Latino family's passion is also the savior to Pasco's downtown
Sunday, March 12, 2006 1:07 AM PST
By Tri-City Herald
Printable version
E-mail this articleTwenty-one years ago women showed up at Anita and Simon Ochoa’s apartment door looking to buy dresses.
Not just any kind. Poofy, bright traditional Mexican-style party dresses that couldn’t be found anywhere else in the Tri-Cities.
Today, the merchandise in their expansive Pasco store, Tienda la Chiquita, is as diverse as their six children.
Ofelia, with her fashion sense, now sells women’s clothing, bras and underwear.
Ana sells the wedding dresses at La Estrellita — The Little Star — but her talent with numbers and accounting means it is up to her to keep the business’ books.
Pedro’s computer skills are put to use wiring money to Mexico for customers.
Raul’s love of music affords him his corner of the store, where he stocks all types of Latino music from the most popular divas to the more obscure Mexican artists.
All of the children left home to find their own careers, and all but two returned to put their mark on La Chiquita.
“Everybody had their own life going but we all agreed we wanted to come back and pick up the store,” said Ofelia, 29. “It’s like the store has become part of our family. We have to take care of what my parents started.”
The other two, Gloria Ochoa Lawrence, the oldest, runs her own law firm in the Tri-Cities. Stephanie, the youngest, works as a beautician.
For two decades now, La Chiquita has evolved, providing customers a full list of oddly combined goods that many thought they could find only across the southern border.
La Chiquita has thrived by depending on the talents of the Ochoa family and by constantly adapting to the desires of its primarily Hispanic customers. Their success has inspired followers — other immigrants who can see a way to leave toiling in the fields behind to be their own bosses.
And along the way, they’re credited with triggering the recovery of a dying downtown business district.
The Ochoas’ hodgepodge of goods has proved to be the recipe that allowed them to prevail during the hard times of the ’80s and ’90s.
“We opened in Pasco because it was the only part of town that we liked to live,” Anita Ochoa said in Spanish. “Thank God that for us, everything went well from the beginning.”
Simon, her gregarious husband, puts his arm around her shoulders and bellows with laughter.
Success wasn’t always a sure thing. When Pasco lost some key downtown stores to Columbia Center mall, empty storefronts outnumbered businesses.
“(The Ochoas) gave the downtown a chance,” said Veronica Yzquierdo, executive director of the Pasco Downtown Development Association.
“The rents were affordable enough where they could have their own storefronts but it was definitely a risk because it was not an area heavily populated with businesses.”
At a time when Mexican restaurants were the only other Latino businesses downtown, the Ochoas were among the first to see opportunity in a store that would cater to Hispanics.
Today, they own much of the block along Fourth Avenue, between Lewis and Clark streets, and many other Latino business owners have followed their example.
Yzquierdo said about 80 percent of the downtown businesses are owned by or cater to Hispanics, and about half of them also own their own buildings.
Those numbers have given downtown Pasco a distinctive flavor that’s spicier than either Kennewick or Richland’s more traditional downtowns.
When Gloria Garcia moved to the Tri-Cities 11 years ago she worried she would miss some of the traditional Mexican culture and products she loved.
Then she found La Chiquita.
“I was coming from an area where we had Mexican restaurants and bakeries. I was raised in East Los Angeles,” she said. “But when I came off the blue bridge, I told my husband I thought I could stay.”
Garcia, the newly elected president of the Pasco Downtown Development Association, said the Ochoa family has set the standard by which other Latino business owners are measuring themselves.
“I think they have set a benchmark and that’s good,” she said.
Anita and Simon left the state of Michoacan in Mexico in the ’70s to look for a better life. But for nearly five years, the couple worked in the fields cutting asparagus and picking cherries and peaches.
They soon began buying traditional Mexican dresses during visits to California and selling them by word of mouth at their Pasco apartment.
Increasing demand for their dresses spurred them to open their first store in Pasco and soon began drawing customers from as far as Othello and Walla Walla.
“People started asking for more and saying this is what you should sell,” said their daughter Ana.
The Ochoas listened, never afraid of trying something new.
Today, after more than two decades in business, the Ochoas are taking a step back and letting their kids take more control.
And their children are putting to use what they’ve learned from their parents about adapting to the needs of customers and the community.
“Pasco has evolved a lot,” Ofelia said. “It’s no longer Hispanics and Americans. It’s everything in between.”
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