Immigrant's $1.3B Powerball win spotlights the Iu Mien community
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Cheng “Charlie” Saephan wore a broad smile and a bright blue sash emblazoned with the words “Iu-Mien USA” as he hoisted an oversized check for $1.3 billion above his head.
The 46-year-old immigrant’s luck in winning an enormous Powerball jackpot in Oregon earlier this month — a lump sum payment of $422 million after taxes, which he and his wife will split with a friend — has changed his life. It also raised awareness about Iu Mien people, a southeast Asian ethnic group with origins in China, many of whose members fled from Laos to Thailand and then settled in the U.S. following the Vietnam War.
“I am born in Laos, but I am not Laotian,” Saephan told a news conference Monday at Oregon Lottery headquarters, where his identity as one of the jackpot’s winners was revealed. “I am Iu Mien.”
During the Vietnam War, the CIA and U.S. military recruited Iu Mien in neighboring Laos, many of them subsistence farmers, to engage in guerrilla warfare and to provide intelligence and surveillance to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail that the North Vietnamese used to send troops and weapons through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam.
Related articles
Election 2024: Biden and the Democrats raised far less in April than Trump and the GOP
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee said Monday that they ra2024-05-22VOX POPULI: Sudden death of Navalny shows dangers of the truth in Russia
It is said there are two distinct “truths” in the cosmos of the Russian language.One is expressed by2024-05-22Concorde makes journey along New York's Hudson River
The Concorde and barge sail past the Statue of Liberty in New York. Photo: Getty Images / Michael M2024-05-22VOX POPULI: Sudden death of Navalny shows dangers of the truth in Russia
It is said there are two distinct “truths” in the cosmos of the Russian language.One is expressed by2024-05-22Trump visits Minnesota after son Barron's Florida high school graduation
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump used a day off from his hush money trial Friday2024-05-22VOX POPULI: Abe faction’s ‘amended’ funds report is simply worthless
For the first time in ages, The Asahi Shimbun on Feb. 1 printed a table of data that ran almost the2024-05-22
atest comment