Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Jimmy orr

Jimmy Orr

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Wyoming Life

LANDER — Sophal Thompson put her Fourth of July flags out early this year. By early May, she had one on each of her handmade tables, because she was that excited to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary.

She hasn’t taken them down yet, and she’s thinking she might just leave them there. They tell a quiet story, one she loves to tell.  

“I just love America,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “I appreciate everything here.”

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not taken lightly by Thompson. 

She grew up in Cambodia and remembers hiding underground when bombs came. This was during the years of conflict after the Khmer Rouge era, when fighting between factions made daily life dangerous.

Villages across western and northern Cambodia were caught in the crossfire. Families routinely dug subterranean dirt bunkers beneath or next to their thatched homes so they could dive underground at a moment’s notice. They might have to stay there for mere hours or days to survive the shrapnel.

Thompson is not sure her exact age. She might have been 5, 6 or 7. But she does remember how terrified she was that she or someone she loved might die. 

She’d already lost her mother when she was 2.

“My mom didn’t make it,” she said in a soft voice. “My real, real mom who gave me a birthday. She passed away because we had no medication. There was no medication, no doctors, because they killed all of them. The Khmer Rouge killed all the smart doctors. Killed all the teachers.”

With no money, no medicine, no doctors or nurses, there was no one left to help her mother survive. 

“My uncle, my dad’s brother, was killed. They killed him because he was a famous boxer,” she said. “He was smart, very successful. They killed all the famous, the smartest, all the rich people.”

Thompson said she first heard about America she was 7 or 8 years old.

Her grandfather had managed to escape the nightmare sometime in the 1970s, before she was born. He finally managed to find her dad. 

“Somehow, he escaped to a camp where Americans try to save us,” she said. “They could put many people in the plane so my grandpa, he just escaped with his family and came to America. Otherwise, they would have all been killed.”

It took him 25 years to find his surviving relatives in Cambodia. 

“When we finally connected, that’s when I heard about America,” Thompson said. “I wanted to go to America. I wanted to be with my grandpa. He is my second grandpa.”

Thompson saved every penny she could from raising livestock on her family’s rice farm. English lessons were $1 an hour. That was a lot of money for a child, especially in a country where $10 could buy a month of food for her whole family.

“My dad told me, like, if you don’t learn English, you can’t speak to people,” she said. “You can’t work. So you have to learn English.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Arriving With Just $10"}]

When Thompson finally boarded a plane to the United States, she had just $10. 

“Just to make sure, just in case you might be hungry on the way,” he told her. “So you can buy a snack at the airport.”

In Cambodia, that was still a lot of money. 

But in America, as she soon discovered, it didn’t go far.

“I applied for work right away,” she said. “I’m not going to waste my breath sitting around. I have to work.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"That’s been her attitude ever since. "}]

When she was a young mother, she opened a day care so she could watch others’ children alongside her own. 

Childcare, she quickly saw, was so expensive it took half her paycheck. A day care seemed only logical.

It didn’t take long for word to spread. She was licensed for up to 10 children — and quickly filled all those spots. Before long, she was juggling two daycares at once.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Dreaming Of A Laundromat"}]

After her children grew older, Thompson decided to try a new kind of business altogether. For years, she ran the Antler Steak House — a restaurant in a gas station. 

“I was cooking seven days a week and training people every other day,” she said. “That was tiring, and I never got to see people.”

So she sold the restaurant and started dreaming up a new business idea, something she’d felt the town always needed when she was a young mother.

That something was a laundromat. But not the boring place she remembered going to with her children.

“I had a baby and my apartment didn’t have laundry,” she said. “So I would pack my baby back and forth in the car. And I always wished that the laundry had a welcome sitting area — like a place to hang out and play with my baby, watch television or listen to music, and get an ice cream or a smoothie for the kids.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Coffee And Conversation"}]

That’s how On-Site Laundry was born, and that’s why it doesn’t look like a traditional laundromat. 

The first thing you notice is a set of barstools and a menu listing several flavors of boba tea, as well as other drinks ranging from beer or cocktails to Thompson’s own favorite, Cambodian coffee.

That menu item is a creamy and sweet conversation starter. 

“I had a gentleman come in who didn’t know where I’m from and look at my menu,” Thompson said with a chuckle. “He was like, ‘Cambodia … why are you serving Cambodian coffee?’”

The man had such a look of perplexity, Thompson wasn’t sure what to think. Was this the start of a compliment, or a complaint?

