By Chris White
23 Jun 2018

The 77-year-old changed the lives of Cambodian refugees flooding into the United States during the nation’s civil war in the 70s and 80s. He wasn’t handing out money or houses, but did it another way. Making doughnuts.

By 1980, he had opened 20 stores and was employing dozens of Cambodian refugees, sponsoring their work visas......“Anybody who wrote to me for help, I’d speak to the US embassy in Bangkok, as I was very friendly with them. They’d see my name and let them come....

“I saw these people gambling on blackjack and I told my wife ‘let’s have some fun’. So at first it was five dollars, then 10. The more I went, the more I was addicted. I feel so much remorse. I think the most I lost was US$1 million,...

It was around this time, in 1993, when Cambodia was having its first free elections, and he thought about running for office. “I sold the stores, gave some money to my children, then went back to Cambodia. I just wanted to open the American dream to the Cambodian people. I wanted to tell people my story. I wanted to help build peace and democracy.”

Now Ted Ngoy spends his time dabbling with property investments in Phnom Penh.

Full article http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/a ... ull-circle

I think he started New World School, then sold it to Westline

The Cambodian Refugee Behind LA’s Amazing Donut Scene Gets a Documentary
23 Oct 2020
You might not realize, but the primary reason LA has such an amazing doughnut scene is because of Ted Ngoy, the Cambodian refugee who will the primary focus of an upcoming documentary called the Donut King.
The rags-to-riches story comes after Ngoy helped sponsor hundreds of visas for Cambodian refugees and helped set many of them up with donut businesses across the Southland.
At one point in the 1990s, more than 80% of donut shops in the LA area were owned by Cambodians. It sounds like the epitome of the American Dream until things go downhill for Ngoy, who got caught up in gambling and eventually lost most of the donut empire.
The trailer is below, with the full documentary premiering on streaming on October 30.


https://la.eater.com/2020/10/23/2153068 ... g-briefing

'Donut King' Ted Ngoy's Life Is Even Crazier Than The Documentary About Him
by Elina Shatkin in Food on October 29, 2020 11:40 AM


Nearly every independent donut shop in every Southern California mini-mall hides a story — and many of them start with an unlikely impresario, a Cambodian refugee named Ted Ngoy. In the 1980s and '90s, when Dunkin' Donuts tried to establish itself on the West Coast, his frosted, deep-fried empire sent the company packing. Then, he lost it all.

Ngoy's epic rags-to-riches-to-rags story has been chronicled before (in the Los Angeles Times, the Phnom Penh Post and California Sunday, to name a few outlets), but Alice Gu is the first to put it on film.

Gu's documentary, The Donut King, chronicles Ngoy's thrill-of-victory/agony-of-defeat rollercoaster ride through the American Dream — immigration, capitalism, history, hubris, romance, addiction, family and food.

An assortment of colorful donuts from DK's Donuts in Santa Monica. (Elina Shatkin/LAist)

Few foods are as universally adored as fried dough. The United States alone is home to more than 25,000 donut shops and they produce more than 10 billion donuts each year. Gu didn't know about any of that before she started developing this project.

A cinematographer who has worked on commercials and movies with Rory Kennedy, Werner Herzog and Stacy Peralta, she stumbled onto the subject after her nanny brought her some "Cambodian doughnuts."

"I was like, 'What on earth makes this Cambodian? This tastes like any other glazed donut,'" Gu says. "And she says, 'Because Cambodian people make them.'"

After a little research, Gu discovered that a huge number of California's independent donut shops, maybe 80-90%, are owned by Cambodian Americans, mostly thanks to Ngoy. She was hooked.

In less than two years, while working on other jobs and projects, Gu directed and shot the 94-minute documentary. The Donut King comes out Friday, Oct. 30, online, and when you buy a ticket, some of the dough (see what we did there?) goes to your local theater.
https://laist.com/2020/10/29/donut_king ... eveals.php

Ngoy doesn’t sound like very Cambodian name, family or otherwise.

whatwat wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 9:22 am Ngoy doesn’t sound like very Cambodian name, family or otherwise.

He’s Chinese-Khmer, hence the business acumen and hustle.

Johno35 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 03, 2020 9:23 am

whatwat wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 9:22 am Ngoy doesn’t sound like very Cambodian name, family or otherwise.

He’s Chinese-Khmer, hence the business acumen and hustle.

Khmer-Chinese I think they prefer, unless he was born in China of course.

whatwat wrote: ↑Tue Nov 03, 2020 9:32 am

Johno35 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 03, 2020 9:23 am

whatwat wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 9:22 am Ngoy doesn’t sound like very Cambodian name, family or otherwise.

He’s Chinese-Khmer, hence the business acumen and hustle.

Khmer-Chinese I think they prefer, unless he was born in China of course.

Why do we say Vietnamese-Australians, Cambodian- American, African-American but when a Chinese person is born in Cambodia we call them Cambodian-Chinese?

Johno35 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 03, 2020 10:55 am

whatwat wrote: ↑Tue Nov 03, 2020 9:32 am

Johno35 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 03, 2020 9:23 am

whatwat wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 9:22 am Ngoy doesn’t sound like very Cambodian name, family or otherwise.

He’s Chinese-Khmer, hence the business acumen and hustle.

Khmer-Chinese I think they prefer, unless he was born in China of course.

Why do we say Vietnamese-Australians, Cambodian- American, African-American but when a Chinese person is born in Cambodia we call them Cambodian-Chinese?

How can a Chinese person be Chinese if they were born in Cambodia?