🎬 Rosemead: An Asian American Immigrant Story

📖 Overview

Rosemead is loosely based on a tragic 2015 incident in Rosemead, California, chronicled in journalist Frank Shyong’s article “A dying mother’s plan: Buy a gun. Rent a hotel room. Kill her son.”

The story follows Lai Hang (known as Eva), a 60-year-old Chinese immigrant widow with terminal cancer, and her 17-year-old son, George, who suffered from schizophrenia and violent delusions.

🏠 Family Background

Lai Hang’s Life: Born in Laos and raised partly in Hong Kong, Lai Hang immigrated to the U.S. in 1992 after studying graphic design in Tokyo on a rare scholarship. She and her husband Peter, a Chinese immigrant, built a successful printing business in Alhambra, California, embodying the “American dream.” They purchased a home in a gated Rosemead community and raised their only child, George (born 1998). After Peter’s death from cancer in 2012, Hang’s world collapsed. Soon after, she herself was diagnosed with aggressive chest and brain tumors. By early 2015, doctors gave her four months to live.

George’s Struggles: After losing his father, George became withdrawn, failing his classes at Gabrielino High School and later being diagnosed with schizophrenia. Hang sought treatment for him at the Asian Pacific Family Center in Rosemead, where cultural stigma around mental illness made support difficult. George’s condition worsened ⚡ he grew destructive at home and obsessed over violence, idolizing figures like Hitler and Dylann Roof and referencing mass shootings such as Aurora, Sandy Hook, and Isla Vista. Hang feared that after her death, George might harm himself or others 💔 a fear she confided to her lifelong friend, Ping Chong.

🕯️ The Incident (July 27, 2015)

Overwhelmed by her diagnosis and her son’s instability, Hang concluded she could not leave him behind to face suffering or cause harm. She decided on a murder-suicide to “protect” him from a doomed life.

She legally purchased a .38-caliber revolver, entrusted family records to Chong, and shared a final meal of pad thai with George. That evening, Hang checked into Room 117 at the Valley Hotel on Valley Boulevard. As George slept, she shot him twice in the chest. She lay beside him for hours, stroking his hair as he died, later telling detectives she believed it was “the right thing.”

Unable to turn the gun on herself, she called Chong around 8 p.m., saying only, “I sent him away.” Police arrived soon after and arrested her.

🌸 Aftermath

Charged with murder, Hang’s health rapidly declined in Los Angeles County Jail. Cancer blinded one eye and left her partially paralyzed. In December 2015, she was granted compassionate release to a hospital for end-of-life care.

Her friend Chong visited, offering Buddhist chants and forgiveness. Hang, consumed by remorse, asked her to burn all family photos so “no one would remember them.” She died later that month, five months after George.

🌏 Legacy

The Rosemead case exposed deep cultural and systemic gaps surrounding mental illness in Asian American communities 💭 stigma, language barriers, and isolation among immigrant families.

The film adaptation by screenwriter Marilyn Fu fictionalizes elements (renaming Hang and George as Irene and Wei) but preserves the emotional truth: a mother’s impossible choice caught between love, fear, and despair.

Fu’s version expands the story into a broader reflection on immigrant resilience, intergenerational trauma, and the urgent need for mental health advocacy in the San Gabriel Valley.