“Then I found out his wife came from Cambodia,” Thompson said. “So I told him I’m from Cambodia and I want to introduce Americans to Cambodian coffee. It’s really dark and strong and a little sweet.”

Before too long, her new friend had brought his wife to the laundromat for Cambodian coffee and conversation.

“That’s what I really like about being here,” Thompson said, beaming. “I get to meet a lot of different travelers. Different states, different countries. I like to visit with them.”

On-Site Laundry has been in business for a year, but it’s already become a popular gathering place for hikers and bikers doing the Continental Divide Trail or the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route.

“Oasis is a good word for it,” Haleigh Swabowicz said, munching on a plate of chicken fingers and French fries. “Like you never see anything like this. It’s such a cool concept.”

“It’s an oasis,” walking trail friend Willie Hammond agreed. “We’re going to be here for a while.”

The duo found the business listed on an app for Divide Trail hikers that highlights useful and interesting places, complete with ratings and recommendations.

The rating for Lander’s laundromat is high — and well-deserved, Swabowicz said. 

“To have a shower laundry place is spectacular,” she said. “And food? Like, I don’t even need to leave here.”

Air conditioning doesn’t hurt at all either, Hammond said. 

Nor do toilets and chairs, Swabowicz added, laughing. 

“Hiking the Great Divide makes you appreciate so many things so much more,” she said. “Like having a toilet, what an amazing thing that is! And chairs. Oh my gosh, sitting in a chair is such a luxury for us now.”

The cool decor was also not lost on the hiking duo, who said it gives the place a nice “vibe.”

That decor, Thompson said, was built by hand. Her own hand.

“This building was old,” she said. “We had to put everything brand new. The floor, I was just learning. I did that. But I had never done flooring before.”

She also built the tables and stools by hand, as well as a Ramen bar and the lunch counter where people gather to order food and drinks while waiting on their laundry. All of the wood is burned to give it a cozy, kitschy feel, and that’s something else Thompson did herself.

The tables and stools have also been popular. Customers beg to buy them, she said. 

She finally let four of them go, and already has orders for a few more — though she doesn’t take many orders. She’s not in the furniture business after all.

She also assembled the art on the walls, having no money to buy expensive artwork.

“When we opened this up, we were kind of like broke,” she said. “We put every penny to this place. So I told my husband, I’m just gonna do everything handmade. You can’t go spend a thousand bucks on pictures. But I didn’t want it to be boring.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"When Grit Meets Freedom"}]

On the front counter, there’s a tiny white piggy bank, but it’s not for tips. It’s for Cambodia.

“I’ve been collecting for a couple of years now,” she said. “And I’ve been sending the money to the hospital. Cambodia is still a very poor country.”

She might have left to find a better future in America, but she refuses to forget where she started. 

The pocket change she collects might be chump change in America, but it will buy life-saving medicines that are still very expensive in the country of her birth. Medicines that might save someone else’s mother. 

In Cambodia, Sophal Thompson learned a thing or two about grit. That grit took her to a  small mountain town in Wind River Country.

Washers spin, dryers thump, and flags fly above tables built by her own hand.

They are a reminder of how far she’s come, and an example of how grit becomes something beautiful when life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are allowed. 

“I really, really love America,” she said. “This is my American dream.”

On Site Laundry inset

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Lander Business Owner Escaped Cambodia's Killing Fields To Build American Dream | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Sophal Thompson grew up in Cambodia and remembers hiding underground when bombs came. She saved every penny to take English lessons and had $10 when she arrived in the U.S. Now, a successful business owner in Lander, she says: “I really, really love America."

Lander Business Owner Escaped Cambodia's Killing Fields To Build American Dream

Zakary Sonntag

Business & Tourism

Business

Typically, the people who bleed in the emergency room are patients. This past week at Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County in Rock Springs, it was a nurse.

Around 9 p.m. July 20, emergency department nurse Christian R. stepped into a patient's room for a routine medication check. Seconds later, he fled with a broken nose.

“I asked the patient if he’d take his nighttime medication, then he stood up and walked towards me and with a closed fist punched me straight in the face,” Christian told Cowboy State Daily.

He heard a pop when the punch landed. Blood started pouring from his nose as he stumbled out of the room. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"But there was no time to process the pain."}]

The patient chased Christian through the emergency department, catching him more than once and resuming the attack.

“He ended up catching up to me and throwing more punches and then using his knees to try and knee me in the head,” he said. “He did knee me a couple times, so I have lacerations to my lips.”

