Bakery family hailed by Obama enjoys sweet success [View all]
Thirty-four years ago, Binh Ly, his brothers and 140 other refugees sat jammed into a 9-foot-wide, hand-built boat in the ocean fleeing Vietnam for Malaysia, half of them terrified and the other half too seasick to feel more than misery. Ly was the cook for his family. All he had was rice and water.
After four hellish days on the waves, during which pirates stole just about everything but their clothes, they made land. Next up was more than a year in a refugee camp - where the diet was rice and noodles, with the rare vegetable thrown in.
"We were always hungry," Ly, now 67, recalled Tuesday.
No chance of that now. If sweet success has a face, it is that of the Ly family - and the $60 million Sugar Bowl Bakery empire they built once they finally made it to San Francisco with nothing but dreams of a new life.
President Obama singled out Ly and his brothers Monday in a San Francisco speech advocating immigration reform, calling their story "amazing." He praised them as the embodiment of "what America is about ... the place where you can reach for something better if you work hard."
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bakery-family-hailed-by-Obama-enjoys-sweet-success-5015403.php
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