Roads To Success 8

Ron and Cristy Varela (continued)


New Territory

In its early stages the Ron E. Varela Company operated out of an office in the Varela family home.  It enabled Cristy to work alongside Ron managing office operations.  “We had always worked together well,” Cristy said.  “So I was able to work and take care of the kids.  When it became apparent that I wouldn’t be able to support him in all areas he hired other employees.”

“We ended up growing that company into, eventually, a $30 million a year company,” Ron added.  Still in their twenties, the Varela’s personal income was over $200,000 a year.

During that period of time the Ron E. Varela Company had up to 150 employees, an inventory of heavy, earth moving equipment and 75 hauling trucks.  In business, timing is often everything, and the timing for the Varelas was excellent considering the building boom in Orange County during that era.  Among the company’s multi-million dollar projects were the Century Freeway in Los Angeles and the Orange Crush freeway intersection in Orange County.

With the growth of their company, the Varelas enjoyment of life grew as well.  Cristy put it this way, “We bought another home; our tax man would tell us we had to invest in other things and so we invested in some properties.  We played a lot.  We travelled a lot.  We always travelled with our kids; we took them almost everywhere we went.”

Ron and Cristy’s daughter, Jennifer, now a real estate agent in Riverside County, California, recalled those family vacations.  “We’d be on vacation and my dad would be on the phone.”  And that’s kind of the vision I have of my dad,” she related.  “He’s always working; he’s one of those people who loves to work.”

Horseback riding was one of the recreational activities that Ron and Cristy grew to love.  While on a five-day camping trip with a men’s equestrian group in the hills of Temecula, California, Ron discovered what he believed was the perfect place for his family.  “When I got back I told Cristy I thought I’d found the place we should move to,” Ron recalled.  “It was nice, serene country and we could keep horses there, so we moved to Temecula.”

Ron and Cristy had overcome the numerous challenges they faced by marrying as teenagers.  They were successfully raising two children, and together they had built a multi-million dollar company.  Life was looking extremely good when they made Temecula their family home.

“A few years later everyone else heard about Temecula,” Ron explained.  “Our secret wasn’t a big secret anymore.”

The fact that Temecula was just beginning to grow and had yet to be developed made it ideal for a talent Ron had developed through his experience in excavating and grading.  Through his years in the earth moving business Ron had learned to visualize the end result for land requiring excavation or grading; he could clearly see the end result of the work.  “One of the projects we did was a two-hundred acre property we were able to purchase,” Ron told me during his interview.  “We subdivided it into five-acre ranchettes and put homes on them.”

The Varelas sold the five-acre parcels effectively creating a development division in the Varela companies.  They also partnered with a business associate to create a sandbag company during this period of growth.  Much of the sand came from their various excavation jobs, but they also acquired permission from owners to excavate sand from flood control districts, channels and a variety of other projects.

The Varelas were doing well and were ready for more.  Through their horse association friends they found a thirty-two-hundred acre ranch just outside of Prescott, Arizona.  The ranch’s current owner, a Canadian developer, was in the process of raising financing to develop the land with 3,000 homes and two golf courses.  He needed someone who could refinance the property and the Varelas took on the refinance. The agreement gave them 320 acres in collateral and stated that if the owner failed to pay back the loan within one year they could purchase the entire ranch at a fixed price.

When the developer was unable to raise the money to complete his project, Ron and Cristy ended up purchasing the ranch, naming it Rancho Diamante.  We shot most of their interview at the ranch, a peaceful, sprawling property cradled in the Prescott National Forest.  The main house, built in the 1920’s by Quaker Oats heir Jerome Eddy, is an expansive, hacienda-style home of brick, with wood vigas, covered porches and patios.  The interior is a warm blend of wood, ceramic tile and smooth, plaster walls.  Nearby, but not too nearby, is the bunkhouse, now often used for ministry guests.  And of course no self-respecting ranch would be complete without a barn, stables and corrals.

When Ron and Cristy took over Rancho Diamante, they immediately began transforming the property, making it truly their own.  The house, a rather cold structure when they first moved in, became more welcoming under Cristy’s care, and the property flourished under Ron’s management.  On the surface, everything was going well, but in reality trouble had been brewing for some time.

© 2011 Philip Kassel

Roads To Success 7

Ron and Cristy Varela (continued)

Leap of Faith

Growing more and more practiced in his profession each working day, Ron was becoming an expert truck driver.  He knew from the beginning that he would earn good money driving, but he began to see that there was better money in being an owner-operator of a truck.  When the opportunity to purchase a truck presented itself, it was hard for Ron to resist.  He was 21 years of age; he still wanted to improve himself and his situation.  He believed the gamble of buying his own truck was worth the risk.

