Fortune Smiles On Young Boy And His Mother

Last week, Nguyen Be Lory won U.S. citizenship.

Dressed neatly in chinos and a striped crew shirt, the 4-year-old heir to a multimillion-dollar fortune seemed the picture of normalcy as he greeted a visitor in the sparsely furnished, two-story brick rental home where he and his mother, Nguyen Thi Be, live with their translator.

"He is happy here," said his mother, nodding with approval as her son picked his ABC's out of a children's book and squeezed a squeak from Barney's rubber tummy.

For too many years, Nguyen said, their lives were more nightmare than dream.

She was one of eight children born to a poor rice farmer in a village outside Phan Biet, a Southeast Asian resort where American multimillionaire Larry Lee Hillblom owned hotels. She grew up in a house with no electricity and a dirt floor. Sometimes, there was not enough food, 23-year-old Nguyen said.

By age 13, she was working as a maid, then later as a cook and a nanny to earn money for the family. Eventually, she landed a waitressing job in a Phan Biet hotel restaurant owned by Hillblom.

Soon the reed-thin Nguyen caught Hillblom's eye.

By the time Hillblom met 18-year-old Nguyen in 1993, his face was badly scarred from an accident earlier that year.

"He was not handsome," Nguyen said. "But he was funny and nice to me."

Nguyen spoke no English. Hillblom knew only a few words of Vietnamese. He wore jeans and T-shirts, and she had no idea he was a multimillionaire.

Now that Lory and his mother are in the United States, her attorney John Veague said, he is determined that they will be prepared to handle Lory's fortune.

Nguyen is taking English lessons, and every legal document is translated into Vietnamese for her. Lory is enrolled in a church-run preschool, and his mother dreams of him going on to college some day.

For now, she has told her son only that his father was an American and that he is dead.

"He is too young to understand more," she said.