Garcia Primed for a Performance Worthy of Oscar : Bout: Oxnard fighter may be ready to achieve stature of stablemate De La Hoya.

The area’s best-kept boxing secret is wearing an apron in the kitchen of his family’s tiny Mexican restaurant, dishing out tacos and menudo as fast as a left-right combination.

Junior lightweight Robert Garcia bobs and weaves among some of his six brothers and sisters who share time in the cramped kitchen of La Cabanita de Grandpa, a modest diner tucked at the end of a strip mall in Oxnard. Garcia stays out of view during the dinner rush, and that’s just the way he likes it.

“I don’t like attention,” he said.

So far sports fans have accommodated him.

Garcia is a Top Rank, Inc. stablemate of Oscar De La Hoya, but unlike the popular lightweight world champion and former Olympic hero from East Los Angeles, Garcia is happiest in the background. So instead of glad-handing customers at the family restaurant--funded in large measure by Garcia’s ring earnings--he is handling the heavy lifting during the dinner crunch.

“Robert is a very quiet, humble person,” De La Hoya said. “Robert didn’t fight in the Olympics and didn’t win a gold medal so it’s been tougher for him to be known.”

That’s Garcia, a quiet, unassuming 20-year-old, stable and reserved, mature beyond his years. He already is a father--his wife Carla and infant son Robert are frequent visitors to his training sessions--and is nicknamed Grandpa.

“I’ve been in boxing so long, people say I could be a grandpa,” he said.

Garcia collected his first boxing purse while he was still a senior at Channel Islands High. Three years later, in Las Vegas in April, he won a decision from former U.S. Olympian Julian Wheeler to take home $20,000 and the North American Boxing Federation title.

Garcia will defend that title in San Antonio today when he faces the stiffest test of his career. He takes a 21-0 record with 16 knockouts into the ring against Pancho Segura, a 29-year-old from Coachella who has a 26-7-1 record with 11 knockouts and has twice fought for world titles.

De La Hoya, who will make his debut as a TV commentator during today’s fight card, predicts the bout could become a coming-out party for Garcia.

“I think after this fight people will start hearing about him,” De La Hoya said. “It takes time but little by little, people will start to recognize him.”

A victory today and Garcia moves a step closer to a world title fight, which could come as soon as next year, according to his promoters at Top Rank. Until Garcia has a world belt to display, he’d prefer to go about his work without fanfare.

Garcia has won a few fans in Oxnard but, in truth, he’s not even the most-recognizable boxer at La Colonia Boxing Club, which meets in the cramped gym at the back of the Boys and Girls Club of Oxnard. The most-talked about athlete in the gym is Garcia’s friend, Fernando Vargas, a light-welterweight who became the youngest national amateur champion ever when he won the title last year at 16.

Vargas is a media-savvy extrovert with a national reputation fueled by his amateur title, two Olympic Festival gold medals and membership on the U.S team that competed in March in the Pan American Games. Vargas and Garcia, opposite personalities, are as close as brothers.

“We run together every day at the beach and he’s a quiet guy but we talk about everything,” Vargas said. “People haven’t heard about him before but they’ll hear a lot about him now. He’s gonna be a world champ some time real soon.”

Vargas, whose goal is Olympic gold next summer, shares more than championship dreams with Garcia--they both train under Eduardo Garcia, Robert’s father.

Boxing is a Garcia family staple. Robert’s older brother Danny fought 22 professional bouts before quitting. And Robert entered the ring before he entered a classroom. He put on gloves and headgear at an Oxnard park when he was 4. He already had puncher’s power.

“I dropped him once and won a decision,” he said about his first opponent.

Realizing already that boxing was the Garcia way of life, he boxed at home until he joined La Colonia as an 8-year-old and started his amateur career. He won 74 of 78 amateur fights and countless regional titles, and became friends with De La Hoya as they crossed paths--but never fought--at various tournaments.

Still, Garcia remained largely unknown outside Southern California and failed to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team in ’92. Garcia settled that score in April when he beat Wheeler, the ’92 Olympian in Garcia’s weight class.

With his Olympic dreams dashed, Garcia decided to turn pro. One problem: he was only 17, a year shy of the professional age limit in the United States.

So he went to Japan. Although he left in July, 1992 strictly to serve as a sparring partner for lightweight Genaro Hernandez, when Tokyo promoters asked Garcia to fill out the fight card, he accepted.

He fought twice more in Japan and earned $8,400 by the time he turned 18 and started fighting in the United States. Before he finished his senior year at Channel Islands, he fought twice at the Forum and both bouts were televised.

Despite the exposure, he remained largely anonymous.

“A few people at school knew I was fighting and my teachers knew because I had to make up a lot of work,” he said. “But it was kind of like a secret at school.”

The word got out anyway. Garcia admits that fans recognize him around town and occasionally ask for his autograph. On a recent afternoon at La Colonia, for instance, Simon Camarillo of Oxnard, who works for 3M, stopped by and asked Garcia to autograph a few photos. Camarillo, whose son attended Channel Islands with Garcia, first watched Garcia fight on television.

“I saw him on TV and I fell in love with him,” Camarillo said. “I’m just so proud to be around him, especially with his character and what he stands for. He’s not big-headed. He’s very focused on where he’s going. What a role model.”

In fact, that’s the only reason Garcia seeks fame. Boxing already has been a financial boon to the family. When asked to estimate his career winnings, he shrugs, saying, “I don’t know, but it’s all gone.”

But hardly wasted. Eduardo Garcia, who at La Colonia trains dozens of kids no taller than a ring post, labored in the fields as a migrant worker since coming to California from Mexico in 1964. Thanks to Robert’s prize money, his 50-year-old father has left the fields to run the family restaurant.

Now that he has helped the family, Garcia wants to lend a hand to the city of Oxnard. He wants to stop fighting well before he turns 30 and pursue another childhood dream--police work.

“Since I was a kid I always thought about being a police officer,” he said. “Maybe it’s because they had guns. Now it’s the other way around.”

Garcia worries that too many people other than the police have guns. When asked about the dangers of his profession, he argues that the streets are more perilous than the ring.

“There are a lot of [bad] things happening in the streets,” he said. “But gang members already look up to me. Maybe if I’m a cop, they will respect all cops and not do crimes. Maybe I can make a change.”

Garcia realizes much of his stature in later life will hinge on his work in the ring. Garcia, who frequently works out at Big Bear with De La Hoya, has been training in earnest the past few weeks at the Cache Boxing Club in Los Angeles.

Garcia may be quiet and respectful outside the ring, but not inside. Once he laces on the gloves, he becomes five and a half feet and 130 pounds of menace.

“Boxing is his job, it’s his business,” De La Hoya said. “A little click goes off and he becomes a different person.”

Garcia hopes to hear that click tonight in San Antonio and start building a reputation that stretches beyond the Oxnard city limits.

“I know this is a big fight for me and I’ve been watching his tapes,” he said of Segura. “I’ve been using different styles but will go with whatever works in the ring. I feel happy. It’s time to have a big fight and be recognized.”