Join us for Trivia Bowl XII— a fun, dynamic and competitive evening. David Ono, ABC7 anchor, returns to emcee the event
Friday, October 20, 2006 6 P.M.
ABC7 Broadcast Center
Circle Seven Drive
Glendale, CA 91201
Hospitality provided by Wahoo’s Fish Taco
For information regarding corporate, community and non-profit sponsorship contact:
Denise L. Poon
TriviaBowl2006@gmail.com
Yet Lock, City News Service
Yet@SoCalNews.com
Wing Lam’s Recipe for Community Involvement
By CYNTHIA FUREY
AAJA-LA.org
Wahoo’s Fish Taco’s playing record in the Trivia Bowl is less than stellar.
The only time the Orange County-based restaurant chain fielded a team, it came in dead last. But its record in supporting the event is quite remarkable.
The company and its co-founder Wing Lam have provided its signature fish tacos, rice and black beans to Trivia Bowl participants for the last two years. This year’s gathering at KABC7’s studios in Glendale will mark AAJA’s silver anniversary and the capping of a historic two-year fundraising effort. Trivia Bowl XII is expected to draw close to 500 people.
Once again, Wahoo’s will be there.
“It’s a nice feeling to help our own people and organizations,” Lam said. “To be able to do something makes me feel good.”
Lam was introduced to AAJA years ago when Los Angeles chapter board member Anh Do invited him to an event.
“After a two-hour drive in traffic I arrived only to find that there was no food left,” Lam recalled. “That was my initiation to do the food. The following year, I made sure that the first person and the last person in got food.”
The Brazilian-born Lam and his brothers Ed and Mingo founded Wahoo’s Fish Taco in 1988 in Costa Mesa. The city, near the Orange County coastline, was a hub of surf culture, with companies like Quicksilver, Rip Curl and Billabong breaking ground nearby.
The brothers, whose parents have owned and operated Chinese restaurants for most of their lives, wanted to open an eatery unlike any other in the area, Wing Lam said.
“When you go into business, you want to be a maverick,” he said. “If we went in as a Mexican restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, Hawaiian, big deal. So we thought, ‘What do we like to eat, but what is not a staple already served in O.C.?’ We decided to create our own niche.”
That niche was fish tacos.
The brothers had developed a taste for the food during frequent surfing trips to Mexico. Lam, however, wanted to put a healthier twist on the old staple. Their restaurant would grill – not fry – its fish.
That idea, coupled with the brothers’ lifetime of experience in their parents’ restaurants, made for a potent business model.
Lam’s parents, now retired, opened their first place in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where they emigrated in the mid-1950s. They later moved to Southern California, opening the Shanghai Pine Garden on Newport Beach’s Balboa Island. They still own the restaurant, but it is operated by someone else.
The Wahoo’s restaurants are named after the fish, also called ono, that often goes into the tacos. The name came by happenstance.
Two weeks before the first restaurant’s opening, Lam and his brothers still had no idea for a name, he recalled. And then he got a phone call.
“A friend of mine’s cousin went fishing and asked us if we wanted any wahoo fish tacos,” Lam said. “But I thought he said ‘Oahu’ fish tacos, like a Hawaiian-style fish.”
The name stuck, and today, Wahoo’s operates 43 restaurants in California, Colorado, Hawaii and Texas.
Trivia Bowl XII Event Broadcasts
Trivia Bowl XII & 25th Anniversary Event Photos
Trivia Bowl XII & 25th Anniversary Team Photos
Trivia Bowl XII Final Standings
Trivia Bowl XII Questions:
1. Current Events
2. History & Geography
3. Arts & Entertainment
4. Science & Literature
5. Sports & “California Living”
Event Sponsors & Donors
Trivia Bowl XII &
25th Anniversary Briefings
Trivia Bowl XII Game “The 411”
Trivia Bowl Lore- Competition & Tradition
Sponsorship Levels
Registered Teams
AAJA Los Angeles
Trivia Bowl & Rice Cup Champions
Trivia Bowl XII Event Program (.pdf 2.6 MB)
TBXII Live Auction, Raffle, Team Prizes & Gift Items
Planning Committees & Wish Lists
Although busy with his brothers at the helm of a growing business empire, Lam finds the time and resources to support community efforts. The restaurant chain sponsors amateur surf tournaments for children and donates to an organization that funds research and programs for multiple sclerosis. Recently, Wahoo’s contributed to the Rod Carew Children’s Cancer Golf Classic in Coto de Caza in Orange County, an event led by the retired Angels baseball star. Wahoo’s donated food for the event, which raised more than $250,000 for the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation in Irvine.
AAJA-LA’s Trivia Bowl is one of many beneficiaries of the generosity of Lam and Wahoo’s. The restaurant chain also helped feed guests at the chapter’s holiday party two years ago.
“Technically, I’m not a member,” Lam said. “But this is my way of giving back to people who work hard. The bottom line is we just do it because we like it.”
Cynthia Furey, a 2004 graduate of UC Irvine and a former AAJA-LA scholarship winner, works as a news assistant at The Orange County Register.
