SANTA ANA, Calif. — Even as a child in Vietnam, Tracy Nguyen had a dream of making good-quality, reasonably priced pharmaceuticals for her countrymen. After a circuitous quarter-century career path, Nguyen and her Garden Grove, Calif., company, Affordable Quality Pharmaceuticals, are doing that.

Her tale is a testament to entrepreneurial perseverance.

"It's very difficult," she acknowledged recently. "If I were not Vietnamese, I would have walked away a long time ago."

Nguyen was in high school in Vietnam when her parents, who owned a jewelry business, fled in 1979, taking Nguyen and her four siblings with them. Although the family settled in California, Nguyen chose the University of Minnesota at which to earn her electrical engineering degree.

"In California, I would have to study English for two years before starting college," Nguyen said. "In Minnesota I could enroll if I passed the test. I could speak the language of numbers, and I didn't want to wait two years."

She worked at a Minnesota computer company, then returned to California in 1989.

In 1994, Nguyen started a pharmacy at the urging of her aunt, a pharmacist who backed out of the project at the last minute. Nguyen didn't have a pharmacy license but did know how to build a business, and within two years she owned 18 pharmacies inside nursing homes in five states. She started a wholesale company to buy prescription drugs and other products in bulk to supply her pharmacies.

"My dream was manufacturing," she said. "Every time I changed businesses, I moved closer and closer to my dream."

Her son, Jimmy Ngo, calls her a visionary: "She gets an idea and within a couple of days she has the whole vision worked out."

In 2000, Nguyen made her next move, selling the pharmacies to start Affordable Quality Pharmaceuticals. Her vision: a vertically integrated company to manufacture, distribute and sell generic drugs and health supplements.

The company developed rapid diagnostic tests for pregnancy, HIV and hepatitis, and launched a line of effervescent vitamin and pain relief tablets under the St. Paul brand name.

In 2003, the government of Vietnam approached Nguyen with offers of land and tax incentives to help build the country's biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry.

"Vietnam is where India was 15 years ago," she said. "India is now the biggest supplier of generic drugs. Vietnam is a big market for generic drugs because the people cannot afford brand names."

Nguyen formed alliances with Vietnamese manufacturers.

"Logistics are a nightmare in Vietnam," said Twee Pham, a vice president for Affordable Quality Pharmaceuticals. "We now cover 90 percent of the hospitals and 80 percent of the physicians, so we have a competitive advantage."

That network recently paid off when Affordable Quality Pharmaceuticals received an order from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention International in Atlanta to buy Vietnamese-made generic drugs for infectious diseases and repackage and sell the drugs at low prices in that country.

Nguyen envisions winning contracts with other U.S. firms to repackage and distribute their generic drugs in Vietnam. And then she hopes to persuade them to move some of their manufacturing to Vietnam, where labor costs are lower, and export quality products from there.

"The CDC opens a lot of doors," she said.