ZZZ - GMG - VEGAS INC 2011-2014

VEGAS INC Battambang when Pol Pot took power. When the regime fell, Seang and other soldiers went back to collect their stockpile — M16 assault rifles, M79 grenade launchers, machine guns, grenades and ammunition. They wanted to take back Cambodia from the Vietnamese occupiers. Seang joined a resistance group, the Khmer People's National Liberation Armed Forces, based near the Thailand border. By mid-1981, the group had about 7,000 fighters. Seang spent three years in the jungle with the group. He ate rice and canned tuna every day and slept in a tent. They had little ammunition, so Seang stayed put and did not go on patrol. They hoped for U.S. support, but it never came. While there, he met a woman who had escaped to the border with other refugees. She came from a wealthy family, but Pol Pot's regime had killed her parents. Seang heard that the United States was looking for former Cambodian soldiers, so one night in 1981, the couple, protected by armed guards, trekked 13 miles to a United Nations refugee camp in Thailand. They stayed there for three months, and his wife gave birth to their first son, Chris. The young family was bused to another refugee camp in Thailand, where they lived for another three months, then flew to the Philippines. They spent four months in an apartment before flying to Los Angeles. According to Seang, the United States paid to move them here because he fought Vietnamese communists. ••• Seang's family lived in L.A. for a year, then moved to Long Beach, Calif., home to a large Cambodian community. He was scared about finding a job because his only real talent was jungle warfare. He went on welfare and received food stamps while his wife attended school. His second son, Ronald, named for Ronald Reagan, was born in 1985. A year later, Seang started working the graveyard shift at a 24-hour doughnut shop. He didn't receive a paycheck, but a Cambodian co-worker taught him English and how to bake doughnuts. Seang had distant relatives in Las Vegas. They worked for casinos and told him about the good wages, free food and health insurance. Plus, they said, it was easy work. He moved to Las Vegas in 1989 and was hired as a porter at Caesars Palace, where he cleaned slot machines and the casino floor. He worked 2 a.m. to 10 a.m. When he was off, he would stop by a doughnut store on Desert Inn Road near Boulder Highway. The owner was | 6 JANUARY 2014 20140106_VI01_F.indd 17 | SWEET SUCCESS: Sothy Seang is shown posing with Metro Police officers at his shop, the Donut Hut, 3242 E. Desert Inn Road, Las Vegas. Seang fought with the Cambodian army against the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War and later immigrated to the United States. He has owned the Donut Hut for 22 years. Cambodian. Seang liked to chat with a fellow countryman, but he also was angling for part-time work, which he got. In 1991, Seang bought the business for $20,000 after borrowing money from anyone who would lend it. The store was open 24 hours a day until 2001, when Seang began closing in the afternoon. When the shop was open around the clock, Seang worked from 6 p.m. to 8  a.m. His wife manned the counter from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. The couple baked and sold doughnuts practically nonstop for two decades. They hardly saw each other and divorced in 2011. "We worked too much like that," Seang said. "We had no life." ••• One morning in 1993, around 3 a.m., three men burst into Donut Hut. Two of them, flashing handguns, jumped over the counter, while the third took a seat as lookout. One of them put his gun to Seang's head and said that he had been watching Seang, that he knew Seang had two children. He warned him not to fight back and to give up his money. They yanked the phone cord, used it to tie Seang's hands behind his back and put a garbage bag over his head. They took $100, put it in a pink doughnut box and fled when a customer — a casino pit boss who always stopped in after his shift ended at 3 a.m. — saw what was happening and ran to call the police. After the robbery, a customer took Seang to a gun show at Cashman Field, where he bought a pistol. In 1997, three masked gunmen tried to rob Donut Hut. Seang fired a shot into the wall and scared them off. When Metro Police responded to the robberies, Seang told them his story. The cops, many of them ex-military, took a liking to him. They started stopping by his shop for coffee and doughnuts, to check on Seang and scare off any would-be assailants. If they couldn't get back to the station, officers went to Donut Hut at the end of their shifts to finish reports and investigations and make phone calls. They also started posing, in uniform, for pictures. Seang arranged them ahead of time and wore military paraphernalia for the camera — uniform, combat boots, aviator sunglasses, helmet. He carried disarmed grenades and an unloaded rifle. About 20 of the photos cover the walls of his store. He also has photos of himself at Las Vegas' Veterans Day parades. When he marches, he wears a military uniform and holds a large sign that shows a picture of him dressed in fatigues and armed to the teeth, with an American flag superimposed behind him. On the sign, he calls himself a former "Cambodian Rambo" and freedom fighter and says, "U.S.A. - All the way! Proud to be an American." Seang, who became a U.S. citizen in 1997, is almost obsessively patriotic. He talks at length about how the American government brought him here because he fought the communists and how the government put him on welfare to help him start a new life. "It's so refreshing to be around somebody who appreciates what the rest of us take for granted," said Vietnam War veteran James McGeachy, of Las Vegas, who also marches in the Veterans Day parade. "He acquired it the hard way." ••• Donut Hut, 3242 E. Desert Inn Road, is squeezed between a smoke shop and a shuttered copy store in the Desert Inn Plaza, a strip mall laced with empty storefronts. The shop is open six days a week from 7 p.m. to 11:15 a.m. Until a year ago, it was open seven days a week. Seang works there with his companion, 35-year-old Peou Sorn, a Cambodian native whom he met a few years ago after placing a personal ad in a Cambodian newspaper in Long Beach. Seang likes being his own boss. Nobody controls him. The business is profitable, and he pays himself about $3,000 a month. Still, his life is behind the counter. He sleeps just five hours a day, and it seems his only hobby is playing the Arizona lottery every week. When he talks about combat, though, he's in his element. And he hasn't given up the fight. He keeps two guns at the shop for protection and wears black Nike kneepads every day under his pants, in case he needs to drop down and shoot an attacker through the doughnut display case. "I'm the best," he said. "I'm the real Rambo." 17 1/2/14 1:23:21 PM

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