Soreath Hok was born in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1984, the child of Cambodian refugees who would come to the U.S. and open their own donut shop. Photo by Frank Lopez

Most people will do anything they can to help their family. In some instances, that means getting deeper into the family business.

For Soreath Hok, an award-winning multimedia journalist, that meant leaving the world of news reporting to help her parents run their business, Sprinkles Donuts on Maple and Behymer avenues in north Fresno.

Hok first entered the media industry in 2004 after graduating from Fresno State. She has worked as a news producer at outlets including KMPH Fox 26, KSEE 24, KCRA 3 in Sacramento, and most recently as a reporter for KVPR Valley Public Radio.

She originally left journalism in 2015 for creative advertising, and in 2016 started Disrupt Marketing, specializing in the food and hospitality industry.

Hok moved back to Fresno in 2020 and started working at KVPR until October 2023, leaving the station to help her parents, who had started having health problems.

Though the donut shop is something dear to the family — representing an opportunity for refugees to make a living in the U.S. — Hok knows it will eventually end.

“We want people to appreciate this while we are here, because they are not going to be around forever,” Hok said.

Hok’s parents escaped the Cambodian Genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. Hok was born in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1984, and the family was then sponsored to come to the U.S., first arriving in Los Angeles in 1986, settling in Echo Park.

By the late 1980s, Cambodian American entrepreneur Ted Ngoy had helped many Cambodian refugees open up and run stores for his donut chain, leading to a boom in donut shops in California.

Though her parents didn’t lease a store directly from Ngoy, they realized that’s how many Cambodian refugees were making a living.

Not wanting to compete in a saturated market in Los Angeles, Hok’s parents opened up their first donut shop in Tehachapi in 1989 — the only one in town at the time — to gain some businesses experience.

They then decided to move back to Los Angeles and opened a shop in what is now Korea Town. The family moved again, opening a location in Santa Clarita.

Her parents decided they wanted to be around family and moved back to Fresno in 2000.

Hok’s parents first leased a Judy’s Donuts, and then another donut shop on Shields and Maroa avenues. The current location opened in 2009. That will be the final home for the family business, she said.

Hok and her brother grew up in the shop, folding boxes, cleaning and helping any way they could.

Her father is the master baker. Her mother helps with frosting and other tasks.

“He’s really perfected the recipe for the donuts and they still taste the same as when I was a kid,” Hok said. “It’s really the signature of the baker that makes a donut shop.”

Hok notes the importance of the Cambodian donut shop boom in the ‘80s and ‘90s, which provided a living for many families and enabled them to send their children to college. But many families have left the industry. It’s a physically demanding job.

Many of the original donut shop owners are aging out, and their children are choosing not to continue the business.

Along with the physical demands, the cost of ingredients has skyrocketed, Hok said, with profit margins shrinking.

Higher ingredient prices have led to donut shops using novel toppings like M&Ms, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and cereal to be able to charge more to stay in business, Hok said.

Hok said donuts are almost taking for granted, with people not realizing how long it takes to make donut. It’s an undervalued skill done mostly by hand.

Hok just recently finished her first semester in Fresno State’s creative writing program and is specializing in creative non-fiction.

She plans to write about her experience with the donut shop.

“What we do has value, and there’s a story behind it,” Hok said.  I want to raise the value of who we are, other Cambodian families who run donut shops, and the industry in general. I want to give a closer look in to what it takes to run a donut shop and maybe foster more empathy.”