The Brief

At the turn of the 21st century, L.A. was the donut capital of the world, with more donut shops per capita than any other city.

Even now, if you take a stroll, there’s a good chance you’ll pass a small mom-and-pop on many street corners.

But how did donuts become such an integral part of L.A.’s urban landscape?

Well, what if I told you that many current donut shops in L.A. and Orange County can be traced back to just one man.

The man, the myth, the Donut King

Ted Ngoy in "The Donut King" documentary.

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Courtesy Greenwich Entertainment

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In 1975, Ted Ngoy found himself in Camp Pendleton, California, after boarding the last passenger plane out of Cambodia to escape the Khmer Rouge.

Ngoy was part of the first wave of Cambodian refugees to come to the United States as their homeland fell into civil war and genocide.

In Southern California, Ngoy worked three jobs to earn money. One of them was at a gas station that just so happened to be attached to a donut shop.

One night, a co-worker offered Ngoy a donut. He took one bite of the fluffy fried dough and his American Dream was cemented.

As the story goes, Ngoy walked right into the donut shop and asked to buy the place. He was promptly laughed at and told to get a job at Winchell’s — which he did.

“Winchell's had this incredible manager training program, and you could go in, learn to bake donuts, learn the very basics, and within about three, six months, you would be handed the keys to your donut shop,” Alice Gu told guest host Austin Cross on LAist’s live public affairs program AirTalk with Larry Mantle. Gu is the filmmaker behind the documentary, The Donut King, which tells the story of Ngoy.

Gu said Ngoy soon became the manager of a Winchell’s in Newport Beach, but he still wasn’t satisfied.

After saving enough money, he eventually went back to the shop where it all began and made good on his original offer. A year later he bought another shop, and then another one.

“It's the complete embodiment of the American spirit and the American dream,” said Gu. “Within three years of landing in California he became a millionaire.”

A castle on every corner

He wanted to share that wealth with his community.

Ngoy wound up sponsoring many Cambodians who came to the United States during the second refugee wave in the late 70s, and he taught them what he knew: donuts.

“He accumulated all these donut shops, but then he would lease them back to them, so they had a chance at the American Dream themselves,” Gu said.

What started out as helping relatives and close friends became an entire niche industry for the Cambodian community.

“So every single donut shop is connected through six degrees of separation to Ted Ngoy,” Gu said.

Ted Ngoy making donuts in "The Donut King" documentary.

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Courtesy Greenwich Entertainment

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A family affair

A cousin of Ngoy started the company B&H that supplied the flour, sugar, and other goods to the donut shops. Another launched a company to manufacture the iconic pink boxes that Ngoy popularized, said Gu.

Why pink boxes? They were 10 cents cheaper than the standard white ones.

“It really became a complete industry within the Cambodian American community,” Gu said. “At his peak, [Ngoy] estimated that he was worth about 20 million. That's actually closer to a hundred million dollars in today's money.”

The king and all his 'donut kids'

“Ted Ngoy was a celebrity,” said Phung Huynh, an artist and educator in Los Angeles. “He was really a superstar for us, seeing somebody who escaped the genocide and was able to make it.”

Huynh heard about Ted Ngoy all the way in Michigan, where her family landed in 1978 after her father fled the Khmer Rouge by riding a bicycle across the border to Vietnam.

“Like many Cambodian refugees, we all wanted to go to California,” said Huynh. “You hear about Ted Ngoy, you hear about all the refugee communities from Cambodia and Vietnam going to California.”

Michelle Sou in a silkscreened portrait on a donut box by artist Phung Huynh.

In 1981, Huynh and her family moved to L.A.

Many in her immediate family became garment workers, but their lives were still inextricably linked to donuts.

“It was very common for a lot of aunties and uncles and family friends to either work in a donut shop or lease a donut shop. That was just like really a part of the culture,” said Huynh.

Ratana Kim in a silkscreened portrait on a pink donut box by artist Phung Huynh.

Now Huynh focuses her art that speaks to second and third generation Cambodian Americans, the self-anointed “donut kids” whose parents operated the stores. She paints portraits of Cambodian refugees on the pink donut boxes that have defined so many of their lives.

“I think when you go to a donut shop, you see happy people greeting you with these donuts but behind the counter is this really complicated history of genocide, of war, of the younger generation finding their place and sometimes being very disconnected and reconnected with their history,” she said.

It’s donuts all the way down

If you’re wondering which shop you can find the Donut King behind the counter now, you’ll be looking for a while.

Gu said after making his fortune, Ngoy developed a gambling problem and lost every penny — and every one of his shops.

