Javier Hernandez, 52, came to Reno when he was 15 years old in order to learn English. 37 years later, after finding success in landscaping and real estate in the Biggest Little City, he is giving back, teaching English to kids in Mexico.
Javier was born in San Miguel Zapotitlán, a small town in Jalisco state with a population of around 2,500 people. “It was a scary place,” Javier explained from his current home in northwest Reno just above UNR, in between trips back to Mexico. “My mother was a businesswoman, and she had a restaurant. So I grew up selling hot dogs, and my brother sold tacos. It was just business.”
There were positives too, with Javier’s hometown located close enough to the ocean. “I had free time on Mondays, and we would go and swim in the ocean for hours. We’d play games in the water, that’s how I broke my teeth,” Javier smiled widely, revealing a chipped front incisor. “It was so much fun, my best memories are in there. The ocean,” he remembers.
Shortly after Javier turned 15, he moved to Reno to join his sisters who were already here. “We came with the idea of staying for two years, and then coming back. But my mother missed us too much, so then she came and we decided to stay here,” Javier explained.
“When I first came to Reno I hated it. It felt like there were so many rules,” he said. “Before, I lived in a small town where you could play baseball and soccer in the streets, and there was nothing like that here. And it was just hard as a teenager coming here, not knowing the language and going to school. So it was tough for the first two years.”
Javier Hernandez has made the most of his adult life after finding success, traveling and collecting souvenirs from his trips across the world.
One of his sisters owned a lawn maintenance business, which she sold to him when she moved back to Mexico. Javier was just a senior in high school at the time, but decided to grasp the opportunity.
“I felt ready because I’d worked for three years in my spare time doing landscape jobs. I also worked for my teachers doing yard work for them during high school,” Javier said. “I bought it with the idea that it would help me pay my way through college. But in my second year of college, the business just kept growing and it was good money. I figured I might as well get a contractor’s license and invest more because there was a future here.”
Although Javier made the decision to invest in the lawn maintenance business, landscaping wasn’t what he always envisioned for himself. As a youth, Javi had aspirations to become an actor and during college starred in various plays held by the University of Nevada, Reno, and even featured in television commercials. But the landscaping venture fell into his lap and after meeting his now wife when he was 23, Javier ultimately chose his family and business over dreams of an acting career, and has never doubted that decision.
When the Great Recession hit from 2007 to 2009, the housing market collapsed, leading to a wave of foreclosures and a sharp decline in housing prices across Nevada. Although many homeowners and investors suffered significant losses as a result of the crash, others were able to profit from the downturn by taking advantage of the decline in housing prices – Javier being one of these people. “I decided to buy a house for my mother so she could stop paying rent. But when I bought the house, she moved back to Mexico and ended up staying there six months,” Javier explained. “The house was unoccupied, so she told me to rent it out, which I did. When she came back, she started suffering with dementia. She was asking me, ‘Where’s my house?’ forgetting that she told me rent it. So I started feeling bad, and invested in a duplex.” This is where Javier’s real estate journey began, and it only skyrocketed from there.
Photo provided by Javier of one of the classes he’s been teaching.
During this time, though, Javier never forgot the promise he made to his mother. “She made me promise to do something for her hometown,” Javier explained. “I figured that one of the best promises I could make was to teach English there. English classes there are very expensive, and not something everyone can pay for. Only the rich can afford it.”
Keeping to his promise, Javier, joined by his wife, went back recently and stayed there for six months, giving English lessons to anybody who wanted to learn. They enjoyed their time so much, they decided to go back and do it again. And again. And again. “People started coming from other nearby towns. They begged us, ‘When are you coming back? When are you coming back?’”
On Javier’s third visit, he brought with him some spare laptops and tablets that his family and friends had lying around, unused and forgotten. On his visits, he now distributes the technology to those that come to his classes so they can access the internet, further their learning, and improve their English even more. “They were so happy to have the laptops and tablets. Especially the kids, they learn best from watching and looking at images. And you can see it in their faces, it’s priceless. They’re very grateful.”
On Javier’s most recent visit, he met with the town’s mayor to ask permission to use one of the community’s multi-purpose rooms. “The mayor told me that other towns nearby have noticed what we are doing here and following it,” Javier mentioned. “They’ve also found ways to start offering free English classes which is great. The purpose is just to teach people how to speak the most universal language.”
In the past year, Javier and his wife have given English classes to over 100 people, he says. “The thing that fascinates me the most is that they learn really fast. Especially the kids and teenagers, they’re very good with grammar. And they known that in the future, learning English will help them find a job.”
He plans to go back several times this year, feeling it’s his duty and his passion now to give back, to see kids from economically challenged environments in Mexico smiling, learning and progressing in English and worldliness.