Christian ran around corners, down two hallways and eventually into the department lobby, where a security worker intervened by tripping the patient.

The patient tumbled to the floor, giving Christian enough time to sprint back into the emergency department, where a colleague pulled him into a locked supply room.

There, surrounded by shelves stocked with gauze, wound-care supplies and medical equipment, the shock finally began to set in.

“I was shocked that he attacked me, but he continued chasing me — that’s what shocked me the most,” Christian said. “The patient had run past countless other nurses and staff, but was just fully focused on me and trying to get me.”

Christian's experience was dramatic. Health care leaders say it’s not unique.

Health care workers are five times more likely to experience workplace violence injuries than workers overall, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While they make up less than 10% of the overall workforce, nurses and other health care workers experience 48% of all nonfatal injuries due to workplace violence, according to analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"In Wyoming, the problem takes many forms."}]

“First of all, you get a lot of verbal violence as a nurse. People call you all kinds of nasty names and four-letter words and curse and swear at you,” said Tracy Garcia, chief of nursing operations at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center, who’s seen the gamut after working in the health care sector for 37 years. 

Garcia believes emergency department workers shoulder an outsized share of the problem.

“In the emergency department, I've had people slap me, kick at me, throw things at me,” said Garcia, adding that violence has become more common and more egregious over the course of her career.

“Several years ago, we had a physician who was pregnant, and that physician was punched in the stomach by a patient who knew she was pregnant, because the patient was mad at the care the physician was providing,” she said.

Garcia said her hospital averages roughly 50 incidents of workplace violence involving patients or family members each year. She worries what it does for retention in an industry already struggling to recruit workers.

"If people know about this workplace violence and we don’t come up with solutions, they may be less likely to go into nursing,” she said.

Why So Much Violence Against Doctors And Nurses?

The roots of the problem lie in the nature of hospital work itself, especially in emergency departments and other nerve-racking units where pain, fear and family crises often converge, according to Josh Hannes, former vice president of the Wyoming Hospital Association.

People arrive injured, intoxicated, distressed, or terrified for a loved one. Then there’s the intensely personal nature of the care, which can blur boundaries in dangerous ways. 

This makes hospitals fundamentally different from other workplaces, as well as more volatile, Hannes said, adding that the issue has worsened in recent years in part because it’s not well understood.

“It's really an untold story,” he said, offering the example of one of his associates whose head was grabbed and thrown into a hospital door by a patient. "Most people don’t realize the literal danger their providers are in when they're at the workplace.

“People think of police officers or corrections officers and the risks for violence in those professions, and that makes sense, but they don't know this is happening to people who work in places that are meant to be places of healing.”

Hannes said one solution is to treat health care workers more like police officers, by which he means enhancing penalties for violence against health care workers.

That approach has been adopted by many states. Wyoming is not one of them.

Wyoming Among Few States Without Protections

Wyoming lawmakers have tried to address violence against health care workers.

Bills introduced in 2023, 2024 and 2025 would have strengthened reporting requirements, created workplace-safety standards and increased penalties for assaults against health care workers. None became law.

“It got caught up in the whole Freedom Caucus — they said, ‘These are special rights for a class of citizens’— and it went downhill from there,” said former state Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Laramie, who sponsored the first major effort in 2023, adding that stripped-down versions his bill in successive years hit the same roadblocks.

“It had the medical community behind it,” he said. "It had tons of frontline stories talking about what happens and why it’s needed … and we still couldn't get it passed."

Opponents argued that creating health care-specific penalties risked turning the law into a patchwork of protected occupations rather than applying equal justice to everyone. 

In addition, some legal experts say there is insufficient evidence that increasing punishment severity deters violence in hospital settings.

Though nurses like Christian have an existing legal remedy, recourse is complicated where mental health is involved, as may have been the case in Rock Springs this past week, implied Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County CEO Kari Quickenden in a statement to Cowboy State Daily.

“Hospitals throughout Wyoming and across the country are seeing an increasing number of patients experiencing behavioral health crises,” said Quickenden. "Caring for these patients safely and compassionately is one of the most complex challenges facing health care today, and Sweetwater Memorial remains committed to providing that care while protecting the safety of our employees, patients, and visitors."

Reform advocates say this is more reason to establish new legal standards.

“The profession recognizes that there is a difference with psychiatric situations,” said Hannes. “This is not about taking people like a geriatric patient who has cognitive problems and trying to throw them in jail.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What Will Christian Do?"}]

While in the locked supply closet, a doctor told Christian his nose appeared broken, but he didn’t fully grasp the severity of his injury until a colleague handed him a mirror in a treatment room later.