“One by one, he literally bet the shops, and one by one, he lost all of his donut shops. It really was quite Shakespearean, or Icarus, if you will,” Gu said.

He now lives in Cambodia, retired from the donut shop business.

But his legacy continues as second and third generation “donut kids” continue to propel their family businesses into the 21st century.

For example, you can visit DK Donuts in Santa Monica, ran by Ngoy’s niece Mayly Tao for some four decades. Now, she operates Donut Princess LA, where the menu includes more trendy flavors and vibrant decorations, but Ngoy’s story can still be tasted in every bite.

In Los Angeles, Thai food is something many of us take for granted — as central to how Angelenos eat as tacos or sushi. But in 1969, when one of the first Thai restaurants, Chao Krung, opened its doors, the cuisine was so unfamiliar that its owners had to offer Chinese dishes to put customers at ease.

"My mom had a chalkboard — barbecue chicken, wonton soup, chow mein," recalled Amanda Maneesilasan of her mother, Supa Kuntee. "She'd start seeing people coming in, and then slowly introduce them to something Thai."

The restaurant mostly served L.A.'s scattered Thai community — years before Thai Town existed.

Boon and Supa Kuntee, along with Supa's sister, Nillaung, opened Chao Krung’s first location, a small storefront on Western Avenue, not long after the couple arrived in California in pursuit of a better education and a better life.

The family later closed that location for a second spot on Hollywood Boulevard, a narrow, single storefront where the same struggle to explain Thai food to Angelenos continued — and the same Chinese menu holdovers stuck around to keep customers coming in.

It wasn't until the family opened its third and current location on Fairfax Avenue in 1972 that Chao Krung began to take the shape it's known as today.

As Thai food became more popular and moved into the mainstream in the '70s and '80s, its clientele grew, boosted by staffers at nearby CBS Television City. You can see family photos in the space spanning the past few decades, in between statues of the Thai Buddha and colorful tapestries, showcasing Los Angeles' restaurant history.

Sisters Katy Noochlaor (left) and Amanda Maneesilasan (right), second-generation owners of Chao Krung, behind the bar.

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Courtesy Chao Krung Thai

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Second generation

As children, Maneesilasan and her sister, Katy Noochlaor, grew up in the restaurant — doing homework between tables, playing behind the building — wherever the family was, they were there, too.

Which is why it made sense in 2017 for them to step into their parents’ shoes. "We knew we would take over the restaurant," Noochlaor said. "We live and breathe that restaurant."

The menu still had vestiges of the original compromise their parents had to make to survive. The sisters, however, were determined to restore it to its true Thai roots.

For Maneesilasan, learning to make green curry from her grandmother was a turning point, almost a lightbulb moment, in her understanding of the cuisine.

Weekly curry nights

As part of the reclamation effort, the sisters have unveiled a new weekly Kanom Jeen Curry Night, Wednesdays only, which features a trio of curries and grilled skewers.

When I visited, small ceramic vats of curry crowded the table, alongside plates of rice noodles — steam still rising, their funky aroma enough to make a famished stomach growl.

The curries consist of Gang Kieaow Waan Gai, the green curry recipe they learned from their grandmother, made with chicken, a coconut curry base, fresh herbs, Thai eggplant and Thai chili.

Mae's Nam Ya Trout is made with tender bits of trout in a Southern Thai coconut curry, built on house-ground red curry paste, and is the most labor-intensive of the three, taking about five hours to complete. The Nam Prik is a roasted chili curry with smoky herbs and nutty undertones from peanuts. The layered flavors are savory, but when mixed with rice noodles, fresh vegetables, and dried chilies, they take on a new dimension — silky smooth at first, then leaving your lips burning the next.

A selection of Ping Ping skewers at Chao Krung, including roasted eggplant, lemongrass chicken, beef satay, and shrimp, alongside Isaan-style pork sausage.

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Sydney Yorkshire

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Courtesy Chao Krung

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"Curry is so important in Thai culture, it's part of our tradition," Maneesilasan said. On the trout curry specifically: "I can guarantee you can't find this anywhere else."

The skewers range from house-made Isaan-style sausage to a surprisingly spicy eggplant, glazed with roasted chili, garlic, and makrut lime leaf — a welcome kick from a vegetable so often relegated to the sidelines.

In addition to taking over the family restaurant, the sisters have also built their own ventures over the years — Tuk Tuk Thai, a street-food-driven spot now on Sawtelle, and Ban Ban Burger, a Thai-inflected smashburger concept located next door.

