Chamroeun's Garage in NE, Washington DC

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Chamrœun Muy was born in Cambodia in 1957. In 1975, he fled to the United States with most of his family and relatives. They settled in Pennsylvania where Chamrœun received his high school education. When he graduated, he enlisted in the US Army as a soldier and then in the US Navy as an electronic tecchnician.
In 1990, Chamroeun resigned from his position with the Navy to open a business in Northeast Washington DC, where he repairs cars and rents taxi cabs. His wife Evelyn Ruiz (who was born in the Philippines) has quit her job to help him…

In the current economic turmoil, Chamrœun and Evelyn Muy believe they can still make ends meet. They don’t have employees at their garage and they have “an old customer base”, having been established in the area for nearly 20 years now. Even if they claim not to be very rich, all their years of hard work has paid off. They own their house in Forest Heights, Maryland, they cover their business’s expenses and they give Sarah, their only daughter, the quality of life she deserves.

On January 7, 2009, I spent a few hours at the garage of Chamrœun and Evelyn Muy. We talked about how they can pull through in such hard economic times… Chamrœun’s older brother, Phon, a Cambodian who lives in France, was at the garage that day. He was visiting his brother, following the death of their mother, who had recently passed away in Pennsylvania.