OXNARD : Minority Group Lauds Businessman, Student

Al Rosales of Santa Paula, president of Thermo Heating Inc. in Ventura, was named on Friday as Minority Entrepreneur of the Year at the Ventura County Minority Business Group’s awards ceremony.

Also honored at the ceremony in Oxnard was high school senior Rosa Armendariz of Oxnard, who received a $4,000 scholarship from the business group, which was founded by Ventura County National Bank to encourage growth of minority businesses.

Rosales, 56, immigrated to the United States from Jalisco, Mexico, with his family at the age of 12. He lived in the La Colonia neighborhood of Oxnard and attended local schools, graduating early from high school to become a sheet-metal apprentice.

He opened a heating and cooling appliances shop in Ventura in 1964 with the help of his wife, Christine, whom he described as “my right hand.”

Rosales’ company was recently awarded the 1992 Small Business Administration’s Minority Small Business of the Year and he won the 1993 SBA Administrator’s Award for Excellence for work on a federal building in Westwood.

“I won’t let it go to my head,” Rosales joked.

Armendariz, 18, maintained a perfect 4.0 grade-point average while attending St. Bonaventure High School, finishing fifth in her class. She plans to attend Stanford University this fall to pursue a career in education administration.

Her father immigrated from Spain and her mother from Mexico. Both worked as laborers. Armendariz lost her father to cancer last summer.