John Chhan opens his donut shop every day before dawn. He has done so since 1990, in Seal Beach, California, in the same place where he and his wife Stella started from scratch after arriving as refugees from Cambodia in 1979.
For nearly thirty years, customers would come in, order one donut, two, maybe three, and leave. Stella was always behind the counter, greeting each one by name.
In September 2018, Stella suffered a brain aneurysm. She was admitted to a rehabilitation center. John began closing the shop late, exhausted, with no time to get there to see her.
His customers noticed. They noticed the absence behind the counter and the exhaustion on John’s face.
A regular customer, Dawn Caviola, had a simple idea: if they bought whole dozens every morning instead of a single donut, John could sell everything early and close sooner. She posted it on social media. The idea spread through Seal Beach like the aroma from a shop of freshly made donuts. Before long, people began arriving asking for a dozen, two dozen, sometimes more than they needed. Marc Loopesko, a customer for eighteen years, summed it up this way: “the community came together”. John tried to turn down a fundraiser they offered him. He said he had enough, that he only wanted one thing: more hours with Stella. They gave them to him, donut by donut, dozen by dozen, every morning. Over time, Stella regained her speech, began writing again, and began eating on her own again.
Sometimes the love of an entire town fits in a box of twelve.
