Immigrant's $1.3B Powerball win spotlights the Iu Mien community
Release time：2024-05-01 08:49:38 Source：Global Gateway news portal
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.
- Previous：Brit living in California shares how expensive it really is to live there
- Next：Alicia Keys, Brian d’Arcy James, Daniel Radcliffe and more react to earning Tony Award nominations
Related articles
- The cancer drugs that could improve survival rates if given to patients in the morning
- New strategy to attack aggressive brain cancer shows promise
- Thailand ready for any scenario on Myanmar border, foreign minister says — Radio Free Asia
- In many African countries, abortions are legal. But information and access can be hard to come by
- Judge clears former Kentucky secretary of state Alison Lundergan Grimes of ethics charges
- Maker of defective sleep apnea devices ordered to overhaul manufacturing
- Posts misrepresent a photo of a Ukrainian soldier balancing on his prosthetic limbs
- NZ Foreign Minister urges Israel not to begin Rafah ground offensive
- Derrick White scores 38, Celtics top Heat 102
- Former world's oldest dog stripped of title
- Immigrant's $1.3B Powerball win spotlights the Iu Mien community
- Funding shortfall halts Taranaki Cathedral project
- Cicadas are nature's weirdos, and about to infest 2 parts of the U.S.
- Search for crew member overboard from fishing vessel in Hawke's Bay
- Audit finds Wisconsin Capitol Police emergency response times up, calls for better tracking
- Confusion about brand name leads to false claims about Aldi’s bacon
- Texas bird flu patient being treated after contact with cows
- Paris race celebrates waiters, waitresses who nourish city
- Walmart shutting down its 51 health care clinics, virtual care service
- Federal data does not show a soaring number of unauthorized migrants registering to vote
Random recommendation
- Copyright © 2024 Powered by Immigrant's $1.3B Powerball win spotlights the Iu Mien community ,Global Gateway news portal sitemap