Editor’s note: This is a preview of the 2008 Progress edition — Snapshots: Southern Iowans Who Make A Difference. The full special section will be included in this Monday’s edition.

OTTUMWA — David Rios has never been afraid of hard work.

He saw his parents working very hard, performing migrant labor jobs. They moved from Mexico to California before he was born.

Even as a youngster, he wanted to bring in money to pay for his own school supplies “...just trying to help my parents.”

The California middle school he attended had a program for students who wanted to earn their own money. He started at age 13, and, except for school, never stopped working.

“I’ve been working — [mostly] on my summer breaks from school — since I was really little. I worked in fields, dairies, ranches, landscaping [and] drove a feed truck.”

When he started about nine years ago at Excel (now Cargill Meat Solutions), there was a dramatic change.

“Here, it’s the first job I had indoors. It wasn’t bad; it was just different for me. I like my job; I’m very comfortable,” Rios said. “That’s my life; it’s work.”

And while the lure of regular work and better pay was strong, he did have some reservations about leaving California and coming to the Cargill plant in Ottumwa.

“I was leaving my friends and family,” he said. “I was a little bit nervous about meeting people. But there’s a lot of people that I met here.”

He said he has plenty of friends both inside and outside the plant, and now he has his own growing family.

Though work is the main thrust of his life, he finds time for family, too.

“I love cooking — I love the grill,” he said. “And we like camping.”

The Rios family has found a home just south of Ottumwa in rural Bloomfield.