COLUMN ONE : A Refuge From Silent Isolation : Deaf immigrants from around the world are drawn to the Southland. Top programs and a welcoming community give some their first chance to express themselves or to feel free from persecution.

Araks Shakhmuradyan’s eyes are the most expressive you could find. But the woman inside is inaccessible.

Shakhmuradyan, a recent immigrant from Armenia, is deaf. Because she speaks neither English nor Armenian, nor knows any formal sign language, there is no one with whom she can converse fluently.

She came to Southern California the way many immigrants do--brought by a family seeking a better life here. But her parents also came with a deeper motive: They hoped America would help crack their daughter’s isolation.

Shakhmuradyan, 31, who lives with her parents in Glendale, belongs to a growing community of deaf immigrants who have arrived here over the years. “Southern California is . . . a mecca,” said Ken Randall, superintendent of the California School for the Deaf in Riverside. Few places in the world offer the deaf as many options, he said, “all within an hour-and-a-half drive.”

While many profoundly deaf Americans, estimated by Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., to number less than half a million, still face hardships in getting jobs and schooling, the United States has come to be viewed as a leader in upholding the rights of the disabled.

And California, in particular, is seen as having a long history of welcoming the disabled, who were able to integrate more easily into its schools and industries. The state led the nation in passing access laws and was the birthplace of the disability rights movement, which has spread throughout the nation and the world.

Even before it became internationally known, Southern California drew deaf Americans who came west to work in defense plants and shipyards during World War II. They were joined by veterans who lost their hearing in combat. Schools and institutions to serve them soon were built.

Today, Southern California is home to some of the nation’s leading services for the deaf, including the National Center on Deafness at Cal State Northridge and the California School for the Deaf in Riverside. The John Tracy Clinic, a free nonprofit educational institution for deaf children in Los Angeles, was founded in 1942 by the wife of actor Spencer Tracy. It is named for their son, who was deaf. In Orange County, the Catholic Deaf Center is an arm of the local diocese. And the Salk Institute in La Jolla has done pioneering linguistic research on sign languages, including studies of deaf adult immigrants.

People now come from Mexico, Vietnam, Syria and Romania, often seeking refuge from isolation and ridicule. No one knows exactly how many deaf immigrants are here. But their number overwhelms that of native-born students in adult-education classes, and their presence is also marked at churches and programs that help the deaf.

Some, like Shakhmuradyan, were brought by families who sacrificed comfort to seek opportunities or were drawn by vague hopes of finding a cure for their child.

Others are fleeing harassment and prejudice. They tell of being kept out of sight by their families in their homelands, or of societies that banned them from driving, shut them out of college or funneled them into rote factory jobs.

Some have traveled halfway across the world with no concept of maps or calendars. They relate their stories with gestures, mimicking airplanes and cars. Others are well-educated in other languages, and become remarkably proficient in English despite having never heard it spoken.

Commonly, they form deep ties to their new country--home to a deaf culture that some say transcends their ethnic identity. Many who have learned American Sign Language call it their native language.

Others speak of discovering their self-worth. “I thought I was weak-minded,” said Mexican immigrant Gonzalo Rodriguez, 21, of Riverside. “Now I can work, I have friends, girlfriends, everything.”

“I was living in darkness,” said Choon Cho, who had no deaf friends until she moved to the United States from South Korea. She said joining the American deaf community, and learning ASL, “opened up a whole new world of light.”

Limited Education

Shakhmuradyan’s family brought her from Armenia five years ago, hoping she would learn sign language. Armenia’s centrally controlled schools allowed few educational options for the deaf, said her sister, Chinar Shakhmuradyan. Araks never learned to read or write, and was never exposed to Armenian sign language.

Chinar, 35, communicates with Araks using spoken Armenian and gestures. She frets over her sister’s future. By crossing her hands over her heart, Araks has told Chinar she wants love, Chinar said. Cradling her arms, Araks has said she wants a baby. “She is smart,” said Chinar. “I know she can do something. She is really intelligent. Only she cannot talk.”

