Medical career lost out to beach

Kirk Garcia relaxes at Redondo Beach, Los Angeles, on a day off from his job as customer account manager for Time magazine. Picture / Martin Sykes

Kirk Garcia loves the beach, maybe too much.

As a promising school student in Apia, he was packed off to study medicine in Hawaii. He enrolled at Brigham Young University for his pre-med year, but there was a problem. It was right by the beach.

"It was my first time away from home, I was 17, loving Hawaii and having the time of my life.

"The campus was right on the beach and it was paradise."

Garcia does not appear to have too many regrets.

"I had been told by the teachers I was gifted at biology, so I followed their lead. I liked university but was not prepared for the workload."

Instead, he landed a job as master of ceremony in Polynesian cultural shows and enjoyed the feeling of sand between his toes.

It seems long ago now for Garcia, 44, based in Los Angeles and working for RR Donnelley, the largest printing company in the United States.

He has been there for seven years as customer account manager for Time magazine.

Garcia manages its production of 1 million copies a week. In early November he was responsible for the smooth printing of two back-to-back election issues in four days.

"I was sleep-deprived for two days, up 72 hours straight, and calling New York at 3am."

Garcia was born in Los Angeles but, due to his Samoan mother, was mostly raised in Apia. His father, a Colombian, was from New York.

Garcia's parents were introduced through one-time New Zealand jazz singer Mavis River, who migrated to Los Angeles.

"When my mother turned 21 her gift from her father was a trip to the US with her sister. They came to Los Angeles in 1954.

"My father was completing military service and his best friend had married Aunty Mavis, who brought my parents together."

After travelling back and forth between Samoa and the United States, Garcia's parents finally settled in Apia, where they own a wholesale supermarket started by Garcia's great-great-grandfather.

"You could not pull them out of there with a herd of horses."

Garcia had thought he might go back to New Zealand, where he worked for Polynesian Airlines for nine years and obtained an MBA, but the work opportunities are in the US.

He also has many relatives and friends in Los Angeles.

"Ninety per cent of my friends are Polynesians: Samoan, Tongan or Maori."

He lives at Long Beach, naturally, not far from Compton and Carson, where most Pacific Islander migrants to Los Angeles settled.

"Those suburbs are getting better but you would not want to be caught out at night."

Garcia has been back in Los Angeles 10 years now, "and you still can't find a decent meat pie here to save your soul".

* Angela Gregory and Martin Sykes' visit was sponsored by the Pacific Co-operation Foundation.