This fall, a second Ban Ban Burger location opens next door to Chao Krung on Fairfax, with the wall between the two restaurants coming down to make way for an archway connecting them. It's a literal and symbolic union of the family's two generational concepts under one roof.

It’s been nearly 600 days since the L.A. fires became one of the most destructive in U.S. history, yet the federal government has still not appropriated more than $15 billion in long-term recovery funds to help survivors get back home. That’s longer than the previous record of 500 days survivors of the Maui fires had to wait, according to After the Fire USA.

“ It's really like nothing we've ever seen before,” said Jennifer Gray Thompson, the nonprofit’s founder and CEO.

Deep partisan divides and repeated government shutdowns under the Trump administration have been major causes for the delays, officials say.

“Disaster relief should not be a political bargaining chip — but that’s exactly how the Trump administration has made it out to be,” Sen. Alex Padilla said in a statement.

The state has also lagged, with $2.5 billion in recovery funds only just starting to be released, according to reporting by NBC4.

Meanwhile, L.A fire survivors are facing massive financial gaps to rebuild, on average between $200,000 and $500,000, even with insurance. And as temporary housing insurance dissipates, many are now being forced to decide whether they can afford to rebuild at all.

“ The community is struggling and is fighting to come back — and determined to come back — but we are really lacking the state and federal support that is necessary to help get us there,” said Sam James, a sixth-generation Altadenan whose family lost multiple generational homes in the Eaton Fire.

James founded the Altadena Recovery Team to support fellow survivors in lieu of reliable government and insurance-funded safety nets. Multiple local creative financing efforts are also cropping up more quickly feed that gap.

“The delay is just really hard to rationalize given how much need there truly is on the ground,” she said.

In recent months, delegations of local officials as well as Eaton and Palisades fire survivors have traveled to Washington, D.C. to speak with lawmakers about the much-needed federal funds, which experts say can often be used to fill such gaps in finances.

In June, the White House requested more than $85 billion in supplemental funds, primarily to support the war on Iran. The next month, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger sent letters to the Senate Committee on Appropriations urging disaster needs be included in such requests.

“It's on D.C. to begin to move the narrative from an ask to a make it happen,” Barger told LAist.

Four U.S. senators from states affected by recent disasters — including two Republicans from Utah and North Carolina, as well as California senators Padilla and Adam Schiff — sent a letter in July expressing their concern that no disaster funds were included in the White House’s supplemental appropriations request.

The senators called the omission an effort by the Trump administration to punish Los Angeles and the state of California.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has requested more than $10 billion for what’s called “Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery,” which can help survivors finance their rebuilds, as well as help local governments rebuild infrastructure, such as water systems, community centers, roads and more.

“It's the largest bucket of money any community receives in order to recover after a disaster,” said Thompson, from After the Fire USA. “It can really help fill the gaps that people need to get home.”

On average, the wait for such funds — from appropriation to allocation — is two years, Thompson said. Yet it’s been nearly two years since the L.A. fires, and the funds have yet to be appropriated at all.

Laura Richardson pays $450 a month out of pocket for a drug that could keep her off insulin for the rest of her life. She's a California state senator — and even she can't get her own insurance to cover it.

Richardson started using a GLP-1 a year ago after learning she was pre-diabetic. Her state health plan does not cover it.

“If something is available to help you to be more healthy, to avoid comorbidities … why would we want to wait till a person became diabetic to help them?” she told lawmakers in a June hearing.

Her experience is not unusual. For many Californians, popular weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy continue to be elusive despite their clinical promise. While prices are dropping, these drugs continue to be unaffordable for many; most insurers don’t cover them; and state programs, wary of costs, have rolled back access.

Senate Bill 1089, which would expand access to the class of drugs known as GLP-1s, is clearing its final hurdles this legislative session. The bill would direct the state to seek to partner with a drug manufacturer to increase competition and lower prices for GLP-1s under its CalRx program, a state program created to distribute popular, expensive drugs at a fraction of the cost.

It is unclear how long that could take, but it’d likely be a yearslong endeavor. It took the state three years to bring its $55 insulin into the market under CalRx. Today the state program also distributes albuterol inhalers and naloxone.

Richardson, an Inglewood Democrat, authored the bill, which is a watered-down version of its original, more ambitious form. Previously, the bill also sought to require that CalPERS, the health plan that insures 1.3 million public employees and retirees, cover GLP-1 drugs.

CalPERS opposed the bill and argued that the drug’s high cost would increase premiums by $28 per member per month.

Richardson added that she had discussed including GLP-1s in the CalRx program with the governor, and “he was very positively open to that.” State health officials have said that GLP-1s are among the drugs they are considering for the program.

