Fruits of Success : Ray Orozco and Ruben Gonzalez came from different backgrounds to start a produce stand. Nine months later, the hard work is paying off.

It’s just past 3 a.m. as Ray Orozco and Ruben Gonzalez fly down the Pacific Coast Highway on this crisp summer morning. It’s quiet on the road at this hour, and the moon is just light enough to give them a spectacular ocean view. They set the cruise control on their way to downtown Los Angeles, gliding along as fast as their borrowed pickup will take them.

Their own aging Chevy has broken down again, and to reach the L. A. Produce Market when it opens, they had to rely on Ray’s brother, Hector, for the gas-powered loan.

Family, these two entrepreneurs will tell you, is what it’s all about. In all sorts of ways.

Ray and Ruben will spend more than an hour wheeling and dealing with the big boys of produce, as hundreds of sellers and even more buyers tangle over prices and quality. They’ve been doing it two or three days a week since December, when they opened R&R; Organic Produce, a little stand at the corner of Telephone Road and Olivas Park Drive in Ventura.

It might not look like much to an outsider, but to these young Mexican-American men, it’s a field of dreams.

If they are right, the stand will provide a ticket out of a life they want to leave behind.

The negotiations this morning seem particularly trying, as Ray and Ruben find wide variations in price and quality among the sellers. When they’re done choosing, though, the care they took to decide what to buy will be worth it.

“Today we got really good prices. That means we can charge less,” Ruben will say later in the day. “Two weeks ago, tomatoes cost $14 a box--today it was $3 a box--so we have to lower our prices. Every day something is different, and every day I am still learning.”

The physical grind of the early morning journey--the business dealings, loading the truck bed eight feet high with an assortment of fruits and vegetables--takes its toll, even on fit bodies. And when their borrowed truck sputters and nearly stops on the way home, the drain on their faces is obvious.

The men are now nearly an hour behind schedule as they recross the Ventura County line. At a lot of other jobs, it might call for going straight into work, with perhaps an excuse and apology. Certainly, it occurs to Ray that maybe they should just drive on and get the store stocked and opened.

But being the boss does afford them certain luxuries. Eating breakfast with their families is one of them.

“Family,” Ray says later, “is what this is all about. That’s why we opened R&R; Organic, and that’s why we work so hard. It’s all about getting something for our families.”

He glances at the pickup filled with corn. “This is our chance at the American dream.”

Disparate Backgrounds

Ruben Gonzalez, 24, and Ray Orozco, 26, are both sons of immigrant Mexican farm workers and grew up in Oxnard. But there the similarities end.

One is a Mexico-born kind of straight arrow, a man who turned his back on the allure of the streets of Oxnard to achieve what no one in his immigrant family ever had. The other is a California-born, street-smart, ninth-grade dropout, a young man who once turned his back on his family in favor of the gangs and drugs of Oxnard.

Despite their differences, the men nevertheless are connected: by pride, ambition, trust and, perhaps most of all, by a shared goal.

Ruben Gonzalez was born in Mexico and moved to Oxnard when he was 12. He’s one of eight children--the oldest boy and the oldest child to make the move north with his family. Three of his sisters stayed behind.

“In Mexico we didn’t own anything,” Ruben says. “We were just working and working and there wasn’t enough money and we didn’t own anything. My three older sisters (who stayed in Mexico) didn’t go to school because they had to work. And they have families there now.”

For the last decade, Ruben’s family has lived in the same modest home in the heart of La Colonia, one of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the county. But Ruben says he was able to avoid the gangs and drugs that were available, literally outside his front door.

He swears he’s never been drunk a day in his life, something he attributes to his parents. “They did such a good job of keeping me in school and away from drugs,” he says. “All the money in the world would never be enough to pay them back for that.”

Born in Fresno and the youngest of five brothers, Ray Orozco took a different path than his partner. He moved to Oxnard with his family when he was two after his father, until then a fieldworker, went into the construction trade. Some of Ray’s relatives still work in the fields in the San Joaquin Valley.

Ray says he was the only one of his siblings who seemed to have trouble getting his life straight. He already was involved with drugs, in trouble at home and with the law, and flirting with gangs when he dropped out of school in the ninth grade. It was then that he cast his family aside, he says, choosing instead the kind of life he found in the streets.

“I was a blockhead,” Ray, now a husband and father, says with a smile.

A boxing coach helped turn his life around, but in many ways he still was foundering in his early 20s. All of his siblings had professions--including one who is an Oxnard police officer--but Ray didn’t.

