Carla O'Leary gets a pedicure from Tram Nguyen at Qi Nail Spa, operated by Lucky Nguyen (no relation) and her husband, William Lewis.

Photos by Jim Davis / Arizona Daily Star

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It's not often you get egg rolls with your manicure.

But at Lucky Nguyen's Qi Nail Spa, the pork, shrimp and chicken egg rolls that her mother makes are a staple on weekends.

"It's a treat for my customers," said Nguyen, who grew up in Vietnam. Her nail spa bears the French version of her mother's name, Qui Hoang.

Nguyen and her husband, William Lewis, opened their business in May at a strip mall at 3900 W. Costco Drive, across the street from Home Depot and Costco.

"We figured this would be a great location because there's a lot of traffic," Lewis said.

Nguyen said most customers are walk-ins.

"People are finding us when they go shopping," she said.

Margo Zaragoza was such a customer. She was on her way to Costco recently when she took a detour into the business to get a broken nail fixed.

"She did a wonderful job," Zaragoza said of nail tech Tram Nguyen, an employee who is not related to the business owner.

Although the nail spa is Lucky Nguyen's first on the Northwest Side, she has plenty of experience in the business. She and her husband own and operate Saigon Nails in Tubac.

In 2006, Nguyen sold her first nail spa, also named Saigon Nails, after running it for nearly nine years in Green Valley, she said.

It was during that time that Thao Nguyen adopted Lucky as her American nickname, which she said reflects how she feels about her life in this country.

Like many other Vietnamese refugees, Nguyen and her family came to the United States in the early 1990s fleeing communist rule.

Nguyen, 38, said she enrolled in English courses at Pima Community College and attended cosmetology school.

Besides running nail spas, Nguyen has dabbled in the restaurant business. She and her mother ran Saigon Flavor, a Vietnamese restaurant in Sahuarita that Nguyen sold in 2004.

Even now, she and her family do catering on the side. Her brother, Luis Nguyen, also works as a nail tech at her Northwest Side business.

Whenever possible, Nguyen and her family band together with other members of the Vietnamese community to put on fundraising events for ailing children in her native country.

"We cook a lot of food and sell it," she said. "All the money we raise is for sick kids in hospitals."

The money helps buy medicine for children who are too poor to afford it, she said.

Nguyen said she also tries to give back to her adopted country.

At her newest nail spa, Nguyen said, 10 cents of every credit card transaction goes toward the Children's Miracle Network at Tucson Medical Center.

"I really appreciate the life here, and I want to do a little bit to help other people," she said.