Around the Fourth of July, immigrants who became American citizens often feel the holiday especially deeply, celebrating not just fireworks and cookouts but the freedom and opportunity that drew them to this country. In Mobile, that story has played out again and again through business owners who built lasting enterprises far from their native homelands.
From Iran to an International Grocery
Reza Hejazi grew up working in his father’s bakery and market in Esfahan, Iran, before leaving in 1974 to attend the University of Florida. After marrying his wife, Nahin, and transferring to the University of South Alabama to finish a civil engineering degree, the couple decided to make Mobile home. Unable to find engineering work, Reza worked in a hotel food and beverage department and ran a used car lot before opening Food Pak International on Old Shell Road in 1991, believed to be Mobile’s first international grocery store. More than two decades later, the shop is known both for hard-to-find imported ingredients and for sandwiches ranging from Italian muffulettas to Greek gyros. Nahin built her own business too, opening a beauty salon in the 1980s that eventually became a commercial rental company. Their sons have carried the business into a third generation, with one running the store full time today. “I truly believe in the American Dream,” Reza said. “If you’re committed and passionate about your work, you can make it.”
From Ethiopia to a State Farm Office
Makeda Nichols grew up in Ethiopia, the daughter of a doctor, before studying chemistry in Germany, where she met and married an American soldier. The couple eventually settled in Florida, and Makeda’s fluent German helped her land a job with a Mobile chemical company after the marriage brought her to the Gulf Coast. Drawn to entrepreneurship, she became a State Farm agent and now owns an office in Midtown Mobile, work she says lets her make a real difference for families the way insurance never could for her own family after her father’s death in Ethiopia decades ago. Her brother, restaurateur Chakli Diggs of NoJa in downtown Mobile, later joined her in the city as well.
From Taiwan to a Family Seafood Restaurant
Christina Lau came to Mobile from Taiwan to visit her sister and never really left, eventually marrying Michael Lau, a Hong Kong native. The couple opened China Doll on Dauphin Street in 1989 before relocating to Pinebrook Shopping Center as New China Doll Seafood Restaurant. After Michael’s death from cancer in 2012, Christina kept the restaurant running herself, greeting customers seven days a week with the help of a cook of 20 years and a son studying finance at the University of South Alabama who plans to join the family business.
From Peru to a Salon Built From Scratch
Mariella “Mally” Descailleaux left Lima, Peru on a student visa in 1987, married Mobile lawyer Robert Rone within months, and eventually opened Nails by Mally on Grelot Road in 1989 using furniture from her own home. The business, now called Mally’s Salon, has grown through five locations and now employs stylists and a massage therapist. “There have been a lot of struggles, a lot of hard work,” she said, crediting her customers as her greatest reward.