Michael Fitzgerald, owner of the California SCUBA Center, joined the California Air National Guard to get a taste of the military when he was 18. He also served with the Fresno Police Department, and in Iraq as part of a special task force with the California Army National Guard. Photo contributed

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), more than 2.4 million U.S.  businesses are owned by veterans, employing 5.8 million people and paying out $210 billion in annual payroll.

In fact, there are certain industries — including finance and insurance, transportation and warehousing, mining, quarrying, oil and gas and construction — where veterans have an outsized stake.

In the Central Valley, the SBA Fresno office and the Valley Small Business Development Center (SBDC) provide resources to veterans who are already entrepreneurs and those who want to start a business.

On Nov. 2, the Clovis Veterans Memorial hosted the Biz Rally Point Summit, inviting community partners to provide information to help veteran business owners grow their business, win government contracts and secure grant funding.

 

One veteran’s path

Veteran Robert De La Torre is owner of Visalia produce wholesaler Horizon Marketing. He attended for more information about securing government contracts and to become a certified veteran-owned business.

“Doing business with the government is difficult if you don’t know the process,” De La Torre said.

He is interested in providing fresh fruit to schools and military bases.

De La Torre started working for the company in sales in 2000. He bought the company in 2012.

The business has since expanded as Horizon Transportation, a transportation brokerage, and a factoring company, Horizon Financial, which deals with the invoice processing and collection for truck drivers to receive faster payment.

Horizon Marketing operates across the country as well as Canada and Mexico.

Raised by his grandmother in a humble home in Farmersville, De La Torre said they survived on public assistance, but she instilled common sense into him, which helped him later in business.

He had a few odd jobs after graduating high school, going on to enlist in the Navy in 1988 right before turning 20. He served as a Navy fireman, responsible for completing engineering watches, operating electrical equipment and performing repairs.

After he left the Navy in 1992, De La Torre took on a variety of jobs, ending up as a car salesman at age 25. He sold cars for about 10 years, while also working for UPS.

By 2000, De La Torre was a finance manager in the industry, and through that, he met someone in produce wholesale. Shortly after, he switched industries.

“I left an established environment, job and income and took a chance on myself, and entered an industry that could potentially be lucrative,” De La Torre said.

De La Torre said many veterans, feel a sense of excitement and expectation when they get out of the military, but there is no secret to success. Hard work will need to be done.

 

Veteran helping veterans

Debra Winegarden, a licensed clinical psychologist and founder of Achievements Unlimited Inc. in Clovis, provides therapy for individuals, couples and families. She is also an Army veteran.

Winegarden said her own military service helps her find common ground with the veterans she treats.

A Southern California native who has been living in the Central Valley for 34 years, Winegarden grew up camping in the outdoors, so when she joined the Army in 1987 at 18, she enjoyed the training.

“My mom was in the Army, my brother was in the Army ahead of me. I told myself, ‘I’m never going to join the Army’ but there I was,” Winegarden said.

She attended a semester at Long Beach State but was more interested in surfing and boyfriends and dropped out, she said.

After basic training, she went to San Antonio, Texas, for Advanced Individual Training in dental prosthetics for more than a year.

Winegarden left the military in 1990, going on to run a dental office for the next 25 years. During that time, she went back to college for her bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Fresno State, master’s degree at the California School of Professional Psychology and doctorate at Pacifica Graduate institute.

Before going back to college, Winegarden was also a professional body builder, placing second in the 2003 NPC (National Physique Committee) Masters Nationals.

Winegarden said she has developed ways of talking to veterans to get them to open up.

A lot of combat veterans feel undervalued after leave the military and aren’t able to use their skills in civilian life, leading them to feel depressed, Winegarden said.

In the workplace, Winegarden said employers should try to provide veterans group sessions and activities with coworkers, as well as put them in roles where they can use their leadership skills.

 

Diving into entrepreneurship

At the California Scuba Center in Clovis, founder and owner Michael Fitzgerald has made his business a one-stop dive shop offering training for SCUBA certification, service, sales, repairs, rentals as well as SCUBA travel trips around the world.

He also guides diving clean ups of lakes, such as Millerton Lake, and offer services for search and recovery of personal property and to families and sheriff departments looking for people who have drowned.

California Scuba Center, which opened in 2019, has a VA testing center that allows veterans to use their GI Bill benefits for training.

Born and raised in Fresno, Fitzgerald joined the California Air National Guard to get a taste of the military. He joined the Army full-time in 1988.

He came out of active duty in 1996 and joined the California Army National Guard, staying until retirement in 2009.

Fitzgerald aspired for a job in law enforcement. He went to the academy and became a reserve officer for the Fresno Police Department in 1998.

He became a full-time officer in 2001, retiring in 2013 as an investigator for the department’s anti-gang unit, MAGEC.

Fitzgerald served in Iraq from 2004-06 on special taskforce, gathering intelligence from local villages and finding high-value targets for arrest and interrogation.

Fitzgerald had plans for a family trip to Hawaii and wanted to get his children SCUBA certified.

He hit it off with the SCUBA instructor and got really interested in the training aspect, becoming more involved at the dive shop and training center.

Fitzgerald and the instructor, who goes by the nickname of “Bear,” would discuss opening their own dive shop and training center and what they could offer that the other few local shops were lacking.

“When the opportunity came for me to open a shop, I decided to do that. Bear came with me and now we are doing our own thing and doing it the way we feel will take care of our diving community,” Fitzgerald said.

Including Bear, the California SCUBA Center has five instructors — more than any of the other local dive shops in town, he said.

For himself, and for many other veterans in the diving community, being underwater in a serene and peaceful environment is therapeutic. Many veterans also enjoy operating the SCUBA equipment, the group camaraderie and the feeling of being on a mission.

His military and law enforcement experience has also disciplined him for how he runs his business.

“We don’t have a dive club — we have a dive family. That’s the way we treat everybody, even our new divers. To me, it ties into the way it was in the military with my fellow veterans and team members. I don’t have employees—my staff is family to me,” Fitzgerald said.

In the future, Fitzgerald would like to open up a new facility that would have its own pools for SCUBA practice, as well as pools that could be utilized for the public to use for swimming and aerobics classes.