Many people get packages during the holidays.
Maria Garcia gets a whole lot of packages — about 1,500 a day.
The 33-year-old Navy petty officer first class is a supervisor at the Naval Supply Systems Command Fleet Logistics Center Pearl Harbor’s Regional Mail Center.
That’s longhand for the place at Pearl Harbor that provides mail support to over 20,000 sailors and military personnel. Garcia revels in her role as a mailroom Santa Claus.
“People can’t be mad at us, because we’re always giving them something,” she said with a laugh in a recent interview.
But she brings holiday cheer to the community in many more ways, those who know her say.
Since 2010 — excluding two years she was not stationed in Hawaii — Garcia has been a volunteer staff member at the Hawaii National Guard’s Youth Challenge Academy for at-risk teens.
HEROES NEXT DOOR
We recently asked readers to help shine a light on the good works of a few true unsung heroes. Readers responded with nominees from divergent walks of island life who share a common desire to help others. Star-Advertiser editors chose five Heroes Next Door who will be highlighted in stories through Dec. 30.
Click here to read more profiles.
At one point she was volunteering five days a week until 11 p.m. at the Kalaeloa campus after her mailroom job duties ended at 4 p.m.
She’s on a diversity committee at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam that meets every Wednesday to plan events.
And she helps out at the Queen Street Word of Life Christian Center every Sunday watching 1- and 2-year-olds while their parents attend services.
“I love volunteering,” Garcia said.
Shannon Haney, a public affairs officer for the fleet logistics center, nominated Garcia as one of the islands’ unsung Heroes Next Door.
“She’s absolutely humble about what she does,” Haney said. “And she quietly takes care of everyone.”
That includes the workers in the mailroom, where the volume of packages during the holidays is five times the normal flow. Last week packages big and small were stacked on shelves, on rolling carts and in big purple plastic bags.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Holland Brown, a mail clerk who has worked with Garcia for two years, said she “absolutely deserves” recognition for her good deeds.
“Not only does she volunteer her time with everything, but she cares,” Brown said. “She cares so much for the people she works with (and) the people she doesn’t work with. She just cares about everyone, and you can tell in the way she conducts herself at work during duty hours (and off duty). She’s really amazing.”
Garcia, who is from Houston, said she loves to work with kids — and that put her on a path to become a volunteer “cadre,” or staff member at the Youth Challenge Academy.
She said she’s “basically a drill instructor,” but she added that “we’re not harping on them, getting mad at them — unless they do something bad.”
The 22-week experience is kind of like boot camp or school for students who don’t generally leave the grounds, she said. She has helped march them to class and assisted with homework, and taken students out to do volunteer work in the community.
“I wanted to be there (for them), and even today I still talk to a lot of them just to (say), ‘Hey, I’m still here for you just in case you need me,’” Garcia said.
In recent months her other volunteer duties have meant she is not spending as much time with the Youth Challenge Academy, but Garcia estimates she has given hundreds of hours of her time to the program.
The unmarried Garcia, who has a boyfriend, said she has a lot of energy — and wants to put it to good use. She’s been in the Navy 15 years and is surface warfare and air warfare qualified.
“I just feel like I have to be productive,” she said. “When we have off days, I (think), ‘Oh, I should do something,’ like (recently) we helped out with Christmas lighting over on Hickam.”
As for her future, she said, not surprisingly, “I want to work with kids,” either as a teacher or youth coordinator.
