Citizen of the Year
Young engineer had vision,
desire to push co-op into diversification
By William Maxwell, The
Taos News
Luis Reyes Jr. doesn't
sound like a rural electric co-op manager. He doesn't act
like a rural electric
co-op manager.
With the help of a progressive
board and staff, he has, over the last eight-and-a-half years, turned Kit Carson from a sleepy
back-country co-op into a modern business empire, with one important difference
from Microsoft or General Electric: It is entirely owned by its customers.
Luis A. Reyes Jr.'s office
is located at the center of the co-op's busy, somewhat
cramped headquarters
building, kitty-corner from the receptionist and the
cashiers.
Reyes, 40, is not the type
of executive who hides behind a secretary and a mahogany door. His office is almost always
open, even when he is meeting with people. While the building is being overhauled, everyone
who has business at the co-op walks by his open door when coming and going.
He has supplemented his
official-looking desk with a long, functional table strewn
with documents -- check
requests, paperwork from Leadership New Mexico, and spreadsheets. Sitting at the table
across from Reyes, one has the feeling of being treated like a colleague rather than a
supplicating minion. Reyes' employees say he is accessible and caring.
"He's a good manager -- 100
percent," said mechanic Tommy Ocaña, who was working on a Kit Carson pickup hoisted up in
the garage at headquarters on a recent afternoon. "Just do your job, and he'll treat you
good. If you got a problem or something, he's real understanding. Go to him, and he'll
listen to you."
Meter reader Gary Martinez
said Reyes has the employees' best interest at heart.
Reyes' colleagues say they
appreciate his professionalism, intelligence and drive.
"He had a lot of vision for
the co-op and he's proven that," Trustee Juan Valdez of El Prado said. "He taught us how to be
professional people. You don't always have to agree, but you have to respect each other."
Valdez said Reyes is good
at carrying out orders. "If we assign him a task, he will
totally commit himself
to it, if it's his favorite or the board's favorite."
Valdez, a friend of Reyes who goes biking with him, describes him as a
competitive man who is physically fit and likes to play basketball and lift
weights.
Carmella Suazo has been
Reyes' secretary for eight-and-a-half years. She said the
two have developed a
close working relationship.
"He is very understanding.
I can talk to him about anything, and he offers advice and support," Suazo said. "There's not an
issue I don't feel comfortable discussing with him on a personal and professional level."
She said Reyes is a careful
planner.
"He thinks everything over
before moving on to the next step. He is a goal-setter. He
is not satisfied until
the goal is accomplished. His expectations from employees
are high. He expects
them to be devoted to the co-op."
"He is a forward thinker,"
Kit Carson Manager of Human Resources and Public Relations Martin Martinez said. "He is
strategic. He lives for the co-op. He wants to take us to
the next level."
Corporate Attorney Jack
McCarthy said Reyes "is more communicative than many managers might be."
Into the 21st century
Reyes, an engineer by
training, worked with the board to turn the co-op into a
company that offers a
variety of economical, competitive services and which is a
machine for economic
development.
Kit Carson now offers
low-cost propane and Internet services. For those who do not
have Internet because
they do not have a computer, the co-op finances the purchase
of computers.
When the Questa schools
complained that U.S. West was unable, or unwilling, to
provide them with
sufficient telephone and data services, Reyes suggested
going wireless.
In 1999, Kit Carson
installed and now maintains a comprehensive wireless telecommunication system for Questa
School District facilities in Questa, Costilla and Red River.
Seeing a need for
white-collar jobs in Taos, the co-op built a new building at
its headquarters on Cruz
Alta to house a call center. Penncro, a Pennsylvania-based collections agency, has signed a
15-year lease for the building. The Taos operation will hire hundreds of local residents.
In a recent Board of
Trustees election, one candidate was happy enough about the
co-op's diversification
that he suggested a venture into a field in which many local
consumers are begging for
relief -- open a gas station and sell low-priced gasoline!
Ocaña, the mechanic, lauded
the co-op's new ventures, including Internet, propane and the call center. "More work for the
people, more employment," he said.
Gary Martinez agrees. "He's
done a lot for the company. He's moving it in the right direction to keep up with the times."
The brainy self-described
homebody and family man has not founded any hospitals or universities. He has not saved any
puppies out of raging torrents, or cured any cripples.
But he has quietly, over
the last five years, led a member-owned company down a path
that now provides
low-priced essential services to cash-strapped Taoseños and
has created a good-size
number of job opportunities.