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AAJA-L.A. Expects XII + 7 to Be a Winning Combination
LOS ANGELES, April 20 – The Los Angeles Chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association has announced that ABC7 will play host to Trivia Bowl XII, the group’s popular trademark annual competition and fundraiser.
On Oct. 20, the station will open its doors to more than 45 media and community teams that will go head to head in an evening of frenzied but friendly competition in a “Jeopardy!”-style quiz game.
Arnold J. Kleiner
President and General Manager of ABC7
The event returns to the ABC7 Broadcast Center in Glendale after five years, coinciding with AAJA’s 25th-anniversary celebration and conclusion of its $2-million endowment campaign.
“We thought it was the right thing to do,” said Arnold J. Kleiner, president and general manager of ABC7, who offered the use of an 8,000-square-foot studio at the station for the event. “We try to get involved with everybody.”
Said David Ono, a longtime anchor for the station’s top-rated “Eyewitness News” team: “We held the event in our studio five years ago and it was a huge success. I think it’s a great venue because it’s part of a real TV studio that we at ABC7 are very proud of. It’s as if we are welcoming everyone to our home. It’s a privilege and honor.”
Trivia Bowl, held every year but one since its inception in 1994, is the Los Angeles Chapter’s signature fundraiser for scholarships, internships and professional development programs. The event has raised more than $10,000 annually and in recent years has netted about twice that amount.
This year, organizers are expecting about 500 journalists, community leaders, corporate sponsors and students to compete for the chance to win the coveted Rice Cup trophy while raising funds for the chapter. AAJA founding pioneers Bill Sing, Tritia Toyota, Frank Kwan, Nancy Yoshihara, David Kishiyama and Dwight Chuman – who in 1981 gathered in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles to organize what would eventually become an international journalism group – will be recognized at the event.
From the time of its founding, AAJA has devoted itself to serving Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders by encouraging young people to consider journalism as a career, developing managers in the media industry and promoting fair and accurate news coverage. Today the organization boasts more than 2,000 members in 19 chapters across the United States and in Asia.
And from the start, AAJA has relied on the support of media organizations and other sponsors to promote its mission. In addition to ABC7, the Los Angeles Chapter is already working with the Los Angeles Times, The Orange County Register, Southern California Edison and other potential contributors to Trivia Bowl XII, and is pleased to announce the return of the Wahoo’s Fish Taco chain as the event’s food sponsor for a third year.
ABC7 President and General Manager Kleiner, who has been with the station for the last decade, emphasized the importance for news outlets to reach out to the community.
“The role of a television station is not just to entertain but to reflect the community it covers,” he said. “We bring the community to the community.”
His station has presented town hall meetings and provides opportunities for viewers to voice their opinions about news coverage through its “ABC7 Listens” outreach program.
Kleiner, who is originally from the East Coast, says one of the things he loves about the West Coast and Los Angeles is their diversity.
According to 2003 estimates, there are 1.3 million residents of Asian descent in Los Angeles County; it is the largest Asian population of any U.S. county.
“As the population grows, the more diverse Los Angeles becomes,” Kleiner said. “The population for Asians and Pacific Islanders in this state is expected to more than double in 25 years, from 4 million in 2000 to 9 million in 2025.”
ABC7 takes diversity seriously, Kleiner said, and that is reflected from management to the newsroom.
“Viewers want to see people that look like them on the news,” he said.
ABC7 has six anchors and reporters of Asian descent – in addition to Ono, they are Denise Dador, Eileen Frere, Rob Fukuzaki, Jane Monreal and Nannette Miranda.
Kleiner sees Trivia Bowl as a fun event for the station to support, though he does not expect to be playing on ABC7’s team this year.
Perhaps he has heard about the difficulty of the questions – quiz master and chapter co-President Matthew Chin promises no letup for Trivia Bowl XII – or the intensity of the competition, in which many cross-town journalistic rivalries carry over into the festivities.
The Los Angeles Times, for example, has never won the competition, though it may hold the dubious record for most times coming in second. The Orange County Register can boast of beating its main rival (and everyone else) in taking home the Rice Cup in 2003. But the newspaper had to hand the trophy over to NBC4 – the first-ever broadcast winner – a year later. And then again, every news media team watched in frustration last year as the Asian Pacific American Legal Center took top honors – the second time the group had won and the fourth time a group of lawyers had beaten the journalists at their own game.
“Trivia Bowl is the most entertaining, dynamic and interactive community fun-raising– I mean fundraising event,” said Denise Poon, a former chapter president and ‘AAJA Chapter President of the Year,’ who returns this year as Trivia Bowl Commissioner. “Participants take this competition very seriously – to the point where they schedule study halls, cram jams, prep sessions and attempt to stack their teams with brainiacs.”
ABC7’s Ono, one of the highest-ranking Asian Americans in a local broadcast market, will serve again as host and emcee of Trivia Bowl.
“I love emceeing the event because I can stand there and hammer everyone yet don’t have to answer any of the questions,” said Ono, already looking forward to jousting with a friend and longtime foil from NBC4.
“As soon as I see Ted Chen walk in,” he said, “I know I’ve found my primary victim and I’m going to have a good time.”�
