

After a year behind bars, Tri Troung returned to the streets of Vancouver a different person.

In prison, he had decided to leave the violent Vietnamese street gang he was running with, realizing he was on the road to an early death.

"I wanted to be different. I promised myself I could do it," he recalls.

But getting out would not be easy.

The day after his release on a drug- trafficking conviction, Troung went to find his childhood friend, Dean. The two had grown up together in Victoria after Troung's family arrived as refugees from Vietnam.

The last time the friends had seen each other was just before Dean was shot three times by a rival gang.

Now, a year later, five of their fellow gangsters were dead, killed in a bloody gang war that took out at least nine people in late 1999.

As Burnaby RCMP Const. Phil Reid told The Province at the time, "Something has gone awry . . . They are taking out their own."

Hoping to honour their departed friends, Troung and Dean went to a Vancouver cemetery.

It was a rainy winter day, and as they tried to light incense, the wind kept blowing it out.

"I told Dean, 'It's only you and me left. They're all dead,'" recalls Troung.

They tried to start over. But without support, it wasn't long before they fell back into drugs and crime.

"I didn't know how to fit in as an ex-gang member -- I wasn't like everyone else," says Troung.

It took waking up in an alley, dirty and sick, to make Troung realize he couldn't do it on his own. He called his brother, a pastor, who helped him enroll in a drug-treatment program. It would change his life.

Rev. Sean Sabourin is the director of the B.C. Teen Challenge men's centre in Yarrow, near Chilliwack. He sees many men like Troung.

At the men's centre, each day conforms to a rigid routine, where 15 students receive academic, vocational and spiritual training. They graduate after a year.

"We create a sense of family here," says Sabourin. "It's a pretty strict program, but we see people who are really serious about changing their lives . . . and the program works."

Teen Challenge began in 1958, when David Wilkerson, a young pastor from Pennsylvania, began working with gang members in New York City. After establishing the first Teen Challenge centre, he co-authored the best-selling true story The Cross and the Switchblade. The book was later made into a movie. There are now 600 Teen Challenge centres in 88 countries, including three in B.C.

For Troung, the program has given him practical skills and a belief that he is not alone. He has since started doing fundraising work at the Yarrow men's centre.

In July, he went with a group of students to hand out food on Hastings Street. Dean, who is also working to turn his life around, tagged along.

"I told him, 'Remember when we were selling drugs on the same street? Right here, we sold drugs. And look at us now. Look at how we are making a difference.'"

gluymes@png.canwest.com