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LAKEVILLE — Former Superintendent Alan Strauss has sent a demand letter to the town of Lakeville, saying that the town could owe him "up to $1,000,000" in damages relating to the actions of two Freetown Lakeville school committee members.

The Gazette obtained a copy of the demand letter through a public records request.

It is not clear at this time if Strauss's attorney also sent a demand letter to Freetown.

Last week, Alan Strauss resigned from his position as superintendent of the Freetown-Lakeville School District. In a statement, Strauss alleged that two school committee members — Crystal Ng and Carolina Hernandez — had made "defamatory statements about my health."

The District signed a settlement agreement with Strauss, according to a copy of a settlement agreement obtained by the Gazette. As part of the settlement, Strauss will receive a $62,500 non-wage payment from "the district's insurance provider," which "represents a settlement payment with respect to the claims identified" in a demand letter sent by Strauss' legal representative.

Crystal Ng and Carolina Hernandez did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Lakeville Town Administrator Andrew Sukeforth said that the town "does not have any comment at this time" regarding the demand letter.

What demand letter says

According to the demand letter, Strauss retained an attorney to "advise him" as to whether he could have a legal case against the town "arising out of the conduct of one or more officials of the Town of Lakeville."

"Based on my review of the facts and evidence," the attorney said, Strauss "has colorable claims of defamation against the Town of Lakeville as well as Carolina Hernandez and Crystal Ng," two school committee members who represent Lakeville on the school committee.

"Superintendent Strauss demands up to $1,000,000 under the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act," the lawyer wrote.

The letter said that Strauss is "open to alternative dispute resolutions."

Letter alleges defamation

In a statement last week, Strauss said he was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2023, and that he gradually informed district employees, the school committee, and Freetown and Lakeville officials of his diagnosis.

The demand letter alleges that Ng and Hernandez had made "false and defamatory statements alleging that Superintendent Strauss is not actually sick with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia."

The demand letter alleged that Ng and Hernandez had made those statements despite "assurances that Superintendent Strauss has provided proof of his diagnosis by Dana Farber Cancer Center in the context of requesting and obtaining intermittent medical leave to receive care for his condition."

The letter also alleged that Hernandez had given Strauss a low evaluation of his job performance.

"In publicly evaluating Superintendent Strauss, Ms. Hernandez asserted that she had repeatedly asked for proof of his diagnosis in order to evaluate him, and, in the absence of seeing his diagnosis, she gave him a rating of 'needs improvement.'"

"Statements by these members conveying the message that the superintendent of schools has been untruthful about his diagnosis are tantamount to accusing him of defrauding the school district," the letter read. "Superintendent Strauss can no longer be silent about these vicious and defamatory efforts to destroy his professional reputation."

The letter also alleged that Hernandez had described Strauss' administration as "Godless."

"I don't believe that the Godless ideologies and indoctrinations so easily passed through your leadership will improve students' progress," Hernandez allegedly said, according to the demand letter.

The letter said that "the emotional distress caused by these people is interfering with Superintendent Strauss's ability to fight his leukemia (Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia never goes into remission) and is exacerbating the physical symptoms of his illness."

Strauss raised possibility of additional legal action against other entities

Strauss' lawyer said in the demand letter that "it is my expectation that discovery will reveal that the currently known defamatory statements of these Lakeville officials concerning Superintendent Strauss are merely the tip of the iceberg. In other words, I expect discovery to reveal that these individuals have engaged in an ongoing pattern of conduct, spreading false and defamatory information about Superintendent Strauss in communications (written and spoken) with numerous members of the community over many months."

The lawyer also said that the demand letter "should serve as reminder of the obligation of each and every party to take all necessary measures to preserve all documents and electronically stored information."

In his statement announcing his resignation, in addition to alleging that Ng and Hernandez had made defamatory statements, Strauss alleged "abusive treatment" by unnamed "Freetown officials."

Strauss said in his resignation statement that "I want to make it clear that I am not releasing claims against the towns or the town officials, individually, for their actions," Strauss said.

