Ruben Garcia took over the San Diego district office of the Small Business Administration on Jan. 3, succeeding George Chandler, who spent 25 years in the position. Garcia, 58, heads a staff of 12 in a Downtown office that last year processed 1,305 loans totaling $401 million. (photo/lambertphoto.com)

Ruben Garcia learned the value of hard work from his father, a field worker in the agricultural town of Weslaco, Texas, in the late 1940s. From his mother, a school teacher, he was taught one of her recipes for success. “Try to learn something new every day,” she counseled.

Though Garcia spent only five years of his life in south central Texas, the lessons from his parents have stayed with him the past 53 years and are reflected in the many educational and career steps he’s taken since.

Garcia’s last — and perhaps final — career move occurred on Jan. 3 when he was sworn in as director of the Small Business Administration’s San Diego district office on C Street Downtown. He succeeds George Chandler, the director for the previous 25 years, who last year built it into the No. 1 office among 21 medium-size SBA offices nationwide.

Big footprints to follow, but Garcia, 58, is up to the challenge. “No one has ever repeated being No. 1 in the 53-year history of the SBA,” he says. “The feat has never been accomplished. That’s one of my goals.”

Tony Vigil, deputy director, isn’t one to doubt his boss’s pledge. “He’s a sincere man who is very passionate about this job,” says Vigil, 70, a 40-year veteran of the SBA who worked as Chandler’s No. 2 guy for 25 years. “I’ve only known him for four months, but he makes a great first impression.”

Unlike Chandler, who was a NASA mission engineer in the Apollo and Gemini programs before taking over the SBA office, Garcia, a Mexican-American, arrived from a different set of circumstances. His father, Patricio Moreno Garcia (who died last September), and mother, Beatrice, moved the family from Texas to Los Angeles in the early 1950s. The elder Garcia was able to get a job as a gas station attendant making much more money than in the fields in Weslaco.

Young Garcia excelled in school. He graduated as student body president of Belmont High School in South Central L.A. and then started acquiring so many educational degrees it made his mother nearly burst with pride. “She was a teacher, so that spirit was in me,” he says. “She was always telling me, ‘Go finish school, go finish school.’”

His father also was supportive of his educational pursuits, but cautioned his son that a degree without anything else won’t guarantee success. “When I got my bachelor’s degree, I told him I had become successful,” says Garcia. “But he said success depended on two things — preparation and opportunity. When preparation and opportunity cross, that’s when you have become a success.”

Besides a bachelor’s degree from Pacific Western University, Garcia has a degree in general business studies from UCLA Extension, a master’s degree from Tulane University and a master’s and doctorate from Madison University. It prepared him for the management positions he has held with Arco, Texaco, Caterpillar, Yale and Clark Equipment. Garcia enlisted in the Army in 1966, graduated from the West Point Preparatory School and served in infantry and special weapons assignments. He served in Europe for a year and left the service in 1969.

Garcia spent 40 years in Los Angeles. He and his wife, Alma, raised two children. Albert Baeza is pastor of an evangelical church in Spring Valley and Melanie Lindsey is a homemaker in San Diego.

The Garcias moved to San Diego in 1991. Here, Garcia worked as executive director of the SEMMSA division of Clarklift of San Diego (now RPM Material Handling Co.), which provides material handling services to business and industry on both sides of the Mexican border.

Garcia says he started searching for a career outside of the corporate world after working for Clarklift for several years. A friend, Ernie Reyes, president of Network Realty, approached him about turning a long-held dream into reality — forming an organization that would help Hispanic home buyers by recruiting and training Hispanic real estate professionals. Reyes, Garcia and Gary Acosta, owner of Prado Mortgage, formed the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals in San Diego in 1999. Garcia became its first CEO.

With 13,000 members in 50 states, the association claims to be the largest minority trade group in the real estate industry. While it initially focused on programs to train its members to become more effective professionals and how to qualify first-time Hispanic home buyers, it has expanded its mission into legislative advocacy and research.

Unlike other national organizations, which usually begin as local chapters, Garcia and his co-founders formed the national association first. As membership grew, local chapters resulted. “We had 500 members in the first 30 days and 5,000 members by the end of the first year,” says Garcia. “The growth was unbelievable.” He says President Bush took notice and invited the association to be a partner in the 2002 White House Conference on Minority Homeownership: Blueprint for the American Dream. Its goal is to increase minority homeownership by 5.5 million families before the end of the decade.

Garcia left the association in 2004 to run unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for the 51st Congressional District seat. He says he learned of Chandler’s retirement from the SBA through a government job listing.“I applied, not knowing if I had a shot at it or not,” he says. As it was, Garcia became one of three final candidates. SBA Administrator Hector Barreto hired him after an interview in his Washington, D.C., office.

As district director of the SBA in San Diego (he does not like to be called chief), Garcia manages a staff of 12. The office works closely with SCORE, the Service Corps of Retired Executives, the three Small Business Development Centers in the county, the Women’s Business Center of California, community groups such as Acción San Diego and 27 lending partners in assistance to the small business community. In 2004, the office processed 1,265 loans totaling $302 million followed in 2005 by 1,305 loans for $401 million. This year, says Garcia, the office is shooting for 1,500 loans for about $500 million.

Garcia laments that his father was not aware of what the SBA could have done for him. By 1956, he was the franchisee for the gas station he once worked for as an attendant, and sought a bank loan two years later so he could expand the business. The bank turned him down. “It taught me a good lesson,” says Garcia. “Six miles down the road he could have found an SBA office that could have given him a $5,000 loan.”

The SBA, says Garcia, typically looks for people who want to start a business or have an existing business that that needs up to $1.5 million in loans. Loans are based on the Wall Street Journal Prime Rate, a consensus of the 30 largest banks. “In some cases, there are banks that can give you better rates; and sometimes not, based on your credit history. But there are things with our loans that are better than bank loans.” The SBA 504 loan, he says, can provide up to a $1.5 million loan for commercial property with 10 percent down. The SBA Express loan, used for working capital, provides loans of between $5,000 and $50,000.

Now that he’s not thinking about interest rates and loans, Chandler has remained busy after SBA retirement. He is on the board of the International Community Foundation and Mainly Mozart and will be leading a delegation of business executives to Third World countries to assist in entrepreneurial development. He says Garcia is doing an outstanding job so far. “Probably the most important and challenging part of the job is to reach out to a continuing larger population of businesses to make sure that as many as possible take advantage of SBA services,” Chandler says. “At the same time you’ve got to maintain the very high quality of work and achieve the challenging goals that are established for each district office by the national office. I’m delighted to see he has done an excellent job in accomplishing those goals and reaching out in the community.”

Vigil, the deputy district director, says the SBA office staff didn’t know what to expect from Garcia after Chandler left. “We were all apprehensive when he first came here, as you always are when someone new comes aboard,” says Vigil. “All I heard about him was that he ran for political office once. I was kind of expecting a professional politician. He’s not. He’s got two equal strengths, his education and his ability to relate to people in a positive way.

“Even though I was ready to retire, I said I would spend six months with the new director, but that was before I knew who it would be. I’ve given Ruben a two-year commitment because I believe in what he is doing and I like what he is doing.”

At his age, Garcia knows he can’t duplicate Chandler’s tenure in the job. “I will work as long as I am productive and useful and can do some good.”