This month, WTOP is spotlighting participants in the 2019 Marine Corps Marathon events who are running with purpose and plan to finish with pride.
Today, 46-year-old Jorge Garcia lives just outside of St. Louis.
He’s married, has two daughters and a good job. It’s a long way from where he grew up in northern New Jersey, and you can say that not just in terms of the actual distance, but really in any way you measure life’s milestones
Because the life Garcia lives now would probably be pretty unrecognizable, and unbelievable, to the life he lived as an 8-year-old, and for the rest of his childhood beyond that.
“I’m not sure where I’d be today if it wasn’t for the Marines,” said Garcia, who spent four years in the military after high school. “… It wasn’t exactly the best childhood for a kid.”
When Garcia was an 8-year-old boy, he watched his father murder his mother. The details are grisly, and it meant Garcia and his 6-year-old brother would be in and out of shelter homes and foster care. He described himself as a ward of the state. He went to four high schools in four years, and when he was 17, he forged a signature allowing him to enlist in the Marine Corps.
“From a personal level, they offered me a place to live, they offered me food, they offered me travel, and I just needed a way to get out,” said Garcia, who served 1991–1996 in Haiti, Cuba, Norway and Japan. “More importantly, the Marine Corps offered me discipline, offered me structure, and like I said, offered me an opportunity to do something with my life.
“It was definitely a way out.”
Garcia said running has become his way to keep himself on the right track, both mentally and emotionally.
“Running … it gives me that feeling of being free,” said Garcia. “I guess you could say sometimes I’m running from my problems, but it gives me that opportunity to spend time with my mom and my thoughts — and my solitude. It gives me time to reflect on my past.”
This will be the third time he’s run the Marine Corps Marathon. He ran a marathon in Australia last month and has competed in several other distance running events. And while he might be running from his past sometimes, he’s also motivated by it.
Garcia’s parents are never far from his line of sight when he’s on the course. Sometimes, it’ll be a picture of his mother he puts under the bill of his hat — so to see her, all he has to do is look up.
During those long runs, he said, he’ll sometimes talk to her, and especially thank her for giving him strength. He can get emotional. Sometimes, he runs happy.
Other times he runs angry, and finds motivation in his father’s words, which he’ll write out instead.
“My father, when I was really young, he saw that I was growing up. He would always say that I can’t do something or that I would grow up to be nothing,” said Garcia.
So when he was a teenager, he said, he wrote that down on his old Yankees hat. “I put down, ‘He said you can’t do it,’ and I still have that on my cap today. Every time I run, if I’m struggling, I see that and get the motivation. So in a weird way, I’m motivated by him.”
Today, the father of two teenage girls admits it’s motivation to be the opposite of what his dad was.
“I’m blessed,” admitted Garcia. “Because of my background, it makes me who I am today.”
“My girls are being raised in a much different way,” he added. “I can’t imagine my girls living in the streets or not living with their parents or not being secure. I think that a lot of the things that happened to me, I’ve learned from it, and I refuse to be that type of father.”
The first time Garcia ran the Marine Corps Marathon, he ran it in camo with an American flag. When he ran two years ago, he did it in honor of some Marines who were from the same area of Illinois where he lives now. Garcia said running this race reminds him of his brothers from the military, including the ones no longer here.
This is the race, more than others, that makes him feel like he’s running for something bigger than he is.
All of that’s to say that even if Garcia doesn’t win the Marine Corps Marathon on Oct. 27 — and odds are a 46-year-old from Illinois probably won’t be the one who finishes first — there’s little doubt in this mind that he’s already won.
“Life can’t be any better,” admitted Garcia. “And I’m very thankful for that. It has been a complete 180 from the way I grew up.”
