Family business closing after 30 years in the Valley

PALMER — After three decades of working 12-hour days, seven days a week at Peking Garden, owners Jack and Tracy Tzou have decided it’s time to retire.

But they had to close their doors more abruptly than they would’ve liked.

On Oct. 5, while conducting some bookkeeping before the restaurant opened for the day, Tracy Tzou noticed that her handwriting was unusually poor. Her right arm started to feel strange, she said.

She was having a stroke.

When admitted to the hospital, Tracy was told her stroke was mild enough to allow for her to be sent home in a day or two. Over the next few days, however, the entire right side of her body became paralyzed. She couldn’t swallow and could barely speak.

A month later, Tracy’s condition had improved enough for her to be transferred to Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage for a 10-day intensive rehab, which has worked wonders.

“She’s gotten so much better,” said daughter Amy Tzou, a 2008 Palmer High School graduate. “Before she went into in-patient, she couldn’t even sit up. She couldn't move her leg, she couldn't move her arm, and she was very confused all the time.”

Now Tracy is home and can walk around the house slowly, with assistance, but the battle is far from over. She said she’s had a history of diabetes and high blood pressure, and will now have to adjust to a strict diet and a less stressful life, for starters.

“After this (stroke), I realized I have to be different,” Tracy said. “Everything’s controlled very well.”

As much as Tracy is improving, the cost of her care is a significant burden to the family. Amy said the hospital bills have risen to six figures, and her parents can’t afford health insurance.

“Before they even sought any benefits they would have to spend almost $40,000 a year,” she said. “Why would we spend the $40,000 a year when they don’t even make that much?”

Fortunately, Amy has been home from pharmacy school at Oregon State University for the past few months while working internships here for her degree, meaning she’s been available to help. Her older brother Ben is keeping the motel side of the business running, and their younger brother Bernard is working at Humdinger’s Gourmet Pizza, where there will soon be a benefit dinner for the family.

The event is from 6 to 9 p.m. at the restaurant on Monday, Dec. 14. Jack Tzou will cook foods previously served at Peking, such as his popular General Tso’s Chicken, and pizza will also be available. Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 at the door.

“It’s … a chance to eat my dad’s food one last time, and then also help my parents out with their crazy medical bills,” Amy said.

For more information on the event, visit the Facebook page at on.fb.me/1NlgGIk.

The history

Jack and Tracy were each born to Chinese parents — Jack in South Korea and Tracy in Taiwan. Both of them worked in their parents’ restaurants there for a time, and decided to come to the U.S. to set up restaurants of their own some day.

To prepare for this, Jack obtained his undergraduate degree from Meijo University and went on to study economics at Nagoya University, both in Japan. There he perfected his Japanese, adding to the list of languages he speaks: Korean, Chinese, Japanese and English.

But when he arrived in California, he found that American business was “very, very different” than that of Asia.

“I think everything is very hard,” Jack said with a laugh.

Tracy noted that California was also already “too full” of Chinese restaurants, and when she met Jack, they decided to look elsewhere.

Jack’s brother Richard, the owner of Peking Chinese Restaurant in Wasilla, was in Alaska at that time, and encouraged the newlyweds to come north — he’d found a good place to set up shop.

In 1983, Richard Tzou moved his restaurant from a Wasilla location near a place called Huppies Roadhouse to its current location just off the Parks Highway. Jack and Tracy opened Peking Express in the Carrs mall (now demolished) in Palmer shortly thereafter.

In 1993, the couple purchased a building up the hill from the mall that was once a restaurant called Bounty in a foreclosure sale. They set to work remodeling right away, and expected to open the following spring, but cleanliness and plumbing problems were still an issue by that time.

“It was very, very dirty inside,” Jack recalled.

Eventually Peking Garden was up and running. The Tzous lined the walls of their new restaurant with handmade decorations from Taiwan, adding onto the building over the years until it became the successful restaurant-motel combo it was until Tracy’s stroke.

“I miss the customers,” she said, but “not the busy.”

Amy, who started taking orders at the restaurant when she was 3, said she often wished she was doing something else when she was working (especially as a teenager), but was grateful to be spending time with family, too.

“It was a very different lifestyle compared to all my friends,” she said. “My friends were like, ‘Oh my parents and I did this,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, my parents and I worked all weekend.’”

But the restaurant was also where the kids got fed, Tracy reminded her.

Spending so much time there led to relationships with many customers, she said — to the point where the Tzous could hear a name or see a face and know exactly what dishes to make.

Amy said they’re still getting phone calls from customers surprised by the closure.

“A lot of people have been really upset that we’ve closed down,” she said.

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.