Not a restaurant story, but when I was eight a hapkido studio opened in my town. I live in the kind of small, Canadian town where you have to drive for the better part of an hour to buy anything more than basic groceries (or to go to high school for that matter), and the biggest things to happen are someone occasionally getting busted for growing and selling pot, or elementary school being cancelled because a cougar had decided to take a nap outside the front door.
So no one really questioned the motives of this large Korean family that moved to town and had a martial arts studio built. I mean, maybe we should have, since no one ever moves there, but we didn’t. (Or maybe we did, but I was eight so idk)
Anyway, the kids’ class had about a dozen of us, which was a lot for any sort of organized extracurricular, ranging from my brother at five to me at eight.
It was great. Hapkido was a lot of fun, and the older man who ran it made sure we had a class at least once a month or so where we learned self defense well enough that we’d actually be able to apply it if the need ever came up. Occasionally his “friends from Korea” would come to “visit him” and they would guest teach a class.
By the time I was thirteen, I had made my way through quite a few belt levels, and he gave me a part time job helping teach the new under five class. A few of them had joined the volunteer fire department, the moms helped with bake sales at the elementary school, my sister was really good friends with the daughter that was her age, and they were all a pretty big part of the community.
Until one day when we’re in class. At this point, I was still in the kids’ class, despite an offer to be moved up to the adults’ one, because I’d finally managed to convince some of my friends to join and they were in the kids’ class.
So, picture this. An older-boarding-on-elder Korean man teaching martial arts to a dozen or so kids. Parents sitting in the adjoining room, watching through the one way glass and gossiping over tea. The door slams open, and a half dozen police officers come in, guns out and yelling.
We all dropped to the floor, freaking out, because nothing like this happens ever. One time, my neighbours got high and lit their car on fire and drove it into a ditch, and the fire fighters had to wait around for three hours before the police finally showed up, that’s how much they hate having to drive out to our town from one of the near-ish cities.
But here they were, interrupting our class.
And the teacher? He booked it out the back door as soon as they entered.
Turns out the studio was a front to smuggle drugs from Korea.
I was only thirteen so nobody really wanted to give me all the details and it may have been 2010, but the elementary school was still the only place with internet, so I couldn’t even look it up.
From what I remember, though, the police caught the hapkido teacher pretty quickly. I’m not sure if they got everyone from the family or not, but I do remember that one of his friends was supposed to be visiting and teaching a class later in the week, so I’m pretty confident they caught him too. I’m pretty sure they were some sort of mafia, because I remember overhearing a conversation between my parents about the amount of paperwork and meetings my dad had to do to convince the higher ups that he had no idea he was letting mafia members into his fire hall.
I also had to go to a couple of interviews with the police since, technically, I worked for them. It didn’t take them long to see that I was just a nerdy little thirteen year old, and that there was no way I was actually involved in this mafia. I got some serious street cred, though, and when I started grade eight in the neighbouring city that fall, I got a lot of questions about what it was like to be in a mafia.
I still don’t know how the police caught onto them, or why it took them five years. I definitely would have kept my job at the studio through high school if they hadn’t been arrested (it was infinitely better than working as a cashier at the tiny grocery store), and I sometimes wonder how much that would have gotten me mixed up in their real business over time.
So yeah. That’s the story of how I was taught martial arts and self defense from drug smugglers and accidentally worked for a mafia. It was also definitely the most interesting thing to happen in my town ever.
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