Nguyen said it is a convenient place for families wanting to stop by their loved ones’ graves on their frequent visits to Little Saigon. “She was so much a part of the local Vietnamese community, and she always wanted to be among her people. “I think my sister will rest happily here,” she said. Members of the Vietnamese community seek out Peek and want to be buried at Westminster Memorial, said Tina Nguyen, who was holding services for her deceased sister on a recent morning. “But we do have room to grow,” Tran said, adding that her company could utilize its strawberry fields and a golf course adjoining the cemetery on Bolsa Avenue. Their popularity is prompting Peek officials to consider expanding the Garden of Peaceful Eternity. The $8,000 packages include everything from the casket to white grieving garments and headbands worn during the service, she said. Peek started offering the customized packages three years ago and now sells about 6,000 each year, Tran said. Yen Do, founder of Nguoi Viet Daily News, is buried there, as is Phu Nguyen, a student and popular Tet Festival organizer. With its towering pagodas, the Garden of Peaceful Eternity bears thousands of headstones with Vietnamese names that read like the Who’s Who of Little Saigon. It is evident in Westminster Memorial Park, which houses an Asian-American corner at Bolsa Avenue and Beach Boulevard. The Vietnamese component doesn’t stop with the funeral home. “We know exactly what they need,” said manager Linda Tran, who was one of the first Vietnamese employees to be hired there. Over the years, Peek has set the standard for serving the Asian-American community – Vietnamese-Americans in particular. At Peek, where about 25 percent of the business is with Asian-Americans, the packages have been selling so quickly that officials are considering expanding their cemetery land to accommodate the demand for more plots. They also sell customized packages tailored for Asian-Americans. They set up Buddhist altars and compiled resource lists for monks and Vietnamese Catholic priests. The mortuaries have created tile-floored chapels with ventilation to negate fire hazards and accommodate incense-burning. Otherwise, you just cannot survive as a business.” “You’ve got to embrace the changes as time goes on. “This type of change is inevitable,” she said. Statewide, the funeral industry had sales of $1.19 billion, according to the 2002 Economic Census. In Westminster and Irvine, the group’s population doubled during that time. This Asian-American population increased by 76 percent between 19, a decade when the entire county’s population rose by 18 percent, according to the Asian Pacific American Legal Center’s 2005 statistics. In recent months several area mortuaries have followed suit in reaching out to Asian-Americans, the fastest-growing major ethnic group in Orange County. Peek was the first funeral home to employ Vietnamese-speaking counselors and salespeople – about 12 years ago. The family finally got the help it needed from Peek Family Colonial Funeral Home, the Asian-American arm of Westminster Memorial Park. But in most places, it was against the local fire codes. Vuong and his father drove throughout Orange County looking for a funeral home that would allow them to burn incense – a ritual that cannot be skipped or ignored in any Buddhist service. WESTMINSTER – Hung Vuong will never forget the day his mother died – for more than one reason.
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