Then came serendipity. The coach who helped set him on a positive course also helped him get his first job in the produce business, at the Santa Cruz Market in Oxnard. And that is where he first met Ruben, though it wouldn’t be until years later--when both worked for the Su Casa market chain--that their fates would be joined.

“The owners sold the market, and that left us both high and dry without a job,” Ray says.

Getting Off the Ground

For a while, after the market they had worked for closed, Ray worked odd jobs and construction. Ruben picked up work wherever he could. Both say they considered the possibility of setting up a produce stand, but neither at the time considered the other as a partner.

It was Ray who discovered a plywood structure and gravel parking lot at the corner of Telephone and Olivas that had an available lease.

“I had a chance to get the lease and I set out to find a partner with a truck,” Ray says.

Several truck owners were in the running, but pretty soon he realized he would have to be more discriminating. His future could depend on it.

“I needed a strong right hand, someone better than me in some ways,” Ray says. “That’s why I wanted Ruben. He was the best thing for me, because he’s as trustworthy and honorable as a person can be.”

While both men were considering the commitment that would be involved, a former co-worker who owned several produce stands drove them around the county. He told them of his meager beginnings, and how there were great opportunities in produce stands for people with talent, ambition and a willingness to work hard.

“He took us around and would point to a stand and say it was his, then drive somewhere else and show us another one. He had dozens of them,” Ray recalls. “He said he started with just one stand, too, and that he built things up from there.”

Ray and Ruben could almost taste their futures. They signed the lease together.

The day R&R; Organic opened in December, the stand had modest offerings. “One box of bananas and one box of tomatoes,” Ruben says with a laugh, as he unloads the dozens of cases he had picked up in Los Angeles earlier in the morning.

The partners had learning to do. It took a while before they figured out how not to overbuy or underbuy, as well as how to make a profit.

But now, they say, things have changed. They are becoming pros.

“There was a time I was the only one in the family not a professional, but now I’m going to pass them all up,” Ray says.

Once again the word, like an echo in their lives, is spoken by the men: family.

Faith from Family

Ruben remembers the summer of ’85 quite clearly. He was having a hard time in school and was ready to quit and take a position in the work world. His parents, farm workers who had migrated north only four years earlier, didn’t think he was making the right decision.

So they came up with a plan.

“They took me out to the fields with them, and we worked all day in the hot sun,” Ruben remembers, taking a break from unloading the truck. “It was very, very hard, and I got a taste for that life. I was much better at school after that.”

Ruben, who looks more mature than his 24 years, went on to become the first member of the Gonzalez family to earn a high school diploma. Since then, thanks to Ruben’s financial support, his younger sister, Dioguelina, started taking classes at Cal State Northridge this summer. His 18-year-old brother, Julio, will be a senior in high school next month and now is employed by Ruben and Ray full time at R&R; Organic.

Ruben says he’s proud of everyone in his family, and is happy to be making a contribution to their lives. But he also sees it as the least he can do. After all, he says, he lives with his family and it was their money that allowed him to pursue his own brass ring.

The sacrifice for him, he knows, wasn’t easy.

The family’s home, on the main street in La Colonia, is filled with soccer trophies, souvenirs and trinkets. Family photos hang everywhere. In the evenings, it is a place where friends and family gather in various rooms and visit on the well-used front porch. Out at the curb is the first car his parents have ever owned, an older station wagon purchased with help from Ruben.

“When I first asked for the loan to go into business, my mother was scared and said, ‘Why don’t you work at a job instead?’ ” Ruben recalls. “She was afraid it might not work out. I said, ‘Mama, I really have to do this. I really feel this is good.’ ”

Ruben’s parents admit that they weren’t sure that their son was ready for such an undertaking, but say they had confidence in him. After all, they reasoned, Ruben had beaten the odds by avoiding the allure of a street culture a stone’s throw away.

“Ruben had set a fine example for his brothers and sisters. He proved he was a man by not getting involved with gangs and drinking and drugs,” Ruben’s father, Emilio Gonzalez, says in Spanish from his living room. “He deserved a chance.”

Ruben’s father is a traditional family man, born and raised in Mexico. He speaks for the family, outwardly running things with pride and nobility as his wife, Rosa, keeps track of the inner workings--including finances.

“We weren’t sure he had enough expertise,” the senior Gonzalez said of his son, “but when we saw his enthusiasm, we decided to let him try it.”

It was a chance that the elder Gonzalez also thought might help fulfill the dream he had when he uprooted his family and moved north. And so he and his wife turned over much of their savings--$1,500--to their son.

“I came here so my children would not have to work in the fields like I do. It’s hard work,” Ruben’s father says matter-of-factly. “Even when he (Ruben) got scared at the last minute and he started to back out, I told him to keep believing in himself.”

