Neighbors fill hole to help shop

Customers gobble up doughnuts so owner can be with ill wife

It’s been about two weeks since customers have been arriving at Donut City in Seal Beach, Calif., starting at 4:30 a.m. to buy dozens of doughnuts.

On Monday, the shop sold out at 7:30 a.m.— hours before its usual 2 p.m. closing time.

Customers say the doughnuts are delicious. But that’s not why they’ve been waiting in line to buy them in recent weeks.

It started a few weeks ago, when customers started noticing that something was amiss.

Every day for the past 28 years, the friendly husbandand-wife owners — Stella and John Chhan — have stood behind the counter selling their freshly made breakfast treats.

But then one day, Stella Chhan wasn’t there.

When customers inquired, John Chhan, 62, told them she had suffered an aneurysm Sept. 22 and was recovering in a nursing home. He would go visit his wife, 63, in the afternoon once all the doughnuts were sold and the shop was clean, he said.

That’s all it took. “Days went by and I just couldn’t get it out of my head,” customer Dawn Caviola told the Orange County Register. “So I thought, if enough people would buy a dozen doughnuts every morning, he could close early and go be with his wife.”

Caviola posted the idea on the neighborhood message board Nextdoor, and neighbors and fans of Donut City responded in a big way. They started showing up in the dark, ordering dozens of doughnuts and croissants.

By 6 a.m., there’s often a line to the door.

“We’re done for today. Sold out about a half-hour ago,” Chhan said in a telephone interview at about 8 a.m. Monday.

“A lot of people come in and buy three, four, five dozen,” he said.

Jenee Rogers said she’s been a regular customer for the past 20 years.

She said John and Stella Chhan are “humble, smiling people.”

Rogers said she and all of her friends started to spread the word to go to the shop early and buy doughnuts.

“I was like, ‘Wait, that’s my doughnut store,’ ” Rogers, 47, said. “We posted and reposted — and every day I’ve been down there the line has been to the door.”