Asian American Trend Reflected in Crime, Breakdown of Families

In troubling numbers, Asian Americans are feeling the shattering punch of compulsive gambling. But for reasons cultural and historical, many are unlikely to seek or find help.

Social service and law enforcement agencies say habitual gambling is perceived by many Asian Americans as perhaps the greatest problem confronting their home lives and communities.

“I see a lot of families in distress,” says Larry Lue, director of counseling for Los Angeles’ Chinatown Service Center.

So does Tina Shum, a social worker at Cameron House in San Francisco’s Chinatown. She estimates that gambling underlies about one-third of her social service agency’s domestic violence cases, “causing the breakdown of relationships for the family.”

Confronted with such growing anecdotal evidence, researchers have begun probing more deeply the forces fueling Asian American gambling and attitudes about the problem’s toll.

Earlier this year, in the first survey of its kind, the Chinese Health Coalition found that nearly 70% of 1,800 Chinese American respondents in San Francisco ranked gambling as their community’s No. 1 problem, surpassing gangs and drugs. The coalition recently received a city grant to develop an outreach program.

“Up and down the California coast, both clinicians and service providers have told us that there’s a problem,” says Nolan Zane, a professor of Asian American studies at UC Santa Barbara, who recently applied for a federally funded research grant.

Among those problem places is the San Gabriel Valley--home to one of the nation’s largest Asian American populations, where authorities say they are seeing crime trends linked to habitual wagering.

Desperate for quick cash, some Asian American gamblers have left themselves open to extortion, home invasion robberies and even murder, according to police agencies throughout the San Gabriel Valley. Some have resorted to prostitution or drug dealing to repay card room loan sharks. Police say gang members run bookmaking operations at wealthy San Gabriel Valley high schools and threaten to kill their young debtors.

Although there is broadening recognition of the fallout from Asian American gambling, finding a solution is uniquely complicated.

Some Asian Americans view fortune and games of chance as natural parts of life, and gambling as an innocuous recreational activity. The notion of luck is central in some Asian cultures, which emphasize that good fortune comes from being in harmony with the universe, from not wrestling with destiny.

And the casinos are cashing in on these cultural factors, with everything from food to interior design. The Hollywood Park Casino has a Buddha statue for good luck, while stone dragons guard the entrance of the Commerce Casino. Several Las Vegas establishments, meanwhile, maintain satellite offices in the San Gabriel Valley, organizing gambling excursions around Asian holidays and luring customers with tickets to shows featuring stars from South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Compounding the treatment problem is the fact that compulsive wagering is widely regarded among Asian Americans as a weakness, not a medical disorder.

“It’s seen as a character flaw,” says Nancy Au, executive director of a mental health agency in Westchester that works with immigrants from throughout Asia and the Pacific Islands. “In Asian families, they deal with it as if the individual was a black sheep.”

Social service agencies also complain that because there are no Asian American programs for compulsive bettors, mainstream organizations such as Gamblers Anonymous are the only option.

Once there, however, many feel so alienated by language barriers--and by the practice of sharing feelings and failings--that they disappear after a few meetings, organizers say.

“In Asian culture, we seldom share our secrets with other people,” Shum says. “It’s not like Americans, who are very open and frank about what they’ve done wrong.”

Gary, a 35-year-old Chinese American in Oakland, struggled for more than a year to start a regular Cantonese-language Gamblers Anonymous meeting in a church room. Although readings were translated into Chinese, Gary at times was alone, disheartened and frustrated.

“I sat there in that room, the last three months . . . twiddling my thumbs,” he says.

In an effort to address the gap in treatment and awareness, the California Council on Problem Gambling this summer translated information about compulsive gambling into 11 Asian languages and distributed thousands of pamphlets to social service agencies, the state Departments of Mental Health and gambling venues.

“There hasn’t been a large community discussion of this yet,” says Lue of the Chinatown Service Center. Without intervention, he says, “we’re going to see a lot more other social problems because families are under such economic stress.”

Times staff writer Matea Gold contributed to this story.