My mom called me that summer of 2014. I was at a Secondary marketing conference in San Francisco. All I remember was I was in the middle of a meeting with some bankers and the phone kept ringing and ringing. I finally excused myself and asked my mom. Mom, what’s going on?? You see I had just saw my dad with my kids just a few days before.
All I remember my mom saying was that my dad had stage 4 pancreas cancer. I was like WTF? I didn’t even know where the pancreas was in the body? How could this happen? You see up to this point I never knew anyone who had cancer before. All my uncles and aunts were alive. I mean I heard of people getting cancer but not anyone i knew or cared about. It was always some neighbours moms cousin. So you could see how shocked I was. I remember my hand trembling as I googled: life expectancy stage 4 pancreas cancer. It said 2 months!!! I just about lost it. I kept crying uncontrollably. You see I was going to redo everything with my father. I had to show him his son was successful!! Had money and was going to be a good father. A better father!! But little did i know I was following in his footsteps. Don’t get me wrong. I used to think my dad was horrible in business. You see my dad owned a gas station in Norwalk. And his customers were primarily older white people and Hispanic. And every single time my dad would fix someone’s car he would tell them to buy a Toyota. He said they make the best cars and the parts are cheap to fix.
I remember asking him when I was younger, “but if all your customers bought Toyota’s you wouldn’t get any business?” I just remember him beating the crap out of me that day and told me that I needed to learn to be a good person. I didn’t understand then but I do now. My dad was probably the most honest man I know.
But remember not having a lot of money twisted my soul. I mean when it came to making money I was good at it. Maybe too good. I wanted to be like Gordon Gekko from the movie Wall Street growing up, not knowing who I became was not who my dad was proud of.