“I remember telling him there’s no way we can afford to do that,” Cristy told me on-camera.  “But he was just real gutsy.  We talked about it some more.  He said he was going to do it no matter what, and he did.”  Cristy paused a moment and then added, “I had to learn to trust him and trust his instincts and trust his abilities.”

The truck was a new, 1971 International Harvester with a price tag of $21,000, for sale by a private party.  “I borrowed $1,000 from my parents.  The payments on that truck were $2,100 a month,” Ron explained, vividly remembering the dollar amounts.

With his own truck, Ron began driving as an independent contractor.  He was enjoying his independence and his increased income.  His family was growing, too, with Cristy giving birth to a son, Jason.

Ron’s owner-operator status would not last very long.  All went well for about two years, and then an unexpected turn of events derailed his thriving business.  Unfortunately, Ron had unknowingly purchased his truck from a man who was struggling financially.  The troubled man declared bankruptcy and Ron was forced to turn the truck over to the bank in order to satisfy claims by creditors.

Ron had a wife and two young children to provide for, but Cristy wasn’t worried.  “I knew that he would be able to go out and find a job.  I just could see by the way that he did things that I could be confident in the fact that he could find a job,” she said.

Cristy knew her husband well.  He quickly landed a job as a dispatcher for a dirt hauling company.  From dispatcher he transitioned into a foreman position; eventually he would become an estimator.

What some might have viewed as a setback, Ron viewed as a learning opportunity.  “I learned all the different phases of the construction business,” Ron recalled.  “I saw the money that was being made.  Actually, the money I was making for the company.  The last job I had done for the company made $26,000 in one month, and I had done that job all by myself.”

The income from that single job was more money than Ron made in one year.  Ron always had big visions and he began entertaining ideas about starting his own company.  It’s not unusual for people to dream about their future, dream of a better life, but Ron could always visualize the possibilities in choosing a particular path.  He believed that if he could generate $26,000 working for someone else he could certainly do it for his own company.

So, once again, Ron started his own business, the Ron E. Varela Company, Inc.  The new company would sell dirt by the truckload.  “That was when Orange County was just really starting to grow,” Ron explained.  “It was an opportunity for me to go into business for myself.  So, I turned in my resignation and bid a job.”

Ron was awarded the job he bid on, a school site requiring 200,000 cubic yards of dirt.  The $350,000 job would necessitate twelve thousand truckloads of dirt.  Ron rented all the equipment to do the work and fulfill the contract.

The job itself proceeded very well, but enjoying the profits proved to be more difficult.  Once again, unknown to Ron, the contractor whom had sealed the deal with Ron’s new company was having financial problems.  The man, obviously hoping to avoid personal and professional disaster, skipped town with the project funds.

For months, unable to pay many of the bills generated by the project, Ron managed to stay afloat.  His suppliers knew him to be an honest, responsible and hard-working businessman.  They knew he was not responsible for the missing cash and willingly worked with him when their invoices came due.  Ron’s reputation essentially gained him the time he needed and the thief was eventually captured.  “The police ended up tracking him down and recovered most of the money,” Ron recounted.  “We finally got our money after months of worrying.”

Even though the first official job for the Ron E. Varela Company resulted in a good deal of stress and a lengthy delay in receiving payment, Ron would not give up.  He pushed his young company on to other projects.  “We ended up getting into the grading and excavating business,” Ron explained.  “Originally we were doing $2 million, $3 million a year.  And it gradually grew to $5 million, $7 million and $10 million.”

Still in their twenties, the Varelas personal income had grown to over $200,000 a year.  They had no way of knowing that it was just the beginning.

© 2011 Philip Kassel

Roads To Success 6

Ron and Cristy Varela (continued)

A Humble and Busy Beginning

Cristy spent her days caring for their new daughter, Jennifer, while Ron completed his junior year of high school.  He attended classes during the day and worked in a pizza joint at night, bussing tables, performing custodial tasks and washing dishes.

Ron eventually transitioned from the pizza joint to working as a busboy in a restaurant located adjacent to Disneyland.  When he learned from the parking valet that parking cars at the restaurant was more profitable than bussing tables, he made a move into that field.  “I got to work at nights parking cars across the street from Disneyland,” Ron said.

One year later, Ron purchased the parking concession with money he managed to save from his earnings.  The experience he gained running this little business would eventually come in very handy.

“We thought we were rolling in money back in those days,” Cristy laughed.  “We were able to pay all our bills and take care of our family.”

After two years Ron decided that he could probably do better than parking cars and sold his valet concession.  “I ended up getting several different jobs.  For about a year I went through quite a few of them,” Ron explained.

In fact, there were about a dozen jobs for Ron during that period.  He worked in a Pier One Imports warehouse; he drove a forklift working for a yogurt company and then later used his forklift experience working for an orange juice firm.  These jobs, obviously, were just to name a few.