Ruben says that meant more to him than the loan.

“It was good when she gave me the money,” says Ruben of his mother. “But when she said yes, that she believed in me, that made me feel very good. That was the best part--that they believed in me.”

Ruben already has repaid his parents and others in the extended family who took a chance on him. And he continues to bring money--literally--to the Gonzalez table every week.

“I put it on the same table where she gave me the money, and I tell her to decide where the money should go,” Ruben says. “It’s part of being a member of this family.”

And thanks to R&R; Organic, things are now looking up for the Gonzalez clan. They still have to count every penny, but now, at least, there is more to count.

Pointing to the bare wooden floors of his family’s living room and then moving his outstretched finger up about a foot, Ruben says: “That is where we used to be, and this is where we are now. This is much better.”

He pauses a moment. “It isn’t much, but it is something. Now we have a chance.”

Downward Spiral Ends

There are two very different views of Oxnard that can be seen from the front yard of Ray’s house in a neighborhood once home to the Fashion Park Boys gang.

In one direction: a shiny new condo tract rising at the end of his block. In the other: a sprinkling of gang graffiti, which lets you know just where you stand--and where not to stand.

In a way, both serve as reminders to Ray. Reminders of what he was, reminders of what he could be.

But this morning, after the long drive downtown and the truck problems on the way home, Ray’s thoughts are elsewhere. Before the day is over he will put in another eight hours of work, but now it’s time for a break.

He pulls up in the truck and sees two little faces pressed against the screen door of his small, neat, rented home. The children are excited as he walks up the path toward the security screen that leads into the living room. Barney the dinosaur is on the TV.

“What’s your name again?” a 5-year-old boy asks, smiling at him.

“Daddy,” says Ray, a smile coming across his face as he leans down to kiss his 2-year-old daughter, Christina, and then his son, Jon.

Ray kisses his wife, Jennifer, as she emerges from a bedroom with the newest addition to the family, little Ray Jr., born on Easter morning this year.

The family then begins its daily breakfast together. It is a time that, considering his own parents and his own past, Ray now sees in a different light. Nowadays, he says, he can appreciate the importance of family. Now, family is everything.

“I was working drywall in construction, but I wasn’t getting much work and could hardly feed my family,” Ray recalls. “If it hadn’t been for my parents and my in-laws, we couldn’t have made it,” he adds, remembering how his family supported him financially and emotionally during that lean period.

“I was heading into a downhill spiral again real fast, at least until we opened the stand.”

But the stand seems to have plugged the downward spiral’s vortex. And now, at 26, Ray says he’s ready to try a spiral in an upward direction.

“It’s the American dream to work, have employees, pay your taxes and get something for yourself and your family. And that’s what I want,” he says. “I have a beautiful wife, three darling children, and one day I want a house with a white picket fence and a dog to protect us.”

He looks out the window of his rented home. He once was a loser, he’ll tell you, but now he’s setting out to win.

“I guess organic produce cleared my head.”

Big Future Plans

“People help us out all the time and I don’t know why,” says Ruben, ringing up the cash register for customers as he talks about the assistance more than a dozen local growers, vendors and distributors have given him and his partner.

Although most of R&R; Organic’s produce comes from Los Angeles, Ray and Ruben say they always buy local fruits and vegetables in season.

“They will give us something and let us pay for it later,” Ruben says, as if he doesn’t understand why. “That makes us feel good that they believe in us.”

In nine months, Ray and Ruben have turned the outlet into a full-service produce stand with an expanded stock and a steady clientele.

“They come in for corn and tomatoes right now, and at other times it might be artichokes or avocados, strawberries or oranges,” says Ray. “But now they come back for the organic stuff. Things are going very well.”

So well, in fact, that the men are preparing to expand their business horizons. They talk of plans to open other produce outlets, either alone or together, and of all sorts of possibilities.

“This business has opened new avenues for me,” says Ray, looking over the farmland that surrounds R&R; Organic. “We work twice as hard now, and a lot harder than most people. But we get to be here, kick back, talk to people.”

It also has brought the men a certain prestige, as well as a sense of pride.

“My friends look at me now and are amazed, and I tell them they can do it, too, if they want,” Ray says. “You just have to want to do it enough.”

His partner breaks out in a grin as he wipes the sweat from his brow.

“If we can do it,” Ruben says, “so can they.”

* AT THE MARKET

Given the abundance of Ventura County’s agriculture, roadside stand shoppers may be surprised to learn that much of the produce offered at these outlets isn’t grown locally. It’s likely that you will be purchasing goods that were transported into the county from the Los Angeles Produce Market. Story, J12