Some Vietnamese Americans like to think of Ly Tong as their own James Bond.

''Some call him crazy,'' a Vietnamese intelligence expert says. ''Some really admire him. He is a daredevil.'

Many Vietnamese-owned stores -- including businesses in South Florida -- carry Vietnamese-language copies of his autobiography titled Black Eagle. Vietnamese-American schoolchildren often write compositions lauding his daring exploits, and poetry idolizing his Don Quixote brand of tragic heroism has appeared in Vietnamese-language magazines.

The former 51-year-old South Vietnamese air force fighter pilot has had a dramatic life full of angst for the loss of his homeland. His adventures have often captured the imagination of the one million-strong Vietnamese-American community, especially former South Vietnamese military men for whom the pain of losing a war is difficult to endure.

Jailed in a harsh ''reeducation camp'' for five years after his A-37 Dragon Fly jet fighter was shot down in 1975 just before the communist North scored its victory over U.S.-backed South Vietnam, Tong refused to bend.

He escaped and embarked on a 17-month trek through mountains and jungles across five Southeast Asian nations, including communist-run Laos and Cambodia, before making it to Singapore, barefoot and suffering from malaria.

WORKING ON DEGREE

Tong, who has three daughters by different girlfriends, first arrived in the United States 10 years ago. He took a job as a security guard, earned a master's in political science from the University of New Orleans, and became an American citizen. Nowadays he splits his time between his home in New Orleans, where he's now working on a doctorate, and California, where he is politically active in the Vietnamese-American community.

After publishing his 300-page biography and becoming active in his own stridently anti-communist organization called The Voice of the Oppressed based in San Jose, Calif., Tong went back to Southeast Asia. He was determined to embarrass his communist captors.

In 1992, he tried to comandeer a Thai air force plane to bomb Vietnam. A few months later, he successfully hijacked an Air Vietnam Airbus 300 on a flight from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City -- once known as Saigon -- and forced it to fly low over the former South Vietnamese capital.

After dropping 50,000 leaflets over the city calling for strikes and demonstrations and urging its citizens to ''build an independent, free and prosperous Vietnam,'' Tong strapped on a parachute and jumped. This man who signed himself ''Commander of the Uprising Forces'' on the leaflets was jailed by the Vietnamese until September 1998, when he was released along with 5,219 other Vietnamese prisoners of conscience.

While Tong was imprisoned, the Vietnamese-American community clamored for his release.

SONGS FOR HIM

In the pages of the Nguoi Viet Daily News, which has wide circulation in California, a poet exclaimed, ''Ly Tong my hero, Ly Tong my conscience, Ly Tong my duty.'' Fund-raising drives, letters to American lawmakers, and street demonstrations continued through the years. Songs were written in his praise.

''This is a man,'' said Tran Do, who runs a grocery store in Margate. ''Someone should pin a medal on him for doing what we all think is right, but we don't have the courage to do.''

Do said that in recent months Tong has taken on what he claims is corruption inside the Vietnamese-American community in addition to launching blistering verbal attacks on Vietnam's communist government. Tong has a Web site outlining what he stands for at http://chimens conf.com/
LyTong_Statement.htm.

Do said he remembers Tong's dogged resolution made after he escaped from the re-education camp. ''He said: 'If I go forward, I die. If I go backward, I die. Better to go forward, and die.''