That is why this local boy,
who grew up on Montoya Street, is The Taos News' Citizen of
the Year.
"I feel like I'm just one
of those locals that has had an opportunity to make it
better for all of us,"
he said.
Growing up
His mother, Olivia, told a
story that exemplified Reyes' characteristic tenacity at the
age of three. Smitten by
the figure of cowboy hero Roy Rogers, the young Luis
emulated Rogers with a
cowboy-style sweater and his hobby horse, Trigger.
"He wore the sweater all
the time," she said. "I had to wash it at night while he was
asleep."
He liked school to the
point that his father, Luis, a Taos building contractor, had
to take him to the
school on snow days to prove to him it was closed. His
first-grade teacher at Taos
Elementary, Rae Cardenas, gushed about him, using words such
as "very well-behaved,"
"very bright boy" and "good home background." Cardenas, now
retired, said: "He was a
good boy and a good student."
Cardenas said Reyes was
serious, but not shy, and that he had a lot of friends.
Later, when the wiry
five-foot-six Taos High School runningback was injured in a
game after his face mask
was ripped off, he didn't take no for an answer.
"The doctor ordered him
not to play," his mother said. "He played anyway because he
thought his team depended
on him."
Both parents are very proud
of their son's accomplishments.
None of Luis' siblings is a
slacker. Brother David was recently deployed in the Middle
East as a U.S. Navy
sailor; his sister, Sandra Lamendola, works at People's
Bank; Brother, Richard,
is the food and beverage manager at Taos Ski Valley; and
brother Angel is chief financial
officer for Centinel Bank.
The rest is history. After
receiving excellent grades at junior high and high school,
Reyes attended New
Mexico Military Institute in Roswell and Arizona State in
Tempe, Ariz. He graduated
from New Mexico State with a bachelor's in electrical
engineering, and went to work
as the co-op engineer two days after commencement. After
eight-and-a-half years as
company engineer, the Board of Trustees hired him as the
co-op's general manager and
CEO in 1993.
Luis Reyes today
Reyes is a member of the Taos
Business Alliance for Economic Development and the Citizens for Economic Diversity. He is a
former member of the Taos Historic Museum board. And he is taking part in a
year-long Leadership New Mexico program to study issues of statewide importance and find
solutions.
Reyes is not a big joiner. He
spends a lot of time with his wife, Francine, his sons, Derek,
18, who is a college
freshman, and Armando, 14, who is playing football, and his daughter, Ariana, 10, an aspiring
actress.
In any case, the true story
of Reyes' impact on Taos is told in his work for the co-op.
The man who works 70 hours a
week has no trouble entering his office at seven every morning. His work is not a chore. And he
works for the satisfaction he gets out of ventures like the installation of a 21st-century
communication system in the Questa schools.
"Qwest is a big animal that
decided it wouldn't serve them. Those are the things that
drive me," Reyes said.
He pooh-poohs suggestions
that the co-op is spreading itself too thin with the new ventures.
"We can walk and chew gum at
the same time," he said, adding that the new ventures are a good safety net if the co-op loses
money in a deregulated electric market.
Not to say that the new
ventures are a piece of cake. The successful decades-old $25-million a year electric operation
still overshadows the two-year-old $70,000 Internet business, which is just breaking even,
and the one-year-old $200,000-a-year propane business, which is still in the hole.
But Reyes said economic
development such as this is ever more important in a local economy that has moved away from farming
and ranching to a fickle tourism cycle.
"Our whole economic
structure is real fragile," he said.
The new ventures developed as
a natural outgrowth of electric service. Electricity made farms and ranches more productive. "The
next step was telecommunications," Reyes said.
But Reyes does not take all
the credit for diversification. He said the idea had been discussed for years before he came to
the co-op. "We've taken it from the idea stage to make it a reality," he said.
Nor is Reyes planning to
neglect the core electric business.
"We have plans for $20
million in improvements in the electric system in the next
four years," he said.
Those plans include electric transmission lines to Peñasco and
Ojo Caliente.
Reyes remembers the times a
light rain began to sprinkle onto Montoya Street when he was a child. "Mom said, 'Kids, go get
the candles because the lights are gonna go out.'"
While no new ventures are
planned at this point, Reyes is not resting on his laurels. It
is time to improve and
build out the current divisions. "I had a chance to come back
and make a difference in
this community," he said. "It's fun to see things get better."