Cristy always had faith in her husband, but she couldn’t help feeling somewhat insecure about Ron leaving so many jobs just to find new ones.  “Cristy was nervous about all the different jobs I had, but they always seemed to be better than the last one.  I was always bettering myself,” Ron stated.

“He would come home with a new job and just say, ‘it’s going to be better money,’ and he’d quit his job and start a new one,” Cristy added.

The job that would prove to be a significant turning point in Ron’s career came about in an unexpected way, through a man living in the same apartment complex as Ron and Cristy.  The neighbor revealed to Ron that he was earning $4.65 an hour working as a driver for a moving van company.  It was an extravagant hourly wage in the mid-sixties and Ron was always on the watch for a more profitable job.  He began working with his neighbor, packing and moving the belongings of the company’s clients.

Ron later heard about another job from his neighbor, a position driving a truck with a dirt hauling company.  He quickly visited the company and managed to set up an interview.  The interview took place while Ron rode with the owner-operator of the company throughout an entire night shift.  Of course, one of the questions the man asked was if Ron knew how to drive a truck.  Ron replied with a confident, “Sure I do.”  The owner told Ron to meet him the next morning for a trial run.

“I met him at seven o’clock the next morning and rode shotgun with him for half of the day,” Ron recalled.  Riding in the passenger seat was a breeze.  The potential job got considerably more interesting when the man slipped out from behind the wheel and told Ron it was his turn to give it a try.

For anyone imagining that Ron and his potential employer were cruising around in a standard pickup truck it is important to note that this particular truck had 16 gears forward and four in reverse.  When Ron started grinding gears it became painfully obvious that he really didn’t know how to drive a truck, at least not a truck that could hall 50,000 pounds of dirt.  Confronted by the owner, Ron admitted that he didn’t know anything about driving a truck but was eager to learn.

“Ron would show that he could do the work.  He was able to learn almost anything he ever tried to do and he did it well,” Cristy explained.

Apparently seeing the confidence Ron brought to the table, the owner agreed to train him.  He taught Ron how to drive hauling trucks and a week later Ron was working for the company.  And then one day, only a short six months after taking on the dirt hauling job, an opportunity presented itself to Ron, one that managed to make Cristy extremely nervous when she heard the details.

© 2011 Philip Kassel

Roads To Success 5

Ron and Cristy Varela (continued)

Youthful Courage

As sixteen-year-old expectant parents, Ron and Cristy faced the overwhelming aggregate of emotions, stresses, judgments and opinions that accompany most teenage pregnancies.  Cristy’s mother was upset and even angry.  Her birth father didn’t really have anything to say about the situation while her stepfather advised her to handle it however she wanted.  Ron’s parents were rightly concerned about the state of affairs but were also tremendously supportive.

At that time, abortion was illegal in most of the United States so, fortunately, it was never suggested as a viable option.  Well-meaning family and friends strongly advised Cristy to have the baby, and then immediately put the newborn up for adoption.  It made sense.  Ron and Cristy were juniors in high school; they were young and inexperienced.  They didn’t really know what it meant to have, care for and be responsible for a family.  And of course there was the cliché, even if it did carry a fair amount of truth, “they had their whole lives ahead of them.”

The general opinion leaned profusely towards adoption and Cristy was beginning to believe that it was, indeed, the path to follow.  “We weren’t going to get married at first.  I was going to have my baby and the baby would be adopted,” Cristy explained.  “And we really didn’t understand the alternatives; what it would be like with adoption.”

But Ron resisted the onslaught of advice.  He loved Cristy and was serious about his commitment to her.  It saddened him to think about permanently parting with a child he would have with Cristy.

“I think it broke his heart to be talking that way,” Cristy related during her interview.  “So we started talking about, do you think we can get married; do you think it would work if we got married?”

“You can’t just give up,” Ron stated emphatically during his interview.  “It’s too easy to give up and too many people are giving up.”

Looking back at that tumultuous season in their lives, Cristy explained her husband’s position.  “Ron pretty much didn’t want to be a failure in that area.  He wanted to show that he could be responsible and take care of me and our baby.”

So, Ron and Cristy chose marriage.  Initially, none of their friends and family agreed with the decision.  But once that decision was made a lot of people began pulling together to help them.  “Ron was a member of the YMCA at the time.  His friends at the Y collected enough money to pay our first month’s rent,” Cristy related as just one example.

None of it was easy or uncomplicated.  Due to their status as minors, getting married was not a straightforward matter.  “We had to go to court to get a court order to get married,” Ron remembered.  They were still juniors in high school when the marriage took place.  Their baby daughter, Jennifer, was born a little over two months later, seven weeks early.

