If my first few weeks in America felt like a grand adventure in my grandparents’ Windsor House, the reality of our new life quickly caught up with us. We had escaped the weight of a name in Seoul, but we hadn’t escaped the necessity of survival. My mother, a woman who had once lived surrounded by maids and chauffeurs, now found herself navigating the gritty, fast-paced rhythm of Los Angeles.

The transition from inherited luxury to working-class survival was a sharp, unyielding lesson in discipline. And it started at the local laundromat.

It’s a chapter I finally tell in full in Who Stole My Pork Belly? My memoir of losing everything and rebuilding from it.

The Rhythms of Survival

For a child who used to watch adults bow to her father, the local LA laundromat was a completely different planet. The air was always thick with the heavy scent of cheap detergent and the humid, industrial heat of roaring dryers. My brothers and I would sit on the hard plastic chairs, watching the clothes spin in endless, dizzying circles.

It was there, against the backdrop of humming machines, that the final remnants of our old life faded away. Money was tight, and every quarter mattered. My mother worked tirelessly, adapting to a world that didn’t care about the “Choi” family name. We were no longer elite; we were immigrants trying to find our footing.

The Rule of the Windsor House

Living under my grandparents’ roof at the Windsor House came with its own set of strict rules. My grandfather was a man of immense discipline, and he expected nothing less from us. Good manners weren’t just preferred; they were mandatory.

Concerned that we might lose our native tongue, we were taught to speak Korean at home and English outside the home, to respect our elders without question, and to carry ourselves with dignity, no matter how little we had. My grandfather believed that wealth could be lost overnight, as we well knew, but integrity and discipline could never be stripped away. If we were going to survive in America, we had to be tougher, smarter, and more disciplined than everyone else. That discipline became the foundation of everything I would later build.

The Night the Kitchen Burned Down

But even the most disciplined households have their breaking points. For us, that point came one afternoon when an unexpected kitchen fire nearly turned tragic.

My mother was not home that day. I was eight years old, and my younger brother was six when an accident in the kitchen quickly became a frightening situation. By the time we realized what had happened, the flames had spread, and we scrambled to put the fire out ourselves.

My mother rushed home after closing the restaurant early. Although we managed to save the house, we all ended up in trouble. It was a brutal lesson: independence was demanded, but never truly allowed.

From the ashes of that kitchen to the courtrooms of Big Law, the full story is in my memoir, Who Stole My Pork Belly? Get your copy on Amazon today.