Michael Zapata made his way through college engineering curriculum and earned a degree before realizing he yearned for something else. Majoring in mechanical engineering, the UT-Rio Grande Valley graduate desired a work life beyond the confines of an office-oriented job. The Brownsville native tried working in restaurants and then did outside sales work in Houston before returning home with a clear goal in mind. “I wanted to own my own…
SpaceX with its Starbase on Boca Chica Beach is transforming the Brownsville economy and is bringing in a slew of outside investors and companies into the area. The buzz of Brownsville becoming a space city has made some local residents wonder when the opportunities others are seeking will come their way. “We’ve heard it plenty of times from the public,” said Nathan Burkhart, the vice president of entrepreneurship and innovations…
Alexis Wooderson takes a look up a 40-foot tower that Brownsville’s Camp RIO calls its Treehouse and begins to unpack what it can do. “It can seem like a puzzle,” said Wooderson, who manages the camp’s new ropes course that runs through the tower. “It looks like a daunting course, but once you’re up there, you can feel how secure it is.” With the help of a nearly $600,000 grant,…
The Ebony Hills Golf Course and the adjoining Echo Hotel were signature pieces for decades on Edinburg’s landscape as the city established itself during its earliest years. The golf course was opened in 1927 as a municipal property before being privately owned and today is again a public golf course. The Echo opened about three decades later as a showpiece two-story hotel. Community leaders developed the Echo as a city…
Going from active military service with its intensity of duties to normal civilian life can be jarring. “It’s a radical overnight change,” said Javier Cardenas, a VA certifying official at South Texas College in McAllen. “It has the potential to be catastrophic.” Cardenas would know. The McAllen native joined the Marines two weeks after graduating from high school. He would serve four years in the Marines and admits to feeling…
Sixto Garza Jr. joined the U.S. Army four days after graduating from Edinburg High School in 1982. Like many youngsters reaching adulthood, Garza knew he wanted to do something beyond the confines of his hometown. He just didn’t know what or where. “I didn’t really have a sense of direction,” Garza said. “The military gave me that structure. It gave me a career.” He would become immersed and trained to…
Cristina Solis Wilson’s 26 years in the military have imbued her with the values of the U.S. Army and ones that serve as the foundations of coaching business owners to success. Purpose, motivation and direction are the principles learned in a military life that have seen her rise to the ranks of being a command sergeant major and representing the pinnacle of enlisted ranks in the Army. Only a small…
David Carter grew up a Kansas kid experiencing some of the more extreme weather fluctuations seen in the United States. There are severe winter storms and blizzards to go with severe thunderstorms over the Midwest plains. Then there are the tornadoes. Kansas averages over 80 tornadoes a year and the big storms of the state became immortalized in “The Wizard of Oz.” “I grew up in southwest Kansas and I…
Daniel Villarreal’s exit from the U.S. Army came in 2006 and he knew the next mission ahead. He wanted to train dogs for law enforcement and detection work and to help fellow veterans who need service dogs. Villarreal had received an introduction to the world of dogs and how they are trained before enlisting in the Army. He was eager to do that work full time in his post-military life…
Nayelli Valdemar was ebullient on a sun-splashed September morning in looking out the windows of her newly expanded business. Valdemar’s Funky Flower Shop in Mercedes enjoyed a chamber of commerce ribbon cutting in mid-September to commemorate a doubling of the square footage of her business. The new floor space of Funky Flower at 400 square feet may not register much excitement at the H-E-B stores where she once worked. It…