U.S. Deportee Brings Street Dance to Street Boys of Cambodia

Tuy Sobil, or K.K., right, a former gang member from Long Beach, Calif., founded the club after being deported in 2004. (Photo: Stuart Isett for The New York Times)
Tach Piseth, 11, practiced spinning on his head at the Tiny Toones break dancing club in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The club teaches about 150 youngsters. (Photo: Stuart Isett for The New York Times)

November 30, 2008
By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — It may be the only place in Cambodia where the children are nicknamed Homey, Frog, Floater, Fresh, Bugs and Diamond.

And there are not many places like this small courtyard, thumping with the beat of a boom box, where dozens of boys in big T-shirts are spinning on their heads and doing one-hand hops, elbow tracks, flairs, halos, air tracks and windmills. And, of course, krumping.

It is a little slice of Long Beach, Calif., brought here by a former gang member by way of a federal prison, an immigration jail and then expulsion four years ago from his homeland, the United States, to the homeland of his parents, Cambodia.

The former gang member is Tuy Sobil, 30, who goes by the street name K.K. The boys are Cambodian street children he has taken under his wing as he teaches them the art he brought with him, break dancing, as well as his hard lessons in life.

K.K. is not here because he wants to be. He is one of 189 Cambodians who have been banished from the United States in the past six years under a law that mandates deportations for noncitizens who commit felonies. Hundreds more are on a waiting list for deportation. Like most of the others, K.K. is a noncitizen only by a technicality. He was not an illegal immigrant. He was a refugee from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge “killing fields” who found a haven in the United States in 1980.

He was an infant when he arrived. In fact, he was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and had never seen Cambodia before he was deported. But K.K.’s parents were simple farmers who failed to complete the citizenship process when they arrived.

Like some children of poor immigrants, K.K. drifted to the streets, where he became a member of the Crips gang and a champion break dancer. It was only after he was convicted of armed robbery at 18 that he discovered that he was not a citizen.

Like many deportees, he arrived in Cambodia without possessions and without family contacts. He was a drug counselor at first and then founded his break dancing club, Tiny Toones Cambodia, where he now earns a living teaching about 150 youngsters and reaching out to hundreds more.

With the financial support of international aid groups like Bridges Across Borders, based in Graham, Fla., he has expanded his center into a small school that teaches English and Khmer and computers in addition to back flips, head stands and krumping, or crazy dancing.

Some other deportees have found work that uses their fluency in English, particularly in hotels. Some have reunited with families. But many have slipped into unemployment, depression and sometimes drug use.

“Some were doing well initially but now over time have become unemployed or never did get employment, and just got discouraged,” said Dimple Rana, who works with Deported Diaspora, which is based in Revere, Mass., and helps deportees adjust.

“I know of a whole bunch of returnees whose mothers were sending money from their Social Security,” she said. “Now, with the economy in the United States, it is very hard and families are not able to send even $100 or $150.”

K.K. stands out as a success, both in finding a calling and in embracing his fate. He has a fair command of the language, unlike some deportees who arrived with no knowledge of Khmer.

“I think it was meant for me to be here, even though I lost my family,” he said. “And my kid is there, Kayshawn. He is 8.”

K.K. is in touch with his relatives in Long Beach but has not seen them since he was deported.

“Right now, you know, these kids are my family,” he said. “I don’t have a kid here, but I adopted one, a street kid. His mom and dad are on drugs.”

The boys and girls leaping and spinning here are the children of Cambodia’s underclass, like thousands who fill the slums of Phnom Penh — children who spend their evenings, as K.K. put it, “begging and digging through garbage to find food.”

K.K., whose youth was not so different from theirs, said he teaches them to find pride in who they are. A wall of his center is marked with students’ graffiti: “I want to be a rapper,” “I want to be a D.J.,” “I want to be a doctor.”

“I try to tell them not to judge people by the way they look,” he said. “I still have a struggle here in Cambodia. People judge me. People see me with tattoos and think I’m a bad guy.

“Sometimes it’s, ‘Come on, we’re going to kill some Americans,’ ” he said, describing threats from street toughs. “I’m not American. I’m Khmer, man.”