“When I saw myself I said, 'OK, this is definitely something bad that happened to me,'” he said. “Seeing my bloody face with the nose that wasn’t straight anymore, seeing the damage — that’s when all the emotions really hit.”

Five days after the attack, he had two black eyes and a sore nose. He expects the physical injuries to heal. The emotional ones are harder to measure.

Christian is a Fort Worth, Texas, native who came to Rock Springs on a short-term nursing contract. He fell in love with the area's outdoor recreation and welcoming community and decided to renew his contract. 

He’s recently signed his third consecutive renewal, but the incident last Monday has raised questions about whether he’ll renew for a fourth. 

For the first time in his career, Christian is considering leaving emergency medicine altogether.

Christian followed his father and older brother into nursing, and said he chose emergency care because it felt the most impactful.

“I've always loved taking care of people,” Christian said. "If somebody got hurt, I always wanted to be the first one to try and help in whichever way I was able to."

According to Wyoming Medical Association Executive Director Sheila Bush, Christian is a prototype of health care workers who she described as people wired to help.

“The thing that gets me the most with this whole issue is the fact that our health care workers are one of the only professions that are strictly there to provide care and heal people,” she said. “They are located in facilities that cannot deny care, especially in an emergency situation.

“They are in health care because they want to help. They're not always trained in self‑defense always. They don't have any tools to enhance their ability to defend themselves.”

Christian was a prototype in this regard as well.

“I've never been in a fight,” he said. "I’d never gotten hit with a bare fist, ever."

He told Cowboy State Daily he intends to pursue criminal charges against the patient who assaulted him, and he is working with the hospital’s legal team to that end. 

In addition to personal recompense, he hopes his experience will inspire changes for the industry. 

“The biggest thing for me is just some kind of change, so that nurses … especially in this state … just feel safer going to work,” he said.

Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County emergency 2 7 26 26

<title>Patient Attacks Rocks Springs ER Nurse And Chases Him Through Hospital | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A patient attacked a Rock Springs emergency nurse, breaking his nose and chasing him through Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County this past week. "He was fully focused on trying to get me," the nurse said. Health care leaders say this is not unique.

Patient Attacks Rocks Springs ER Nurse And Chases Him Through Hospital

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Wildlife

Wyoming hunters seeking next fall’s trophy bulls and bucks can start looking now. After months of explosive growth, elk and deer antlers are about as big as they’re going to get for the year.

Good nutrition is the key. With the onset of spring, bucks and bulls must first recover the body mass they lost over the winter. Then they continue eating like hogs, pumping additional nutrients into antler growth.

In peak season, typically in early summer, antlers can grow up to an inch a day.

During the process, a fuzzy substance called “velvet” covers the antlers. It looks like its namesake, but is actually skin, dense with blood vessels and covered with short, dense fur.

As summer wanes, the velvet starts to dry, and the animals rub it off on trees and brush.

Once the velvet is rubbed off, elk emerge with a clean set of headgear, just in time for fierce, 

 associated with the rut, or mating season.

The elk rut starts in mid-September and lasts “well into October,” retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Bruce Smith told Cowboy State daily.

The deer rut usually starts in late October, peaks in November and might run into December.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Cycle Starts In February"}]

Buck and bulls go through a yearly cycle of growing, shedding and then re-growing their antlers, with each set getting larger than the previous year’s.

Large bull elk start shedding their antlers as early as February, said Smith, who was the senior biologist at the National Elk Refuge near Jackson from 1982 to 2004 and now lives in Bozeman, Montana.

Smaller bulls and spikes (male elk that have only single-tine, spike antlers) might not shed theirs until April or May, he said.

With that jump-start, larger bulls might start growing antlers by April, Smith said.

However, they’re still trying to make up for the nutritional deficit coming out of winter.

Antler growth can’t really kick into high gear until late spring or early summer, when green, nutrient-rich grasses and other plants become available, Smith said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The cycle is similar for deer, he said."}]

Elk are primarily grazers (grass-eaters), while deer are browsers, relying heavily on shrubs and forbs.

After mid-July, hot dry weather settles in “like we’re having now,” Smith said.

Foliage starts to dry out and its nutritional value wanes, so antler growth slows to a stop.  