It is unclear if Strauss has taken any legal action against any entity other than the town of Lakeville.

On the west side of a liquor store parking lot in Lakeville, there's a food truck. It's simple and small, scattered with silver dimples that refract sunlight like a Studio 54 disco ball. Next to it, just feet from the the road, there's a white foam sign wedged in between an electric panel and a wooden stand: "GREAT THAI FOOD" it reads.

And while the sign is certainly accurate, it only tells a sliver of the story. Because inside that food truck isn't just great Thai food, though there's plenty of that. Inside that food truck, an unassuming culinary master named Orawan Tang-on Maloney goes to work, preparing food with the creativity of an artist and the meticulousness of a neurosurgeon. Aptly, Tang-on Maloney's regulars simply call her "Chef Wan."

Tang-on Maloney owns and operates Tuk Tuk Pad Thai located at 78 Main St. in Lakeville. It's open from noon to 8 p.m. every day except Sundays, April through October. But if you arrive a little early, don't fret. "She opens when the first person gets here," joked her husband and business partner Mike Maloney.

Tang-on Maloney understands the combinations of flavor and temperature and texture the same way you might understand the combinations of vowels and consonants to make a word. Want proof? She started making curry puffs at age 10 to support her family, a venture so successful that it eventually paid for her college tuition. And in 2024, when Tang-on Maloney took her macaroons to Paris, she was told "yours are better than the ones we have here."

Everything is on the menu

Looking at Tang-on Maloney's menu, you'd think her operation is impossible. With 23 dishes on offer, Tang-on Maloney, a one-woman-cooking-operation, makes it work. Armed with six burners, sunflower-patterned Crocs and a wooden stool she stands on to reach the back burners, she serves dishes without wait times and without consolidation: she cuts no corners. If she gets four orders of pad Thai, she doesn't lump them together in a single pan. She instead uses four of her burners to prepare the orders separately.

Of course Tang-on Maloney serves Thai classics like hot basil, pad see ew and drunken noodles. But she also sees cooking as something best done without the arbitrary limits of national boarders. Recently, she's mastered the macaroon. She also sells sourdough boules, crab Rangoon and chicken satay. Maloney, her husband, even said the best guacamole he's ever had was made by Tang-on Maloney. (She sadly does not sell guacamole on the truck.)

'I call her my rockstar'

Perhaps the best way to understand the level at which she operates is to hear it directly from Maloney. He handles a lot of the grunt work of Tuk Tuk Pad Thai and witnesses Tang-on Maloney firsthand. He shleps water, deals with suppliers to place orders, handles the gas setup and does some of the cleaning. But despite having around-the-clock exposure to Tang-on Maloney's craft, this overwhelming feeling of awe toward his wife persists.

"I call her my rockstar. She should be world famous," he said. "It's very complicated food. It looks so easy when she does it, but there's so much going on."

Tang-on Maloney loves to cook, meaning the couple rarely goes out to eat in a restaurant. But when they do, Maloney said that's when he sees the full extent of Tang-on Maloney's powers.

"She can sit at the table and taste the food and break down exactly what was in it. She'll say, 'They did this. They did that. This was frozen. This wasn't.' All the ingredients — everything, she knows it all," he said.

Som tam moo like no other

It's this ability that gives Tang-on Maloney such remarkable range. Not only can she understand exactly how a dish was prepared through just a single bite, but she also doesn't need to sample the food she's making to know how it's going to taste. Take her signature som tam moo for example — a marinated pork salad with tomato, lime, fish sauce, peanuts, cashews, chili, string beans, garlic and lettuce.

Tang-on Maloney first started selling the dish after graduating college in the Phanat Nikholm district of Thailand. She borrowed $15 from her mother to get ingredients and supplies but made no sales on her first day. The next day, when Tang-on Maloney opened at 9:30 a.m., a man approached her and asked what she was selling.

