Feeling unprepared for the rigors of college, out of place on a sprawling Big Ten university campus and far from his farmworker family in Texas, freshman Elias Lopez was ready to leave Michigan State University, drive home and quit his journey in higher education.
But his car quit first.
Lopez’s beat-up old 1989 Honda Civic Wagon broke down about 10 minutes from campus. He tried calling his friends for help, but in the early days of cellphones, most of his friends only answered calls after 9 p.m. when the free minutes kicked in.
The only person left to call was Luis Alonzo Garcia, Farmworker Student Services director emeritus and founder of MSU’s College Assistance Migrant Program, or CAMP. It was a call Lopez didn't want to make because he already knew Garcia’s answer.
But eventually, he dialed Garcia’s number.
“He picked up immediately and jumped into action,” Lopez said. “His response was, ‘I can help you, but this ride only goes in one direction. This ride is going back to campus, and you're going to continue doing what you came here to do.’”
After jumping in Garcia's car and heading back to campus, Lopez, who recently became MSU's new director of Farmworker Student Services, began learning lessons that he carries with him today.
It is experiences like Lopez’s that illustrate Garcia’s belief in students and passion to open doors at MSU for farmworker students, a population that for decades was nearly invisible on the university's campus. And it's a prime example of why the Government of Mexico presented Garcia with one of its highest honors.
On Sept. 18, the Consulate of Mexico presented Garcia with the Ohtli Award. “Ohtli” comes from Nahuatl, an Indigenous language spoken in Mexico, and means “path” or “road,” recognizing those who have opened paths for others. The award, presented through the Institute for Mexicans Abroad, honors individuals of Mexican descent and other nationalities, as well as organizations or associations, for contributing to the development of Mexican communities abroad.
Garcia retired in January and now serves as a consultant to MSU, after spending more than 40 years at his alma mater, including 25 years leading CAMP. He was shocked to learn he would receive the award he was unaware he had even been nominated for.
"It's something of value, not only to our families and the communities, but also to the students whose lives we've changed," Garcia said. "You look back and realize how fortunate you've been to utilize resources for the betterment of others. What better mark can you leave in life?"
Coming from a family of farmworkers, Garcia set out to help the populations and communities of students he intimately knew and understood, believing in them and giving them the opportunity to succeed at MSU.
"That was really his philosophy," Lopez said. "He believed in students so deeply that he saw abilities in me that I couldn't see in myself."
Bringing a community to the table
Garcia grew up in a farmworker family in Waco, Texas, as one of 12 siblings. He joined his family as a teenager for their migration north to work in cherry orchards in Traverse City and later moved to Alma.
Like thousands of students he later served, Garcia struggled with speaking a new language and entering an unwelcoming and foreign education system.
When he first came to MSU more than 40 years ago, he found existing programs that supported Hispanic and Latino students, but nothing to support farmworker students.
Garcia considers CAMP and Farmworker Student Services major accomplishments of his career. The programs he created and managed include:
- CAMP, which has enrolled more than 1,300 CAMP scholarship recipients since its inception
- High School Equivalency Program, or HEP, enrolling more than 1,200 students from farmworker families in GED programs since 2002
- Farmworker Student Services Global Initiatives, mobilizing more than 2,600 students from 2003 to 2025 to participate in international service-learning programs, providing volunteer experiences in six regions of Mexico — Chiapas, Campeche, Morelos, Oaxaca, Yucatán and Puebla — and strengthening the capacity of more than 50 nonprofit organizations across Mexico
- MSU Identification and Recruitment Center, or MSU ID&R, which is part of the Michigan Migrant Education Program, or MiMEP
- National Migrant Scholars Internship Initiative, or NMSI
- The Great Lakes Farmers Program, in partnership with the Department of Entomology and David Mota-Sanchez
“I purposely decided to start focusing on farmworkers because that’s something that I knew personally. I know who they are because that’s who I am," he said. "My life experiences became such that I could articulate and represent the needs and thereby construct areas that would bring this particular community to the table.”
After multiple failed proposals in the late 1990s, Garcia surrounded himself with people who understood his vision, bringing knowledge and expertise he lacked. It resulted in a 300-page proposal, which led to the birth of CAMP.
“Historically, my perspective has been that if something doesn't exist, it's an opportunity for us to create it," Garcia said. "So, over the years, I've really focused on creating things that didn't exist before."
At the core of Garcia's work is his deep understanding of the population he serves — students who have attended multiple high schools as their families migrate north and south for work, disrupting their education and lives, experiencing incredible difficulty in constantly adjusting. Students may appear to have been struggling in school, but nobody understood the circumstances they were facing.
Despite their interrupted lives and early educational careers, Garcia has always believed in those students.
“There are many students who, given the opportunity, would be shining stars," he said. "That really is what the history of CAMP is. We don't necessarily want the straight 4.0 student. That student is going to be successful; it doesn’t matter where they go. If you give me somebody that has shown this burning desire to get ahead, that’s the one I want; that person understands and is hungry enough that they’re going to work for it.”
Lessons from a broken-down Honda
When Garcia picked up Lopez after his Honda broke down and drove him back to campus, he used the drive to instill numerous lessons in the young first-year student.
That young first-year student would become one of the hundreds of hungry students with a burning desire that Garcia and CAMP would go on to support.
Lopez was among CAMP's first full cohort of 45 students in 2001. That first cohort became numerous cohorts and thousands of students over the years.
"What I think is often missed is that we don’t only shape and support those students; it changes the entire fabric of their families," Lopez said. "The entire family progresses and improves their situation when you educate one individual within that family."
Families like the Gonzalezes, which had four members come through MSU, graduate, and become professionals around the country, Garcia said. Or a West Michigan family that had five brothers and sisters attend MSU and go on to own large businesses.
“There are hundreds of success stories with kids that came from migrant families that ended up graduating from Michigan State University, making real change in their lives and the lives of their families,” said Martin Ruiz, an MSU alumnus and former deputy director of the Michigan Higher Education Student Loan Authority.
The Consulate of Mexico in Detroit nominated Garcia for the award because of that impact, as well as his more than four decades of work supporting migrant and farmworker communities. Programs like CAMP and HEP at MSU have given thousands of farmworker students educational support and opportunities. Garcia's work additionally has strengthened educational and community ties between the U.S. and Mexico.
“That’s what his friends and I would agree is his biggest legacy; really believing in people who only needed someone to believe in them,” Lopez said.
Now retired while continuing to serve as an MSU consultant, Garcia has time to reflect on a career and lifetime that began in the fields as a farmworker and led to one of Mexico's highest honors.
“I went for my walk this morning, and sometimes life feels like a marathon; you wonder if you're ever going to get to that mark,” he said. “I got to the mark today.”