His journey between identities reached a point of strangeness when he was invited last December to perform with some of his students at a Christmas party at the United States Embassy.

“The American ambassador gave me a handshake and a hug, and asked me one day when his kid is a little older he wanted to put him in my school,” K.K. said.

The ambassador at the time, Joseph A. Mussomeli, recalled the performance as “great fun,” but he said the piquancy of the moment had not been lost on him.

“You are right that there is a certain wonderful irony to him being ‘rejected’ or at least ‘ejected’ from the U.S. and still landing on his feet — or shoulders and head — dancing,” Mr. Mussomeli said in an e-mail message.

“While watching him I was reminded of that great patriotic speech by Bill Murray in ‘Stripes,’ ” he added, “where he talks about Americans as being rejects from all the good, decent countries of the world! K.K. is/was an American in everything except in law — and he has shown this by his creativity, tenacity, and undying optimism.”

Now another irony is in store for K.K. His club has been invited to send dancers to perform in the United States — Cambodian boys who speak no English and have never left their country.

The real American among them, K.K., deported and excluded from the United States for the rest of his life, must stay behind.

“I can’t go,” he said over the thump of the boom box, as his boys jumped and bounced around him like tiny springs. “I can understand that they deported me here. I’d like to go visit — only visit, because I live here now. I have a brand new life.”

Once he killed; now he’s back as peacemaker

Sareth Kim was slashed on his 7th birthday. Imprisoned for killing at 17, he’s back on the street, trying to settle disputes among rival gangs.

Friday, February 8, 2008
The Providence Journal (Providence, Rhode Island, USA)

PROVIDENCE — Sareth “Tony” Kim, a founding member of the Providence Street Boys gang, had killed a man.

At the time, he was still a teenager, but his life had been in a downward spiral for the better part of a decade.

Kim sat in his prison cell and wondered about his infant daughter. He also wondered why his so-called friends for life in the gang didn’t bother to visit or write him at the Adult Correctional Institutions.

Really, he thought, why continue to live life as a gang member?

“Everything is drama,” he said. “It’s all about putting other people down. It’s so negative.”

He had made peace with rival gang members from the Oriental Rascals and Laos Pride. He had also earned his GED — high school graduation equivalent degree — and took classes in anger management and developing life skills.

Today, Kim, 32, is a free man and father of three who lives a productive life as a senior streetworker for the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence on the city’s South Side. He uses his experiences as a former gang member to resolve disputes between rival gangs and keep kids out of trouble. He helps them stay in school and find jobs.

“They know that I’ve been through it,” he said. “The main thing is that they trust me. They can come to me for anything.”

Kim was part of the gang culture back in the early ’90s, when it first took hold in the city’s West End and South Side. He was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, the first son of a family that had escaped the killing fields of Cambodia. His childhood in Providence was entrenched in violence that he experienced or witnessed as a first generation immigrant. He quickly learned that it was safer to hang with a gang than to be “punked” by other gangs or ethnic groups.

“I was just full of anger,” he said. “I decided that I would rather victimize someone else than be a victim.”

Kim was just 7 when he had his first bad experience on the street. It was his birthday, Jan. 1, 1983, and his mother, Savoeun, who worked long hours in a factory, gave him $5. He was excited about the prospect of buying goodies at a corner store on Elmwood Avenue, a short walk from the family’s apartment.

Kim bought candy and stuffed the change in his pants pocket. As he left, a man approached and grabbed his candy. Then, he reached into the boy’s pockets and stole his change.

“Let me see your hand!” the robber yelled.

Kim extended his hand and the guy sliced his palm. He ran home dripping blood on the newly fallen snow.

A year or two later, the Kim family bought a house on Waverly Street in the West End. Tony Kim remembered seeing a man shot outside his home and hobbling toward Cranston Street with a gunshot wound. Once he reached Cranston Street, a car pulled up and a barrage of gunfire finished him off.

There was no escape from the bloodshed.

One afternoon, a few years later, Kim was heading home from Samuel Bridgham Middle School. He and his friends were planning to play volleyball in the park near the Messer Street firehouse.

Suddenly, a wild shootout broke out between the Asian Boyz and Tiny Raskal Gang.

