San Diego's top small business official Ruben Garcia wonders what his life would have been like had his father gotten that loan he needed to expand his gas station business more than 50 years ago.

Garcia, the U.S. Small Business Administration San Diego district director, shared his story about missed opportunity with a mostly Latino audience at the Chicano Federation of San Diego County's annual Unity Luncheon.

His aim was to explain his passion for promoting the federal agency that provides support to small businesses.

"It's a personal thing with me," Garcia told the hundreds at the Holiday Inn on the Bay in San Diego on Friday.

His father, Patricio Moreno Garcia, was a cotton field worker who moved his family from Texas to Los Angeles in the 1950s after hearing he could earn 50 cents an hour working at a gas station.

He got the job, saved his money, bought the gas station and after a while decided to expand it to include a car wash and a hot dog stand.

He needed $5,000 but the bank he went to turned him down because he did not have sufficient collateral.

Garcia, who was about 10 at the time, said his father relied on what the bank rep told him because he did not know where else to go.

He remembers his father asking: "Where can I go to get help? Is there somebody else who can help do a loan for me?"

And the banker's response: "No, there's nobody who can give you help."

Garcia doesn't know whether it was ignorance or prejudice that brought this response.

He later learned there was an SBA office not far from the bank his father solicited that could have helped him obtain the loan needed through one of its programs.

His father ended up selling his gas station a year later to someone who added a car wash and a convenience store, continued expanding, and got rich, he said.

"I think my life could have been so different if my dad had gotten the right answer," he said. "My dad gave up his dream because somebody did not have the right information."

"I don't want to see that happen to anybody," he said.

"I want to get the word out that the SBA is there to help you start and grow your business," he said. "I don't want to hear that someone did not give you the right information."

Garcia went on to finish high school, serve in the U.S. Army and over a 30-year period hold management positions at Arco, Texaco and other corporations. He's also the founding president of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.

Since 2006, he has overseen SBA's financial and educational programs in San Diego and Imperial counties.

The SBA in San Diego last fiscal year guaranteed 1,279 loans worth $401 million, he said. About 27,000 people received business counseling assistance or training with help from its partners, Garcia said.

The number of Latino-owned businesses continues to grow across the nation, he said, but many Latinos still don't know about the SBA.

Leonel.sanchez@sandiegored.com