Carmen Garcia, 96; Pioneer Merchant on Olvera Street

Pioneer Olvera Street merchant Carmen Garcia has died after suffering a stroke, her family said Wednesday. She was 96.

Mrs. Garcia, who ran her small Olvera Street variety shop for 56 years, liked to entertain visitors with stories of the early days of the Mexican-style marketplace, which opened 61 years ago on the spot where 11 families founded Los Angeles in 1781.

To get her shop in 1935, the native of Durango, Mexico, had to parade herself and her four children before Olvera Street patron Christine Sterling, a civic activist who created the tourist attraction out of what had been a crime-infested alley and who personally approved her tenants.

In a June 7 article about Olvera Street in The Times, Mrs. Garcia said she intended to live out her days doing what she loved.

“One of the distributors died on the street while he was delivering merchandise. That will happen to me,” she said in Spanish, the only language she ever really learned. “Only the death will retire me.”

Mrs. Garcia had operated her puesto, or wooden booth, as usual on June 19, making change out of an old wooden cigar box. She caught the bus for home, suffered a stroke and died the following day.

A funeral service is scheduled for 9 a.m. today at La Placita Catholic Church, which faces Olvera Street. Burial will follow at Calvary Cemetery. Mrs. Garcia is survived by three of her children, Mike, Margarita and Ruben, as well as 14 grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren and eight great-great-grandchildren.