It is important to note here that Ron and Cristy Varela do not advocate that any unmarried couple have a child together, and they particularly do not advocate that a teenage couple do so.  “I would never recommend that a sixteen-year-old couple become involved in a way where a baby would result,” Cristy stated during her on-camera interview.  Ron added, “But if the circumstance happens you have to understand it’s going to take a lot of work, working together, and a lot of understanding.”

Choosing a life together with their new baby daughter meant making some radical life changes.  Ron was active in the high school wrestling, track and football teams.  He had to give up those activities but was able to complete his junior year in high school.  Cristy was not allowed to continue attending regular classes but managed to complete her junior year.  “I had a tutor that came to the house that helped me finish the eleventh grade in my own home,” Cristy related.  “And then our senior year we finished in adult education and got our diplomas.”

© 2011 Philip Kassel

Roads To Success 4

Ron & Cristy Varela

Success comes in all kinds of packages and for all kinds of reasons.  There is always the lottery winner, of course, that lucky individual whose birthday numerals happen to match nicely with numbered ping-pong balls in the $80 million Power Ball drawing.  Sometimes it comes with a good idea.  Bill Gates coming up with the DOS operating system was a pretty good one, and it is unlikely anyone would debate the level of success that followed the idea.

Most of the time, though, success only comes with hard work and persistence.  For Ron and Cristy Varela that is precisely the way it came, but they were too busy at the time to give such a philosophical question much thought.

Ron was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, a small city extending into the desert from the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains.  The youngest of three brothers, he remembers that his family life was rather typical for the 1950s and 1960s.  His mother was a housewife who took care of her husband and boys, making sure they were always clothed and fed.  In later years she broke out of the “typical” mold and became a paralegal.  His father was a car salesman, good natured, fun loving man with a strong work ethic.  “He always took care of his family,” Ron told me during his on-camera interview.

“Being a Mexican family there was always lots of people around and lots of food,” he reminisced.  There was also a spiritual influence; like many Mexican families, the Varelas were Catholic.  It wasn’t something Ron or his brothers willingly embraced.  “We were born and raised Catholic,” Ron explained.  “We’d go to church, but we were expected to go.”

What Ron did enjoy was working at the bakery his aunt owned in Tucson.  He enthusiastically worked there whenever he could, beginning when he was about ten-years-old.  “I always enjoyed making some money,” Ron explained.  “My aunt gave us that opportunity and all the donuts we could eat.  She taught us a lot of work ethics.”

Ron was fourteen when his father accepted a position as an auto salesman at a Southern California dealership.  The Varelas packed up and made the 480 mile move to the Golden State.  At least, most of the family moved.  One of Ron’s brothers had just graduated from high school; his other brother was still attending college.  They remained in Arizona.

“I was a desert boy so I wasn’t quite ready for it,” Ron explained.  “And you don’t want to leave your friends.”  Still, the prospect of living in California excited Ron, and he had no idea at the time how the move would radically change his life.

The Varela family settled in Anaheim, California, an up-and-coming city in Orange County.  The completion of the Interstate 5 freeway in 1954 began a wave of commercial and residential development in Orange County, but in the mid-1960s the area still consisted largely of citrus fields.  Avocado and strawberry farms were everywhere and Buena Park native Walter Knott was doing well with his boysenberry crops.  Disneyland was still bordered on two sides by orange groves.

Ron began attending Ball Junior High School, entering the ninth grade.  Although he was fresh from the desert and not exactly a natural fit in the Orange County sun and surf environment, his positive attitude and sense of humor enabled him to make quite a few new friends.  One of those new friends was a girl named Cristy McKenzie.

Cristy McKenzie was born in Long Beach, California, and had grown up in Orange County.  Her parents divorced when she was two and Cristy only saw her father twice annually.   Cristy’s mother eventually remarried and had children with her second husband, supplying Cristy with three new brothers and a sister.

For Cristy, Ron was hard to miss.  “We were raised in a beach area and beach atmosphere, and he just dressed differently.  He talked differently,” she told me.  “He was funny.  That’s what made him interesting; he had a good sense of humor.”

“She was like a surfer girl,” Ron recollected.  “Long, blonde hair.”

Ron and Cristy became close friends, increasingly including each other in school and social activities.  Eventually, the friendship flourished into romance and the couple began dating.

Cristy explained, “The social activities at school back in the ninth grade were mainly dances and football games, and that’s what we did.  We’d mostly hang around with groups of kids and eventually he invited me to his home to meet his family.”

Continuing into high school, Ron and Cristy’s relationship grew stronger than ever.  They were happy together and they were in love.  They were also human, and teenagers being teenagers with romance in their hearts and raging hormones, a new aspect to their relationship developed.  In the eleventh grade Cristy found herself pregnant.

© 2011 Philip Kassel