Lei Pan’s daughter’s 18th birthday approached. He went shopping that January day for a cake from Safeway and long noodles from a local grocery store in San Francisco’s Chinatown. In Chinese tradition, eating those noodles on a birthday harkens a long life for the celebrant. Pan found it harder to pay for his shopping — the previous May, he had stopped working for the Lee’s Deli restaurant chain. 

The restaurant owners still owed him about $2,000 in unpaid wages. By spring, the last locations closed, ending the Bay Area chain’s 40-year history across about a dozen locations. The closure also ended his hopes that the owners would give him back pay, which had become more and more scant as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the restaurant.

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Anna Leah comes to Local News Matters from over fifteen years in documentary film – including a docu-series examining the national reach of conspiratorial thinking, never-before-seen materials related to Jeffrey Epstein, and a history of currency. Currently, she is earning a master’s degree in feature writing, investigation, and data at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism (part of CUNY – the City University of New York). She focuses on building empathy with people who are often overlooked or oversimplified. More at annaleah.com.