Ted kept a low profile until the LA filmmaker Alice Gu got in touch a couple of years ago. Near the station was a doughnut shop. Once, he was a poor boy who carried away one of Cambodias wealthiest daughters. Every time I met them I said, 'Sorry son, sorry my daughter, sorry Christy. Ngoy forged her signature on checks. TED NGOY HAD an unrelenting obsession during his 1975 plane ride from Southeast Asia to Southern California. Then, he lost it all. [9], Ngoy is the subject of the 2020 documentary film The Donut King. We believe when reliable local reporting is widely available, the entire community benefits. Ted was dismayed. Despite his success, he said, he felt unhappy and isolated. It was small amounts first but he was soon blowing bigger figures and he couldn't seem to stop. His story begins in the early 1970s when Ngoy was a commander in the Royal Cambodian Army, training soldiers in Thailand. I gave her my spiel, and she said, 'Well, you've called the right person. Although there is still some resentment towards him in the Cambodian community, whose hard-earned cash he gambled away, he is also revered by many. I did not have time to expand. "I came back to L.A. and I didn't know that I was going to create this crazy explosion in the business. Upon deeper glance, it was so personal for me. Eager to learn the business, Ngoy approached the shop owners. Ted Ngoy, his wife and family pick up the story and walk us through their unbelievable experience, flying to a . He paid for their airfare and, when they arrived, "Uncle Ted" let them stay at his house while he taught them the ropes of the donut business. 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 donuts. [11], Last edited on 22 February 2023, at 19:19, "Rise and fall of Cambodian refugee 'Donut King' charted in award-winning film", "A TASTE OF CAMBODIA: A Real Horatio Alger Story: Refugee Built Empire on Doughnuts", "VOICES FROM THE FIRST GENERATION: The Ngoy Family", "Asians Looking to Broaden Horizons: Immigrants Prosper but Hope to Venture Outside the 'Business Ghetto', "The Donut King who went full circle - from rags to riches, twice", "The story of the man they called the doughnut king", "Review: A Shakespearean SoCal tragedy, 'The Donut King' charts the rise and fall of Ted Ngoy", "Lessons from the Donut King & Science Fiction's Golden Age", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ted_Ngoy&oldid=1140980965, This page was last edited on 22 February 2023, at 19:19. A week later, Suganthini wrote back, and the two began a secret correspondence. At the weekend the oldest children, Chet and Savy, then nine and eight, helped out by pouring coffee, packing doughnuts and folding boxes. At 16, she had no friends, could not talk to boys and was forbidden to leave home alone. Ngoy is Cambodian and he was in Phnom Penh when it fell. One night, he. "I had true love for her.". Ted soon got a job working at Winchell's, which was then the dominant donut chain on the West Coast. I believed him a thousand times, she said. [4], Despite the wealth he had amassed and his importance within his community, Ngoy felt dissatisfied, remarking that he had "No political life, no religious life, just work, work. Faced with such determination, her family allowed the young lovers to be together. "The more you chase, the more it's gone," he says in a new documentary about his rise and fall, called The Donut King. Her daughter, Mayly Tao, has taken over the reigns of DK's. Gu realized his story was also an epic romance. Also, significantly for Ngoy, other Cambodian refugees and their children donuts. His family didn't want to see him, and nobody offered him work, not even baking doughnuts. Driving back with $85,000 cash in the boot of the car, they were stopped by the police; they had fallen behind with payments, so the car showed up as stolen. "She was so beautiful," he remembers. "It's impossible to explain that money had nothing to do with it. It really helped put some perspective on the journey to get here from somewhere else and the struggles that people go through when they arrive in a new, strange and foreign land. So he named his own political party the Free Development Republican Party. At the end, I win. "They forgive me fully. Peace Lutheran Church Naturally he agreed, and set his sisters up with doughnut shops. Upon his return to Orange County, Ngoy began gambling harder than ever stating "Monks cannot help me, Buddha cannot help me. Ngoy ended his political career abruptly in 2002, breaking with two powerful allies, the commerce minister and the head of the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. He wrote a book called The Donut: History, Recipes, and Lore from Boston to Berlin and he gave really fascinating insights into donut culture, history and our relationship to donuts in America. Where Im going, I dont know. "That's why I want to tell the world, 'Do not gamble.' If there's anything she wants people who watch The Donut King to know, it's that this seemingly simple treat has a deeper cultural resonance. It provided a path for refugees to settle and was a profitable business model. Everybody cry, he said. And that's what he did. "If I need the vote, I cannot gamble. To make sure he went through with it, they insisted on hiding behind a curtain while he said his spiel. Whenever Ted won, the family would rejoice with him. 2023 Southern California Public Radio - All Rights Reserved, Rising Egg Prices Are For The Birds. A new documentary chronicles the fascinating saga of Ted Ngoy, "The Donut King," who made a fortune and then