By MARK NEWMAN Courier staff writer
March 26, 2008 11:13 pm
—
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.
In the summer, he always takes the family to Missouri for a long weekend. They camp by a river, explore cliffs and caves and take an all day canoe trip.
He’s been moving up the Cargill ladder, too.
His secret to success may be attitude as well as a strong back. Even when he was driving a forklift, he’d stop between runs, jump down and assist those who needed it.
Rios describes his motto as “anything I can do to help.”
When he was a younger employee, supervisors saw that work ethic and wanted to promote him. He passed on the offer. After all, he made enough to support himself, had no responsibilities outside of his own job, could come in, do his work and then go home.
A year or two later, his attitude changed.
“Now I [had] a family, so I accepted,” he said. “That way, I could have whatever I can for the kids to give them a better life.”
After six years in production jobs he became a supervisor. Two years later — just a few months ago — he was promoted again, this time to general supervisor.
Now he oversees six regular supervisors as well as three trainers. The two “departments” they run, Loin Boning and Ham Boning, have a total of 250 workers.
It’s those 250 employees Rios talks about most.
“If it wasn’t for my people, we’d be nothing,” he said. “If they weren’t there, what could we do? What could one person do? I’m there to guide them.”
To do that, he feels he needs to know what’s happening on the line.
“I consider myself one of the [workers]. Normally, I try to talk to each person,” he said. “I like to communicate and do my best for the people.”
Rios grew up in his native California but also spent a few years in his parents’ homeland of Mexico.
These days, he said he has workers who speak English and workers who speak Spanish.
“I speak both equally [at Cargill],” he said.
Though being fully bilingual is a marketable skill, he sometimes finds knowing two languages equally means he has to stop for a moment when speaking to someone.
“Do you notice me pausing sometimes? I have to think, ‘How do I say this?’” Rios said. “[I have to do] the same thing in Spanish.”
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.
Photos
