Generous Helping : Simi Valley Restaurant and Patrons Team Up to Provide Relief to Oklahoma City

In the kitchen of his Simi Valley restaurant Tuesday, Danny Chow reached through the blue range-top flames, stirred the sizzling meat, and thought of Laos, Iran, Paraguay and Oklahoma City.

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Oklahoma City--and Chow’s offer to donate China Express’s gross revenues for the day to help the relief effort there--had packed the restaurant with hundreds of patrons and brought a television satellite truck to the corner of the strip mall parking lot where the restaurant is tucked away.

But when Chow, the restaurant’s owner, began talking about the victims of the bombing that destroyed the federal building there, his conversation quickly turned to violence elsewhere, long ago.

At age 4, Chow moved from Taiwan to Laos. When war broke out there, he said, he went to Iran.

“They had a war again,” he said.

Paraguay was the next stop. There he met his wife, Estela. The two came to the United States in 1982, and after a week in Santa Monica, moved to Simi Valley and opened the restaurant.

Simi Valley, Chow said, is “a fine end place . . . a very quiet, very nice town.”

Still, television brought pictures of bloody babies from Oklahoma City to his living room. When Chow’s 60-year-old mother saw them on Monday and suggested that her son do something to help, he agreed.

“I’m doing OK for a living,” said Chow, 37. “If I can help somebody, I’ll be very happy.”

So, in addition to the usual aquarium and east Asian fans decorating this small restaurant Tuesday, there was a large cardboard box for donations to the Red Cross, and posters advertising that all the money customers paid for lunch would make its way to Oklahoma City.

In addition to the regular staff, there were half a dozen volunteers pouring drinks and clearing tables, and officials from the Red Cross and Supervisor Judy Mikels’ office keeping track of the money.

And joining the usual crowd were throngs of extra customers whose lunch tabs and donations, ranging from $3 to $100, had totaled $2,000 by the end of the midday rush.

“We’re super-busy,” Chow said. He already had 20 or 30 dinner reservations, some from Thousand Oaks, he said in amazement.

The lunchtime crowd walked away with contented smiles.

“It was delicious,” said Doris Maravelas, who joined six other workers from a Simi Valley engineering company in devouring the fried won tons, kon pao chicken, vegetable lo mein and chocolate soft-serve ice cream on the all-you-can-eat lunch buffet. She and her friends chose the restaurant because of Chow’s pledge to turn his proceeds over to the bombing victims.

Joe Hunsinger, who eats at the China Express about once a week, came Tuesday to lend his support.

“This looks like a success,” said Hunsinger, vice president of a Simi Valley aircraft parts company, as he surveyed the crowd behind him as he left the restaurant. “I think it’s really a good thing.”