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From El Salvador to Prince George’s

Entrepreneur José W. Flores fought barriers to success

Thursday, Oct. 12, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Greg Dohler⁄The Gazette ‘‘I don’t like to do stuff halfway,” says José Flores, president of W Concrete. ‘‘If you can do good, then I can do good. If you’re good, then I can be better. There’s a lot of people who do the same thing I do.”

He wouldn’t have pursued his love of construction, and he wouldn’t have started his own company.

And Flores, president of W Concrete Inc. of Millersville, wouldn’t be the Greater Maryland Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s Entrepreneur of the Year in Prince George’s County, where he has three clients.

W Concrete — the W stands for Wilfredo, his middle name — has earned revenues of roughly $2 million per year, with at least $4 million expected this year, Flores said.

It’s been quite the journey for Flores, who fled to the United States as a barefoot 14-year-old, with few clothes and $1,400 his mother gave him.

‘‘I’m blessed to be here,” said Flores, 37. ‘‘I’m not better than anyone. I came here with nothing. I’m just a poor little immigrant guy who came here, but God brought me with a purpose.”

As a boy, Flores endured what no child should. On a typical walk home from school, he saw dogs fighting over dismembered human heads and limbs scattered along the roads, casualties of El Salvador’s civil war. He would miss weeks of school, because it was not safe to go outside alone. No one ventured outside after 5 p.m., he said, because ‘‘you never knew how people would react.”

‘‘It was bad,” he said through a thick accent. ‘‘No security. No nothing.”

Flores had few choices in life. He either had to join the Salvadoran army, which drafted young boys to fight, or he had to flee, leaving his family behind.

‘‘It was rough, because I really wanted to be there with my family,” Flores said.

He rode a bus for a month to Mexico, swam a river and walked three days before arriving in Houston. Once in the States, Flores hopped into a U-Haul truck with 80 other immigrants en route to Washington, D.C., where his uncle lived.

The truck was just a few hours from his destination when it was pulled over by Philadelphia police, after the driver ran a red light.

The police took the 80 passengers to an immigration office. Because he was underage, he said, he wasn’t jailed. Instead, he stayed for a week with a Roman Catholic priest and nun.

‘‘They fed me, they gave me clothes and then they brought me here to Washington” to live with his uncle, who was a laborer for Miller and Long Concrete Construction Inc. in Bethesda.

Flores faced uncertainty.

‘‘I didn’t come here to go to school,” said Flores, who went to high school for only six months before dropping out. ‘‘My uncle said, ‘I’m not gonna put you through school. You have to go to work.’”

There were two problems, though: Flores was only 15 and he could not speak English.

Flores, who said he learned ‘‘just enough English to grow up a little bit,” eventually wants to go back to school.

To get a job at Miller and Long, Flores said he was 18 years old. As a laborer at Miller, he discovered his love for construction, carrying scaffolding and wood for other workers.

He moved up quickly through the ranks.

By age 21, he was a finisher foreman in charge of a 20-man crew. At 25, he was Miller and Long’s finisher superintendent, in charge of nearly 60 workers. Flores now employs 80 workers, and all but one are Hispanic.

‘A remarkable man’

Flores worked 14 years with Miller and Long, before joining NEX Construction Inc. as a minority partner in charge of field operations. But his business partners were not good with money, he said, and they didn’t always pay their employees on time.

He endured five years there before taking $50,000 in loans and home equity and five workers to start W Concrete in the basement of his Beltsville home.

‘‘I need to pay everything on time,” he said of his lessons learned from NEX. ‘‘Number 2: You need to treat the clients with respect. I don’t believe in looking back. I just learn from my mistakes and move forward.”

While Flores has contracts all over the region, his biggest current job is in Prince George’s, where his employees are installing 2.4 million square feet of concrete in the parking garage of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Suitland headquarters.

Flores said he loves hard work and sometimes works 17-hour days to get the job just right. On a typical day, Flores wakes up at 2 a.m., goes to different sites to check on the status of his projects, meets with a few clients and drives back to his Millersville office to check phone messages and e-mail to secure new business.

He moved the company to Millersville in Anne Arundel County because of cheaper office rent there; he said he pays $750 a month for 1,000 square feet. Flores eventually wants to move back to Prince George’s, but only if he can find reasonably priced quarters.

When he’s not slinging concrete, Flores preaches once a week at a Seventh-day Adventist Church in the District and spends time with his wife, Ana, and their 4-year-old son, Will.

‘‘I don’t like to do stuff halfway,” Flores said. ‘‘If you can do good, then I can do good. If you’re good, then I can be better. There’s a lot of people who do the same thing I do.”

Jorge Ribas, president and CEO of the newly formed Hispanic chamber, said Flores was named Entrepreneur of the Year because of the company’s growth and county roots.

‘‘I think he’s a remarkable man,” Ribas said. ‘‘He could’ve been in jail. There are many good things about him. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made something of himself.”

Through it all, Flores remains humble.

‘‘I’ve been blessed,” he said. ‘‘My health is in perfect condition, and I’ve never been to the hospital. You know, I could have a lot of stress in this type of work, but I lay it all on Jesus Christ.”

E-mail Marcus Moore at mmoore@gazette.net.