Jacinto Garcia signed up as a WESTERN SERVICE WORKERS ASSOCIATION (WSWA) member on one of the initial canvasses in October 1976, and was elected President of the Orange County Workers Benefit Council in 1978 after signing on as a cadre. Jacinto was well known in the barrios of Santa Ana. He maintained an extensive vegetable garden and sold produce, especially nopales to the neighbors. Jacinto had originally come from Mexico to the US through the Bracero Program as a contracted farm laborer. He later worked in the copper mines of southern Arizona and in other jobs before retiring.

Jacinto was an active and integral part of the local organizing drive – he attended the first WSWA Staff Meeting, the first Orange County Workers Benefit Council Meeting, and later participated in fostering a new organizing drive in San Diego. He spoke in college classes to sign up students as volunteers, and was on meetings with medical and legal professionals to gain their participation. Jacinto was also an excellent cook and he would prepare meals for the organizers like caldo de pollo.

In the first year, to help launch the new organizing drive, Jacinto went on door-to-door membership canvasses and on volunteer outreach to sign up new members and volunteers. Jacinto did not let his inability to speak English stop him; instead speaking in his native Spanish, he organized others to interpret for him, allowing him to be an effective organizer in English and Spanish. In 1999 Jacinto died, yet Jacinto’s legacy lives on through WSWA!