Rita Garcia heads for retirement after 27 years of hospital work
in the South Valley
By Jen Penkethman Special to the Dispatch
Gilroy – Rita Garcia still speaks of her place of work, Saint Louise Regional Hospital, in the present tense.
“I feel privileged to be a part of it,” said Garcia, who retired earlier this month. “It’s a place full of wonderful people doing good work.” Garcia was an instrumental part of her workplace, but if you were a patient at the hospital you might not have seen her face. As Vice President of Facilities and Hospitality, Garcia was in charge of everything from getting patients clean linens, ordering machines for CT and MRI scans, organizing patient records, and security, among other things.
“It was a lot of things to keep track of, but I had really great directors working for me,” said Garcia. She spent 27 years working in hospital administration, but the path to the current facility in Gilroy was a complicated one. Beginning in 1979, she worked at Wheeler Hospital in Gilroy, which became associated with Good Samaritan and South Valley Hospital in 1989. From there, South Valley was sold to Saint Louise, then in Morgan Hill. In 1999, the Morgan Hill facility moved to Gilroy, while Garcia and her staff had to maintain two hospitals full of patients during the three-month moving period.
“My job was to make sure we found a physical place for everyone,” said Garcia. “In the morning we’d serve breakfast at Wheeler, and then we’d go serve lunch in the new [Saint Louise] facility.”
Garcia began her career after graduating from St. Mary’s College in Moraga with a master’s degree in health services administration. She worked part-time as a nutrition consultant for several groups, including the Mexican and Filipino American Senior Societies. She was also an instructor at her alma mater, San Jose State. Then her real career began, at Wheeler.
“When I started at Wheeler Hospital, I got to do so many fun things,” recalls Garcia.
Among them were giving speeches as a guest speaker at the American Dietetic Association, and to an audience of chefs at the Red Lion Inn. Entrepreneur magazine ran an article on her specialized hospital cuisine called “We Want Hospital Food,” which led to a series of catering jobs, on the side of her regular work. She was also Gilroy Rotary Club’s Outstanding Professional of the Year.
“The most exciting part was to be given the opportunity to play a leadership role,” said Garcia. “I enjoyed being in management, being able to provide the latest equipment and technology, and the best environment possible for the patients. I wasn’t a doctor or a nurse, but I did everything to make sure they had all they needed.”
She said the complex knowledge required for managing a facility – how to heat and cool it, how to make sure all parts were running well – was enough work for more than one career. “Everywhere I turned there was something new to learn,” said Garcia.
Among the new things she learned was how to manage a heliport, the helicopter landing site where a patient in critical condition can be transported from Gilroy to the nearest trauma center “in a matter of minutes, not hours.”
“I’m really proud of the hospital being as modern as it is,” said Garcia. Her coworkers, in turn, “are tremendously strong people. I feel privileged to know them.”
Her staff has even better things to say about her.
“Rita was more than a boss,” said Luciano Costa of Gilroy, who worked with Garcia for 15 years. “She was a mentor, a figure I look up to, and to me, a kind of second parent. We’re very sad that she left.”
Garcia was always supportive of her staff, said Costa, and at the same time willing to give them the freedom to do what they knew how to do best. Costa says his best training was hands-on, with Garcia, at the hospital.
Ted Fox, Chief Executive Officer of Saint Louise, says signs of Garcia’s hard work will always be visible in the facility.
“Rita has given very generously of her life to the healthcare of the South County,” said Fox via e-mail. “When walking around the Saint Louise Regional Hospital campus, there is evidence of her handiwork and impact, from the beautiful landscaping to the exemplary condition and appearance of our hospital. We will all miss Rita, and we wish her many happy retirement years.”
Garcia and her husband raised two sons, Roy and Ruben, who both graduated from college. Now that she and her husband are both retired, she says, she will be able to spend a lot more time on her new houseboat, on Shasta Lake. But this doesn’t mean she’ll be moving away anytime soon – Garcia still lives in Morgan Hill, where she can be near her loved ones.