A boom in GLP-1 spending

The bill follows California’s recent elimination of GLP-1 coverage for the treatment of obesity in its Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal. The state cited growing pharmacy costs and budget pressures for cutting the benefit. The state still pays for certain GLP-1s when prescribed specifically for diabetes treatment.

GLP-1s have helped many people to better manage their obesity and chronic healthcare conditions. Obesity is a well-known contributor to conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

State data show that the number of GLP-1 prescriptions solely for weight loss jumped from 20,000 to 700,000 between 2018 and 2023 across both Medi-Cal and commercial plans. In 2023, California spent $416.8 million on GLP-1 prescriptions for weight loss in the Medi-Cal program and commercial payers spent $405.2 million, according to state data.

An analysis by the Legislative Analyst’s Office found that during this time, California’s pharmacy spending nearly doubled, and tied that growth to drugs that treat diabetes, obesity, and inflammatory diseases.

California is not the only state feeling the burden of these drugs' popularity and cost: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and South Carolina also recently eliminated Medicaid coverage for GLP-1s when used solely for weight loss.

Today 12 states cover GLP-1s for obesity treatment under their Medicaid programs, although Rhode Island will cease coverage in October.

Similarly, coverage of GLP-1s under private insurance varies widely; there’s no clear standard. Health plans have also pointed to costs , noting they are currently a key contributor to premium increases.

Alison Sexton Ward, an economist and research scientist at the University of Southern California, said that data show huge benefits for peoples’ health. Modeling projects long-term savings in healthcare spending as well as a narrowing of health disparities, but she noted it’s a tricky investment for insurers to make. There are significant upfront costs before plans may start to see savings because of the reduction of obesity-related health problems, and insurers may not capture those savings when people tend to switch health plans every few years, she explained.

“The thing about treating obesity is just because you lose weight today doesn't mean that your healthcare costs go down tomorrow,” Ward said. “There's been this unique pressure on these drugs that they pay for themselves.”

One pilot that researchers and providers are looking at is the new federal Medicare GLP-1 Bridge Program, a temporary project that seeks to bring down the cost of Zepbound, Wegovy and Foundayo to about $50 a month.

Patients seeking cheaper options 

Dr. Wayne Ho, an obesity specialist and researcher in Los Angeles, sees the consequences of patchwork access to the drugs in his patients. Patients who can pay cash or whose insurance covers the drugs tend to be able to better manage their health conditions. Those without access try other, less effective therapies.

“It's really disheartening to see because we have these wonderful innovative treatments that really are life altering,” he said.

The cost is also driving some of his patients to seek cheaper, compounded versions of the drug, which some doctors warn against because they lack FDA approval.

Compounding typically involves custom-making a drug for a specific need — removing an allergen, for example. Increasingly, compound pharmacies and telehealth platforms are offering versions of GLP-1s that swap out an ingredient or two. Ho says these compounded drugs carry higher risk because they bypass the FDA’s rigorous vetting and approval process.

Nationally, calls to poison centers related to weight loss drugs increased by 1,500% between 2019 and 2025, according to data from America’s Poison Centers. Studies and reports have shown that compounded GLP-1s are more likely to cause adverse effects and have a higher risk of preparation errors. A Binghamton University study found that the odds of hospitalization were higher for compounded products. The FDA also warns of the prevalence of counterfeit products.

Ho calls GLP-1s one of the best tools he has as a provider. He remains hopeful that affordable access to the FDA-approved weight loss drugs is on the horizon. Continued efforts by state lawmakers to expand access are a critical step, he said.

“I think there's more and more pressure to cover these medications as more and more scientific data come out to show how it affects the body in a very positive manner,” he said.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

UCLA is launching the nation’s first digital humanities department and bachelor’s degree this fall. The new discipline combines classical humanities with technical know-how to examine a digitized and increasingly AI-enhanced world.

The major fuses technological tools for statistical analysis, coding, 3D mapping and data visualization with traditional humanities subjects like history, literature and global cultures. It’s a multidisciplinary approach to education that capitalizes on employers’ growing desire for recent graduates to think critically while also being able to harness new technology. And the major requires a great deal of teamwork among students, another skill hiring managers seek.

Students will learn how new technologies shape culture and the human biases that enter into the use of these new tools. Top of mind is the rise of generative artificial intelligence and training students to use it ethically while also understanding how easily it can produce misleading content.

Todd Presner is a UCLA professor of European languages and transcultural studies, and co-led the effort to create the digital humanities department. He said contemporary culture has witnessed a rift between computational subjects and the traditional humanities, and both are enhanced by merging the two.

