Galdino Velasco, a native of Oaxaca, Mexico, has called Stamford home since 1956. Since 1980, his business, Tacos Guadalajara, has been at the center of the city”™s now-booming Hispanic community.
On a recent morning, it was also a temporary toy warehouse, as the Latino Foundation of Stamford Velasco founded prepared to dispense 500 gifts for the Feast of the Three Kings (aka the Feast of the Epiphany), which can be bigger than Christmas in the Hispanic community.
Velasco was a polytechnic student in Mexico City when a student strike sent him north, but he has never forgotten the value of education. He has initiated contact with the University of Mexico, which runs three campuses in the U.S. (in Texas, California and Illinois), with the hope of luring it to the new Stamford Innovation Center in the grand municipal building downtown.
“I have sent letters and I”™m working with the mayor””” David Martin, who took office last month ”” “because I think it would be a wonderful thing for Stamford,” he said.
Velasco recalled that when he arrived in Stamford there were perhaps 60 Spanish-speaking Hispanics; now the number approaches 35,000.
Velasco was busy inside his Atlantic Street restaurant helping to organize 500 gifts to be handed out in conjunction with the Domus Foundation, the student advocacy and help organization, and the U.S. Marines”™ Toys for Tots program, with veteran George DuCanic coordinating the gift-giving slated for Jan. 5.
Velasco proudly displayed a bicycle that he said was far better than anything he had ever known in his youth. “We have a beautiful bike for someone,” he said.
Behind him, his son Johnny Velasco, who serves as program director for the Latino Foundation of Stamford, corrected him, producing two more bikes, equally beautiful.
Johnny Velasco works in the restaurant and since 1996 has been principal of Velasco Ventures, a photography service. After a few trips to the back of the restaurant, he had produced a sizable pile of new toys, sports gear and bikes. They would be gone by the lunchtime rush; DuCanic was on his was to transport them to Domus Center on Lockwood Avenue.
Everything was under control and the restaurant motto was holding forth: Keep Calm And Have A Taco.
