AUSTIN — (AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN) When Ophie Garcia walked into her first day on the job at H-E-B, she was a 27-year-old mother who was thrilled to be making 75 cents an hour selling tobacco.
It was the mid-1960s — just a few days before New Year’s Day 1965, to be exact — and Garcia had already been working for more than 15 years.
She grew up in a migrant community in South Texas, and when her father died when she was in eighth grade, she knew she had to get a job, either in the fields or somewhere else.
“You’re too young to be picking cotton and tomatoes,” she recalls the local drugstore owner telling her; instead, he offered her a job as a soda jerk, making sandwiches and serving customers who came in for a bite to eat.
Eventually, she was earning 35 cents an hour. But then the H-E-B in Harlingen offered twice what she was making at the drugstore.
This story originally appeared in the Austin American-Statesman. Click here to read the full story.