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.
UN: Sudan conflict claims thousands of civilian lives, displaces millions in one year
China urges US to immediately stop meddling in Hong Kong affairs
Hamas chief reaffirms commitment to ceasefire demands
Fighter jets fire at targets in live
Imposing travel restrictions for China arrivals scientifically unjustified: ACI EUROPE
Conservationists give wings to black
England cricket great Derek Underwood dies at age 78
World Insights: NATO's meddling in Asia
Members of Team Indonesia attend departure ceremony for Chengdu Universiade
Senior Chinese diplomat meets delegation of Brazilian Workers' Party
China's Qin leads field into men's 50m breaststroke final at Aquatics Worlds