[2] In 1967, Ngoy was sent by his mother to study in the capital, Phnom Penh, where he met and married Suganthini Khoeun, the daughter of a high-ranking government official.
He subsequently received training through an affirmative action program to increase minority hiring within the Winchell's chain of doughnut shops, and managed a store in Newport Beach where he employed his wife and nephew.
He saw an opportunity to expand his business and help the large number of poor, unassimilated Cambodians who had fled the Khmer Rouge to the United States.
Ngoy also involved himself in American politics, joining the Republican Party and hosting fundraisers for George H. W. Bush and encouraged fellow Cambodian immigrants to support the GOP.
Ngoy would make a habit of returning monthly to watch performers such as Tom Jones, Diana Ross, and Wayne Newton and indulging in the incentives pit bosses of major casinos offered all the while spending even larger sums at the card tables.
[8] After a particularly devastating gambling loss in 1990, Ngoy flew to Washington, D.C. and joined a Buddhist monastery where he spent a month meditating.
He formed the Free Development Republican Party, believing that he could show others the path to wealth and hoping that being a politician might stymy his gambling addiction.
He did not fare well in either the 1993 or 1998 parliamentary elections, but his friend, Prime Minister Hun Sen, made him an advisor on commerce and agriculture.
[1] When his wife visited California for the birthday of their grandchild in 1999, Ngoy began an affair with a young woman; Christy divorced him soon after and has not since returned to Cambodia.
By 2005, after a failed political career in Cambodia, Ngoy was penniless and living on the porch of a fellow Parkcrest Christian Church parishioner's mobile home.
[8] Author Ryka Aoki describes Ngoy as "legend in our Asian-American community" and inspiration for her award-winning novel Light From Uncommon Stars for both his "stealing books" process and the legacy of Cambodian-American doughnut shops in Southern California.