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
Former Spain coach Del Bosque to head the commission overseeing beleaguered soccer federation
MADRID (AP) — Former Spain coach Vicente del Bosque will lead the Spanish government’s commission ov2024-05-01Chinese, Turkmen Presidents Hold Talks, Elevating Ties to Comprehensive Strategic Partnership
Contact Us HomeNewsHighlightACWF NewsSocietyWom2024-05-01Beijing looks to boost green technology development
Beijing will strive to ramp up the development of green technology in its municipal administrative c2024-05-01Protein markers tied to chemotherapy success
Doctors in Shanghai have screened two protein markers to determine pancreatic cancer patients' s2024-05-01DAILY MAIL COMMENT: A very good day for our united kingdom
No matter how many contortions he performed during his unedifying bid to cling on to power, Humza Yo2024-05-01Xi's Speech at 1st Plenum of 20th CPC Central Committee to Be Published
Contact Us HomeNewsHighlightACWF NewsSocietyWom2024-05-01
atest comment