On Sunday Jesús Garcia and his family walked out of mass at St. Patrick Church in Providence and for the first time in her life his five-year-old daughter Emiliana saw snow.

“She was excited,” he said. “She can’t wait to build a snowman.”

Garcia, a recruiter for the Army, moved his family to Warwick after being transferred from El Paso Texas where he and his wife grew up. 

“The Army has sent me to many places but after we had our daughter we wanted to go back home to spend more time with family. And now the Army had other plans for us and moved us across the country to Rhode Island.”

Garcia in an interview Monday said he’s been stationed in a number of different places including Fort Bliss Texas, Fort Hood Texas, Camp Casey South Korea, Camp Pamir Afghanistan, Al Dhafra Air Base United Arab Emirates and Grafenwhör Germany.  

During his last deployment Garcia received notification that he would be on recruiting detail. 

When he finished his deployment to the Middle East in May he attended recruiting school in Kentucky and two weeks before he graduated he learned he would be stationed in Warwick at the Quaker Lane recruiting center. He had 45 days to move his family about 2,300 miles across the country.

“I didn’t find out I was coming to Rhode Island until I was about to graduate the recruiter course in Fort Knox Kentucky,” Garcia said.

His first time anywhere in the northeast was in October when he first started to look at houses. 

While he has no roots in Rhode Island he was able to meet someone who would help to show him the staples of Rhode Island.

His real estate agent is Frank Sullivan who over 50 years ago helped to set up a budget office in the basement of City Hall.

Now Sullivan is an independent contractor selling real estate with a lot of his business coming from an online company called Veterans United. 

The company has two aspects to it one being the real estate. Veterans and active military personnel are able to speak to the company and then they connect them with local agents like Sullivan.

For the financial aspect they are a VA lender, which means they are able to help the buyers with the lending and helps the realtor know what price range they should be looking in to help the process. Sullivan said that the company is the largest VA lender in the United States.

Aside from his experience of working with the VA lending process Sullivan feels that he is able to connect with veterans because he is one himself serving during the Vietnam War. 

Since coming to Rhode Island Sullivan has taken Garcia to a couple of Providence College basketball games, to Angelos on Federal Hill, to Twin Oaks and has introduced him to New York System Wieners. 

“Frank has been a Godsend, he's been so helpful. He’s been quite the Rhode Island tour guide,” Garcia said. 

Sullivan has been helping veterans and active military members like Garcia for decades. 

For 25 years he worked as a mortgage broker and did VA loans, which helped to give him the knowledge of how they work.

Garcia and his father drove their vehicles to Rhode Island, which took them about four days. 

For about a week and a half Garcia stayed in the Crowne Plaza and then about 10 days later he flew his wife and daughter in and continued to stay there until they closed on their house in the Oakland Beach section of Warwick on Nov.17. 

Garcia started his new position in Warwick last week. He is currently the only bi-lingual translator who speaks Spanish in the state for the active Army.

He explained that being certified, as a translator for the military is no small feat. In order to do so he had to pass a proficiency test and based on a score of 1-5 with 1 being the best he had to score a 1 or a 2.

Garcia said that one of the most important aspects of it is being able to translate documents from Spanish to English and vice versa. 

In order to enlist in the military an individual has to provide different documentation including things like their birth certificates. For immigrants their paperwork may be in Spanish and Garcia is able to legally translate it and verify the information. 

He said that his unique skill set and the lack of it currently in Rhode Island was one of the reasons he was chosen for his relocation to Warwick.

The other reason he pointed to is the fact that he and his wife showed interest in the northeast. They wanted to find a community where their daughter could get a good education.

“We know that the education system is really good up here in the northeast,” Garcia said.

In his ninth year of service to the country Garcia have settled into their new home and his daughter is enrolled at St. Rose of Lima School. 

She’s also looking forward to the snow sticking to the ground.