Immigrant Staggered by 3rd Successive Blow : Fire Reduces Shopkeeper’s Perseverance to Ashes

The Los Angeles Korean community has rallied to help the owner of a Canoga Park grocery store destroyed Sunday by a shopping center fire.

Destruction of the tiny Asia Market is the third recent personal tragedy for store owner Sun Yeoul Lee, friends said.

Two years ago, Lee’s husband was shot to death during a $70 robbery at the market. After that, Lee lost the family home in Agoura Hills.

Lee did not have insurance to cover losses from Sunday’s fire, according to Yong Kim, a family friend who lives in Canoga Park.

“It’s almost too much for one person to stand,” Kim said “Such a tragedy.”

Fund-Raising Drive

Kim said that other Koreans around the city immediately started a fund-raising drive for Lee and her children.

Lee’s grocery was among four businesses and two vacant offices in the DeSoto Plaza shopping center in the 8900 block of De Soto Avenue that was gutted by Sunday’s fire. The 45-year-old Korean immigrant was working in the market with her 16-year-old son, Kyung Lee, when the fire broke out in a nearby restaurant-bar.

She and and her son watched helplessly as flames consumed the contents of the store after the fire flared unexpectedly through a hidden attic in the complex as 80 firefighters fought to control it.

“Everything she had is gone,” Kim said. “Now, she won’t even be able to pay her rent.”

Monday morning, Lee cried when she returned to view gutted market. But by afternoon, she was busying herself helping friends pull whatever merchandise they could salvage from the rubble.

“She has to save every penny now,” said another friend, Sandra Choi of Chatsworth. “She wants to open up her business again right away. The manager already said he would let her lease a place here or in Van Nuys.

“She wants to get a loan . . . she doesn’t want welfare.”

Lee’s husband, Joong Hwan Lee, 42, was gunned down during a robbery at the market on May 17, 1983.

A customer, who saw the shooting through a window, jotted down the license plate number of the robbers’ car and police soon after arrested two men at a Reseda apartment, where officers recovered the stolen $70 and the .38-caliber revolver used in the shooting. The two were eventually convicted of Lee’s murder.

Speaking through an interpreter, Lee said that she, her husband and their three children came to the United States 10 years ago from South Korea. She worked at a garment factory and her husband at a pharmaceutical firm until they saved enough to open their own business four years ago, she said.

Friends said Lee worked hard to hold on to the business after her husband’s death.

Long Hours

According to Choi, Lee would get up at 4 a.m. every day to travel from her Agoura Hills apartment to a Los Angeles produce market to obtain fresh fruits and vegetables to sell in the store. Lee worked in the market until 9 p.m. each night, friends said.

After the murder of her husband, Lee lost the Agoura Hills home the couple had owned when she could not afford mortgage payments, her friends said.

Choi said Lee had no insurance to cover the contents of the store, estimated to be worth more than $50,000, because she had no money to pay the premium.

Ed Mynkoff, property manager for the shopping center, said Lee had been hard-pressed to come up with the rent for the store in recent months.

“Somehow, she always did,” he said. “She’s a hard worker.”