Araks attends sessions at the nonprofit Independent Living Center in Van Nuys. She is learning a little sign language, and shows a flair for cooking and a passion for soap operas--which she seems to understand just fine without the dialogue.

Interacting with her is like playing charades with an expert. Her gestures are complex, consistent and sharply rendered. When asking for pepper to season a dish she’s cooking, she makes a swift upward motion of fingers sweeping out from the sides of her nose, vividly depicting the sensation of inhaling something that makes you sneeze.

Chinar says she wants to get Araks into a more intensive sign language program. But Araks doesn’t drive, and Chinar works and has a family. So Araks’ struggle for language has been a slow one.

Although many deaf immigrants come here knowing a spoken language, as well as their native sign language, a surprisingly large number are like Shakhmuradyan--linguistic puzzles who have grown well past childhood without any formal means of communication. In contrast to deaf Americans, those from many countries, such as Mexico, are unlikely to have been exposed to a standardized sign language or to have received intensive speech training. This is especially true for those from rural areas.

In fact, some Mexicans describe Mexican Sign Language--which has many dialects and varies by region--almost as an underground code. One man said he tried to learn in secret, since his school punished students for signing. Others said they never even saw it used--indeed, they never saw another deaf person.

For people who were born deaf, learning spoken language the way hearing babies do is nearly impossible. By contrast, any of the world’s scores of sign languages can be learned naturally by toddlers, both deaf and hearing--but only if they are exposed to them.

People who are not trained in or exposed to a spoken or sign language typically rely, as Shakhmuradyan does, on homemade gestures--what experts call “homesign.”

It’s telling that these immigrants quickly forget their homesign when they begin to learn real language--usually American Sign Language or English, or both.

Many, though, have no trouble remembering the agonizing tedium of life without language.

“I was all by myself. I was so bored, I was so frustrated, I wanted to tell someone how I feel,” said Liliana Mora, a native of Mexico who lives in the Riverside area. She learned American Sign Language here four years ago. “I couldn’t do anything. I just sat around. It was so awful. . . . I was so stuck.”

Mora once communicated with her family using homesign. “You’d act. You’d role-play,” she said. “There were so many misunderstandings. You’d have to find a book sometimes so you could find a picture to show what you were saying.”

Now 19, Mora has largely overcome her early language deprivation. She recently finished high school at the California School of the Deaf, works at a local hospital, and is considering a career in health care. When asked about her life story, she delivers in ASL an enthusiastic account of her struggle to learn sign language. She is so gregarious that it’s hard to imagine she was once as she describes--lonely, listless and cut off.

Transformations like Mora’s are familiar to many people who work with the deaf in Southern California. Virginia McKinney, director of the Center for Communicative Development in Los Angeles, said up to half her 50 adult students were born in other countries, and many are what she calls “alingual”--without language. “We are writing on a blank slate,” she said.

“We had a student who didn’t know people had names. We would show him the sign for his name, and then we’d take his open palm and press it against his chest. He’d just look at us like we were crazy.”

Programs like McKinney’s are seeing more immigrants from distant countries. Sally Campbell, director of special services at Abram Friedman Occupational Center in Los Angeles, began a program with two deaf adults 20 years ago. Now, the program has about 160 adults, most immigrants.

At West Valley Occupational Center in Woodland Hills, daily language classes bring together students from Poland, Syria, Romania and Central America. In Vernon, the Catholic Holy Angels of the Deaf was formed eight years ago to meet the growing demand. It draws nearly 500 people each Sunday for services in a medley of signed English, ASL, Spanish and spoken English.

In such places, national origin takes a back seat to deafness. This journey from isolation to membership in a close-knit society is one many immigrants recount with great emotion.

Anna Kim, a student at Cal State Northridge, was born in South Korea. She was 12 before she began learning American Sign Language in school here. She told how this development changed her life, starting with this basic revelation: She found out she was deaf.