lost it all to a gambling addiction. "[1], Ted Ngoy was born in the Cambodian village of Sisophon near the country's border with Thailand. She said he would be throwing his money away. He also sponsored more than 100 Cambodian refugee families and established a path of financial opportunity for them in America. Ted resides in Cambodia where he splits his time between Phnom Pen and Kep, a province in Southern Cambodia that's famous for its crab fishing industry. It was really wonderful. After a civil war broke out and Phnom Penh fell to the communist Khmer. They arranged a meeting for the couple at a relatives house, where Ngoy was expected to formally end their romance. I never will be able to pay back. Christy was in the front and made a lot of inroads with the community and built a lot of bridges. The premise of family in the film is how hard your parents work and the sacrifices they make so that you can have a life better than they did. "After cry, go back gambling," he told one interviewer. Some of those he borrowed from were the people he had leased doughnut shops to. He had gotten his first taste of that passion years earlier. They had a vacation home in Big Bear and a time share in Acapulco. Everybody cry," he said. On Sundays, he attends Parkcrest Christian Church in Long Beach. , chronicles Ngoy's thrill-of-victory/agony-of-defeat rollercoaster ride through the American Dream immigration, capitalism, history, hubris, romance, addiction, family and food. Suganthinis father ran out from hiding and called an ambulance. He has converted to Christianity, he said, and prays often, asking God for help. He was Chinese Cambodian, part of a despised underclass. With Chuong Pek Lee, Susan Lim, Ted Ngoy, Daewon Song. All night long Ted would watch people buying coffee and doughnuts, and he realised it was a good business. It was here that Ngoy had his first taste of gambling while placing bets at the blackjack tables. But the situation at home was increasingly dangerous and on his last trip, in April 1975, the capital fell. I have to go to school.". He taught them the names of the doughnuts: old fashioned, jelly-filled, glazed. ", But in the end, he says, he beat it. "Everybody's happy to see me now, because I changed from the bad guy to the good guy.". And it was actually a donut that I refused at first from Mayly Tao, the Donut Princess. The documentary goes back and forth between Ngoy and the present-day lives of second- and third-generation donut shop kids or what Gu refers to as Donut Generation 2.0. Ted became known as the Donut King - or Uncle Ted, because of the many Cambodian immigrants he'd sponsored. [10] Ngoy was hesitant to return to California for the film; he was estranged from his children and former friends. Ngoy bought stores in Fullerton, Anaheim, Anaheim Hills and Buena Park over the next year. Chuong Lee, who has run DK's Donuts since 1988, is officially retired although she occasionally helps out at the shop. For the next 45 days, he lived in her room. The couple and their three toddlers arrived penniless at Camp Pendleton, part of the first wave of Cambodian refugees. "It's a crazy story, but it's true," says Ted, now 78. The first few times he and Christy visited, on early family holidays, everything went well: they watched a magic show, they saw Elvis perform. Her parents and cousins hid behind curtains so they could hear him break off the relationship. Something else about Orange County that I found so beautiful and touching while we were making this film, there was a man who owned a donut shop in Seal Beach and his wife was stricken with cancer. And then I hate the gambling and then I hate that I treat Christy so badly, treat my children so badly, because of the gambling, so I hate myself," he says. The rise & fall of The Donut King. Read about our approach to external linking. Ted, who spoke four languages, was offered a post as liaison officer in Thailand by Suganthini's brother-in-law, Gen Sak Sutsakhan. The Donut King is a 2020 American documentary film which tells the life story of California donut shop owner Ted Ngoy. At loose ends, she returned to Los Angeles and, once again, started helping with the family business. It was love at first bite. [5] She reached out to Ngoy and other Cambodian families who ran donut shops, and within six weeks began principal photography. Seasonal Halloween donuts at DK's Donuts in Santa Monica. On the porch of a friends mobile home in Long Beach, the Cambodian doughnut king falls asleep each night shivering. called Tell us about your wife. I told them I'm very sorry 1,000 times. You just have to see the opportunity and go for it. Those are the wise words of Ted Ngoy. "You can't find any prettier woman besides her.". Beautiful views aren't the only thing drawing Angelenos to the region. He is nicknamed the "Donut King. Late at night, Ngoy would put Suganthini on his back and climb down the roof, then down the coconut tree. But he admits he was also aware that conquering Suganthini's heart held out the promise of a better life. Get the day's top news with our Today's Headlines newsletter, sent every weekday morning. The Donut King: Directed by Alice Gu. Ted's story is told in a new documentary. He remarried and had four more children - the youngest two are still at school. and California landscape with a familiar coat yellow strip mall signs with red lettering reading Christys Donuts. That's because of a refugee who built up an empire, and became known as the Donut King, only to lose it all. 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