Diep Nguyen is a lawyer and managing member of Elite Title & Closing Services LLC in East Providence, a business she launched in 2004.
But the early years of her life were very different from many others in her industry. Her family was forced to flee Vietnam after the war in the 1970s, piling into a boat and sailing into the South China Sea when Nguyen was 2.
She arrived in the U.S. in 1979, along with her mother, father, grandmother and brother, who was born in a refugee camp in Taiwan during the journey. Another brother was born in the U.S.
Nguyen was one of nearly 800,000 “boat people” who fled Vietnam by boat and ship during the humanitarian crisis left behind after the Vietnam War in 1975 through the early 1990s. Risks included pirates, storms and overcrowded boats, with up to 400,000 people dying at sea, according to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees.
In Nguyen’s case, Rhode Island became her new home thanks to the activism of others.
Sponsored by the Evangelical Covenant Church in the Riverside section of East Providence, her family stayed with Barrington residents John and Elsie Wright, who tried to ensure they integrated into their new community.
“The Wrights took my parents to English classes,” Nguyen remembered. She and her brothers attended Covenant Cooperative Nursery School, learning English there, with the public TV show “Sesame Street” becoming a language-skills booster.
Today, her brother Trung works for industrial arts campus The Steel Yard in Providence, and her other brother Liem works for Nguyen’s mother’s wholesale company in Worcester, Mass.
She doesn’t remember that time on the boat or early days afterward but has images of her family’s history.
“We had a get-together for the 40th year anniversary of our arrival with the family who sponsored us and got to see their kids, who we used to play with. There were black-and-white photos of us when we first came – photo of us on the boat with our heads shaved, holding up signs with numbers,” she said. “We never had time before to sit down and talk about those things.”
Photos were taken of boat people, with one family member holding a card with the identification number of their boat, with each family member getting a single-digit number. The numbers were to help refugee camp administrators keep track of families to deliver relief services.
Nguyen learned a strong work ethic from her parents. The couple, who later divorced, owned a convenience store at one point, Nguyen said. Her mother, who she calls “my rock,” worked for an East Providence manufacturer, assembling cigarette lighters.
Early in her work life, Nguyen worked at Honey Dew Donuts because her former in-laws owned a chain of doughnut shops. “It gave me time to take care of my daughter, who I had when I was 21,” she said.
‘It’s been a ride, but we are very, very grateful.’
DIEP NGUYEN, Elite Title & Closing Services LLC managing member
Soon enough, she was looking for more. And she found it. “One of my friends at Fleet Mortgage [then a subsidiary of FleetBoston Financial Corp.] said there was a position open in quality control,” Nguyen said. “Since then, I have been in the business. I love it because it’s fast-paced. You meet so many people, and it’s never the same thing twice.”
Nguyen started climbing the ladder, becoming a senior closer with Equity Title & Closing Services Inc. in East Providence in the late 1990s. She became a paralegal and manager at a local office of Chicago Title Insurance Co. from 1999 to 2004.
She used that experience to start Elite Title & Closing, and then bolstered her background with higher education.
While raising her daughter and two sons, she earned her bachelor’s degree in justice studies at Rhode Island College in 2009 – getting up at 6 a.m. to attend a class before work and then attending a class after clocking out for the day. She earned her law degree from the University of Massachusetts School of Law in Dartmouth in 2013.
Nguyen’s decision to start her own practice originated not from displeasure about working for others but from a desire to continue her professional development.
“I enjoyed working for everyone, I just wanted to do more. My past bosses are all experts and I trust their opinions on things,” she said.
She thrived on her own, building the business of handling title issues, title insurance and other closing documents involved in real estate transactions. Elite has a staff of nine people in two locations, an office in East Providence and a newly opened location in Worcester, Mass.
Fluent in Vietnamese, Nguyen can communicate with Vietnamese clients. The trust is so strong that many will ask her to perform legal work outside of real estate or help them read mail they have received – some of it junk mail – that they don’t understand. Many see her as an adviser who speaks their native language.
Nguyen, who was recently appointed to the board of directors of the Center for Southeast Asians, is happy to be of service when possible.
“It’s been a ride, but we are very, very grateful,” she said of her family and its journey.
Susan Shalhoub is a contributing writer for Providence Business News.