“It's actually at our own peril when scientists are not speaking to folks in the humanities with historical knowledge, ethical knowledge, cultural knowledge, right?” he said. “And at the same time, I'd say when the humanities are not understanding the technologies in the world today, they also could be seen as irrelevant.”

Presner has taught a course showing students how to get under the hood of large language models, which store the reading material generative AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT use to spit out answers. “Students can essentially upload their own training data to some of these smaller models and see how easily they can be manipulated,” he said.

New major, old discipline

UCLA students will be able to declare digital humanities as a major this year, but campus professors have taught courses in the discipline for more than two decades. It’s the second most popular minor at UCLA, which was one reason the school decided to transform it into a major, said Alexandra Minna Stern, dean of the UCLA College Division of Humanities where digital humanities is based. Last academic year 750 UCLA undergraduate students took a course in digital humanities. Stern expects 50 to 100 students to eventually declare the major, and would be thrilled if 40 signed up this year.

The department will launch with 23 faculty, including lecturers, plus four staff members. Stern eventually wants a few more faculty, but UCLA’s currently under a hiring freeze. No academic unit at the university was cut to make way for the new digital humanities. Faculty hail from multiple humanities fields as well as information studies and data science, so classes will occur across several campus buildings.

She said at least one museum will provide internship opportunities. Based in the Los Angeles area, the Wende Museum specializes in collecting artifacts and oral histories of refugees as well as other dissident groups and digitizing them — a key aspect of digital humanities training. She aims to secure similar arrangements with other museums so students can further apply what they learn in professional settings.

The major’s introductory courses are clustered around data networks, such as statistical reasoning, and courses on culture, such as the symbolic history of Jerusalem or film depictions of antiquity. Upper division courses can center on how contemporary technology is shaped by political, cultural, and social forces or a class on social media data analysis.

One student’s experience

Kedaar Sridhar, 26, graduated from UCLA in 2022 with a computer science major and a minor in digital humanities.

The social media data analysis course was his favorite in the minor. For a class project, he and a team of students analyzed the hashtag “facemask” on social media while much of the world was still in the throes of COVID-19. He relied on the coding language Python as well as sentiment analysis tools to classify how different countries felt about face masks in public based on the social media posts featuring that hashtag.

If he could do college all over, he’d major in the new digital humanities program because it combines the application of contemporary data software with the probing analytical questions that the humanities embody.

“I think computer science is the what, digital humanities is the how and the why, and how do you actually apply it, and why is it important to be applied,” he said.

Sridhar credits the minor with landing him an internship at Microsoft. All the applicants knew computer science, but digital humanities distinguished him, he said. An interviewer asked what the minor entailed, and he said “it’s human-centered data storytelling, working with groups, working in projects, getting a tangible outcome.”

The interviewer said that’s what they’re looking for.

In the past year he co-founded his own company, Grantlytics, an AI-based platform focused on helping nonprofits fundraise by writing proposals, finding funding opportunities and identifying promising donors.

As an employer, he’s looking for much of what the digital humanities major offers. Without it, Sridhar would prefer a candidate with a humanities and coding or math background. But digital humanities “automatically is that interdisciplinary nature because it combines those two worlds together.”

What employers want

Sridhar’s preference for someone who is well-rounded appears to be backed by recent survey data.

Hiring managers who recruit recent college graduates indicated this year that these workers are mostly employable, but with caveats. The annual survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers shows that the skills recent graduates are most proficient in aren’t what employers prioritize most.

For example, 99% of hiring managers say oral and written communication and persuasion skills are important. But the same hiring managers indicated that just 55% of recent college graduates score well in communication skills. The same goes for critical thinking: Around 94% of hiring managers rate this competency highly but they report that just half of recent graduates are able to gather data from diverse sources and draw conclusions or work well in a fast-paced setting.

Where recent graduates do better is in technology, but hiring managers care slightly less about those. About 75% of employers place high importance on adapting to new technology or using tech to achieve company goals; they say that about 65% of recent grads are competent in that skillset.

Stern, the dean, is careful not to overstate the promise of digital humanities to halt the freefall of the broader humanities as a major students want. The share of U.S. college students majoring in fields such as literature, history, philosophy and foreign languages is at a historic nadir — just 8% of degrees conferred were in the humanities, down from nearly 15% nearly two decades ago. The trend at UCLA is similar.

She knows things are tough for humanities departments, but “an art history grad is more likely to get a job these days than a computer science grad,” she said, citing data tracked by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “There are ebbs and flows across time” with which degrees lead to jobs and that students gravitate toward.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.