“I didn’t really think of myself as deaf. It wasn’t a concept I had,” said Kim, now 21, speaking through an ASL interpreter. “I thought everyone around me was lip reading. And I thought I was very stupid because I knew I couldn’t communicate as well as everyone else. . . . I wish my hearing teachers had just told me I was deaf.”

When she was 5, Kim’s parents brought her to California to be educated. She was trained to lip-read, without much success, until junior high. For most of her childhood, she relied on gestures and what spoken Korean she could decipher. Many times she would sit uncomprehending while the family chatted around her at dinner. “I grew up very lonely,” she said.

Kim, who lives in Reseda, is making up for it now. She is an irrepressible gabber who signs at lightning speed, and in an interview she renders her interpreter breathless. Although Kim can read English, she says ASL is the language she thinks in, and she speaks of deaf culture with a passion akin to patriotism.

While immigrants such as Shakhmuradyan are struggling, Kim is a success story. She earned good grades in high school, and is studying interior design at CSUN. She is a beauty pageant contestant.

To help Kim, her parents sacrificed their own goals: In Korea, her mother was a teacher, and her father a law student. Their first jobs here were in a fast-food restaurant. Today, they own a golf pro shop that Kim says has been struggling because of the recession.

‘Reason for Living’

Such stories are common: Marilou Ladines, a Pasadena businesswoman, said she “cried for two years every Sunday” after her decision to uproot her family from the Philippines for the sake of her daughter, Mara. Ladines wanted Mara, now 12, to go to the John Tracy Clinic, which specializes in teaching deaf children to speak and lip-read, services Ladines said were not available in the Philippines.

Mara bloomed, Ladines said. Her first spoken word is still a treasured memory: “Being a Filipina, it was shoe . Shoe, shoe, over and over.”

Ladines, too, got an education. In the Philippines, the family belonged to a privileged elite, surrounded by maids, chauffeurs, and nannies--one for each of the three children. Here they had a one-bedroom apartment, and Ladines’ husband, a surgeon, spent five years qualifying to practice medicine again. “I was doing all this housework I’d never done in my life. I had never taken care of my own children . . . never even boiled water,” Ladines said, adding: “My glass bubble burst. And thank God. I have no regrets.”

Choon Cho, 58, moved from Korea to Los Angeles 12 years ago to join family members. She didn’t even know sign language existed until she saw some kids using it on a bus in Los Angeles. “I thought, ‘What the heck are they doing? They look so happy!’ ” Cho recalls. She now uses a combination of spoken English and American Sign Language. She has been deaf since she was 27. After she lost her hearing, she tried to commit suicide three times. The last time, she lay across a railroad track in the path of a train. “The driver came and picked me off the track and yelled at me . . . Then the station manager gave me a ticket to go back home,” she said.

Although she had a college degree and came from a wealthy family, she went to work in a garment factory, laboring 15 hours a day at low pay for 13 years. Then her mother and sister immigrated to the United States, sponsored by relatives. Cho followed, continuing her life as a garment worker.

Today, she is an American citizen and works for Community Rehabilitation Services in Los Angeles, counseling members of a deaf community she only lately learned exists.

“I have found a reason for living in this work,” she said.

Cho’s new community includes the tiny congregation of the International Deaf Mission Church. In a basement in Los Angeles each Sunday, two dozen Koreans hold services in American Sign Language and Korean Sign Language. The church is an offshoot of a denomination based in Korea, but tries to draw worshipers of all nationalities, said Pastor Soo Ryul Ryoo.

On a recent Sunday, the pastor’s sermon dealt--aptly enough--with a passage from Exodus.

Cho led the group in a hymn. Some of the voices were off-key, but the signing was all in sync. Evangelist Chul Kang, who is deaf, offered a prayer of deliverance:

“Lord, help bring our deaf brothers and sisters to us. Help them to find us here.”