Bull elk might then seek green “riparian areas and wet meadows,” which could help boost a final antler growth spurt, Smith said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Nitrogen And Lead"}]

What all of that means is that hunters eyeballing bulls and bucks now, in mid-July, can have get a reasonable estimation of how big they’ll be during the fall hunting seasons after the velvet comes off, Smith said.

He noted that elk habits can be driven by “nitrogen and lead.” (The latter being a reference to the lead in hunter’s bullets).

"They are attracted to nitrogen, and they’re afraid of lead,” he said.

The nitrogen, or nitrates, is the primary nutrient that is easily digestible and promotes antler growth, Smith said.

Antlers might frequently be called “bone,” which is reasonably accurate, he added.

“It’s certainly more like bone than another other particular tissue or structure that you might find in the animal’s body,” Smith said.

The entire region had a mild winter and early spring, which bodes well for wildlife, and antler growth, Smith said.

He lives in Montana, which also saw significant rains recently. That also helps with antler growth.

So, Smith expects at least average antler growth in Montana bull elk this year.

It might not be so great in Wyoming, which leaned toward the dry side this spring and early summer, said avid hunter Owen Miller, who lives in northeast Wyoming.

“They (antlers) grow fast from the start of the growing stage. This time of year, it looks like they’re growing faster because each tine (point) is growing,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

 “A dry year, like this summer has been, also has an effect on them. With less green foliage around, and being dry, it has fewer nutrients,” he added.

“Both bucks and bulls can be smaller than the previous year, due to water shortages and fewer nutrients during drought,” he said.

Mule deer rack 8 24 23

<title>After Growing Fast Through July, Elk And Deer Antlers About As Big As They’ll Get | Cowboy State Daily</title>

During the peak antler growing-season of spring and early summer, Wyoming bull elk and buck deer can add an inch per day to their antlers thanks to lush foliage. Now that it's the peak of summer, antler growth will grind almost to a halt.

After Growing Fast Through July, Elk And Deer Antlers About As Big As They’ll Get

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

[{"type":"text","text":"Frank Canton was known for his eyes. "}]

Rancher Elmer Brock claimed that Canton had "yellow coyote eyes." Edward Burnett, a rancher who also knew him well, said that when Canton got his steely eye on a man that settled it.

“Canton carried a gun, perhaps sometimes two of them,” Burnett said. “I never knew of his using one. His eye was sufficient.”

Canton was also a man with a secret identit

 admitted his real name was Joe Horner. 

According to Margaret Brock Hanson in her book “Powder River Country,” Canton had gone on a cattle drive through Kansas when he was a teenager in 1869. On his way home through Texas, he found trouble.

“The stories vary as to the adventures of these boys,” Hanson wrote. “But it seems that they got to Jacksboro where they all got liquored up and tried to shoot up the town.”

Near Jacksboro was Fort Richardson. Hanson said the story she heard was that Buffalo soldiers tried to arrest the cowboys and some were killed. The boys escaped and headed west to unsettled country. 

[{"type":"text","text":"At Comanche, Texas, they robbed a bank."}]

“Evidently, young Joe Horner was not in on the robbery and was left behind when the other boys left town in a hurry,” Hanson said. “Therefore, Joe was the only one who was arrested.”

Johnson County Frank Canton was so ruthless with cattle rustlers and quick with a gun that he needed a secret identity. “If the first warning was not obeyed, you would probably find several dead bodies hanging to telegraph poles,” he once said.

CSD Staff

Latest from CSD Staff

Steve Inman: Sunday, March 1, 2026

Bonus Video 1: Sunday, March 1, 2026

You Still Here? Sunday, March 1, 2026

Daily Cartoon 1: Saturday, February 28, 2026

Daily Cartoon 2: Saturday, February 28, 2026

Your Wyoming Sunrise: Saturday, February 28, 2026

One More For The Road: Saturday, February 28, 2026

You Still Here: Saturday, February 28, 2026

Steve Inman: Saturday, February 28, 2026

Bonus Video 2: Saturday, February 28, 2026

Daily Darwin: Saturday, February 28, 2026

Daily Smile: Saturday, February 28, 2026

Other Authors

Today In Politics: Saturday, February 28, 2026

Bonus Video 2: Friday, February 27, 2026

Today In Business: Friday, February 27, 2026

Today In Snow: Friday, February 27, 2026

Today In Mattresses: Friday, February 27, 2026

Daily Cartoon 2: Friday, February 27, 2026

Steve Inman: Friday, February 27, 2026

Bonus Video 1: Friday, February 27, 2026

The Stem Cell Freedom Act: Your Stem Cells, For Your Treatment