Bullets were flying and several gang members were hit. Kim saw one man get shot in the head, and he thought, “This is the world that I have to accept and live in.”

Kim said the Asian Boyz and Oriental Rascals both wanted him to join their gangs. He was hanging out with the gang members on a daily basis and one of his best friends was part of the Asian Boyz.

One day, several of the gang members asked Kim whether he wanted to join them on a trip to Minnesota. He was thrilled with the possibility of taking a vacation to a faraway place. Since he had arrived in Rhode Island when he was 3, Kim had never left the state.

Now, this group of older teenage boys wanted to include him in a getaway trip. Kim, who had little adult supervision, agreed to go.

“I never told my parents anything,” he said. “My dad worked two jobs all through my childhood, and my mom worked from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. I’d hardly see my parents. They worked hard, but they missed out on my childhood.”

Kim joined about 8 to 10 other Asian Boyz and Oriental Rascals and they took two cars to Minnesota. Halfway there, Kim learned that the gang members were plotting a home invasion of a Cambodian gambling operation.

In Minnesota, they stayed in an apartment and someone delivered a bag with about 30 handguns and shotguns. Kim said two of the gang members argued over a handgun. One of them grabbed the gun and jokingly pointed it at him and another gang member. Then, he loaded a bullet into the gun and spun the chamber. He placed the barrel to his head and pulled the trigger.

The explosion of the report was deafening. Kim’s friend had blown his brains out. The gang members got rid of the guns and the police arrived. The home invasion never went down, and the Rhode Island boys headed home.

“I came back traumatized again,” he said.

Kim decided to turn his back on the Asian Boyz and Oriental Rascals. He told them that he was done with the gang life. He was a freshman at Central High School, but he was skipping more classes than he was attending. He was constantly getting into fights and getting suspended.

Kim spent most days hanging out with friends in the attic of a house. They would head out and steal bikes in Warwick and Cranston. One day, a group of Oriental Rascals burst into the attic and warned them against forming their own gang. Kim said they had no intention of forming a gang until the Oriental Rascals confronted them.

In response, they formed the Providence Street Boys. They set out and desecrated all the Oriental Rascals graffiti in the West End. In no time, scores of young people across the city wanted to join the new gang. Most of the gang members were Cambodian and Laotian.

The gang members had no great master plan. They hung out, played volleyball and basketball and watched one another’s backs.

About six months later, the Providence Street Boys were involved in a large rumble with the Oriental Rascals at the public park off Messer Street. The newcomers outnumbered the Oriental Rascals and won the battle.

Tony Kim and the Providence Street Boys had become a force on the streets of the city.

A few weeks later, though, the Laotian boys broke away from the Providence Street Boys and formed their own gang — Laos Pride.

A few weeks before Christmas and his 18th birthday, Kim’s world came crashing down.

On the afternoon of Dec. 9, 1993, the police received a report that a man driving a van had been shot and killed on Waverly Street. The day before, Kim’s older sister had been raped by the van driver, Samang Pha, 27, of Providence.

Tony Kim and five of the Providence Street Boys decided to take justice into their own hands.

They had planned on abducting the man at gunpoint and bringing him to the basement of Kim’s house at 48-50 Waverly St. But during the confrontation, Kim’s .357-magnum handgun discharged, sending a bullet into Pha’s face. Kim told police that he intended to wound — not kill — Pha.

Kim pleaded no contest to manslaughter and received a 30-year sentence —10 years to serve and 20 years suspended. The other five gang members also were arrested and spent time in the state Training School or the ACI.

Kim spent about four years in prison before, on his first attempt, he was paroled. He feels fortunate that he is able to work for the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence and give back to the same streets where he wasted his adolescence. He worries about young people who seem more impressed than ever with the gang lifestyle.

“It’s more accepted,” he said. “Now, it’s more of a trend. Everybody wants to be a gangster.”

Teny Gross, executive director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, said that Kim’s ethnic background and experiences as a gang leader are critical in resolving disputes.

He said Kim has placed himself in harm’s way on many occasions, and he likened his role in the community to that of a soldier in Iraq.

“He has a strong passion for his community,” Gross said. “He is doing something that we should all be grateful for.”