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Forty-five years after arriving in the U.S. as a refugee from Vietnam, David Tran has built Sriracha into a billion-dollar business.

In December 1978, David Tran, then 33 years old, left his home in Vietnam with 100 ounces of gold. Worth $20,000 at the time, or about $90,000 in today's terms, the precious metal was stashed in cans of condensed milk to evade the attention of Vietnam's Communist authorities. Tran traveled by freighter to Hong Kong, where he spent eight months at a refugee camp, then moved to Boston for six months before settling in Los Angeles in January 1980.