"Come here brother," Tang-on Maloney replied. "This is my recipe for som tam moo. I will make one for you to try. If you don't like it, you don't have to buy it." He took a bite. And then he placed an order for two more orders of som tam moo — a total of three. That day, Tang-on Maloney sold out. A week later, the line was down to the street.

As her enterprise expanded, you couldn't walk up and order som tam moo anymore; it simply wouldn't be available. Instead, customers had to call ahead hours in advance. Before Tang-on Maloney closed the restaurant in 2014, she had built quite the following for herself. Multiple television stations profiled her and the restaurant's customers were flocking from all over the country just to try Tang-on Maloney's pork-centered recipe.

But here's the catch.

"She doesn't eat meat," Maloney marveled, "but she knows how to cook it. And it always comes out right. She doesn't have to taste it. That's a big thing for her: she doesn't cook food that she likes. She cooks food that other people like, that's cooked the way it's supposed to be cooked."

A curry puff 49 years in the making

Forty-nine years ago, Tang-on Maloney made her first curry puff. She was 10 years old then and learned the recipe from her neighbor. She hoped to sell them at her mom's noodle shop, but when she handed the curry puff to her dad to try, he wasn't too impressed.

"Oh! that's terrible!" he said. Looking back on the moment, Tang-on Maloney is certain her dad was correct. A 10-year-old making a halfway decent curry puff would have been unheard of. The famed Thai snack — when done right — is nothing short of an artform: a semi sweet concoction of chicken, potato, carrot, onion and curry powder bundled up in a flakey layer of homemade puff pastry. Today, the doughy exoskeletons of Tang-on Maloney's curry puffs resemble a 3D-printed topography map, textured by the many layers of homemade dough.

"It's dinner and dessert at the same time," Maloney said, describing the dish. (He's not wrong.)

But at 10 years old, that wasn't the case. By 17, Tang-on Maloney was making headway on the curry puff, but her rural upbringing offered little opportunity for her to learn more about the dish. Luckily, when high school rolled around, she headed into the city of Chonburi to study.

Now with an abundance of bookstores available to her — each with a section devoted to cookbooks — the young chef was ready to perfect her craft.

There was one small issue: Because she was saving all her money to cover tuition costs for college, Tang-on Maloney couldn't afford any of the cookbooks she so coveted. With the world's culinary offerings at her fingertips, there was nothing to be done.

Or was there?

Ever-crafty, Tang-on Maloney wandered into Chonburi's bookstores, found the cooking sections and copied down recipes into a notebook she'd snuck into the shops. The strategy worked. Through college, Tang-on Maloney woke up at 2 a.m., prepped her curry puffs and sold them before classes began later that day. The venture paid for her college tuition.

From Bangkok to Boston

In 2014, Tang-on Maloney was ready for a new chapter. She moved to the United States and worked as a head chef in Plymouth — it's there where she met Maloney. The couple wed in 2016 and opened a corporate catering business in Cambridge (Puff & Pie Thai Cuisine). But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the couple lost all their clients.

A year later, Tang-on Maloney rebounded. She and Maloney purchased the food truck in the winter of 2021 and opened Tuk Tuk Pad Thai just two weeks later. Not much has changed since then. Tang-on Maloney replaced a flat-top stove with a couple extra burners, and the menu has subtly evolved, but Tang-on Maloney's cooking has persisted. Now in her fourth year at the truck, the 59-year old doesn't plan on going anywhere.

She and Maloney have talked about taking the truck to events in other towns, but between permitting costs and working farther from their home in Lakeville, it never made that much sense. And so, Tang-on Maloney remains in that parking lot on Lakeville's Main Street. While she may miss industrial kitchens, she prefers the food truck lifestyle over the restaurant lifestyle any day.

Next year will be 50 years since she made that first curry puff, a recipe that's come a long way since her dad tried it in 1976. At the end of our interview I asked Tang-on Maloney how she was able to perfect something that she, herself, doesn't even eat.

"It's experience, hun," she replied. "I've cooked my whole life. I'm still learning my whole life."