Victor Flores, pictured June 10, 2016, worked a series of odd jobs and once slept on the floor of a restaurant where he worked before becoming the pitchman for La Bonita Supermarkets.
Tuesday, July 5, 2016 | 2 a.m.
Before his face and signature pitch line of “Wow!” filled Las Vegas area television screens and the social media pages for one of the valley’s biggest specialty supermarket chains, La Bonita pitchman Victor Flores was like many immigrants to the United States, looking for hope and a new adventure.
That new adventure wasn’t always easy. Between scrubbing floors, cleaning swimming pools and sleeping on the floor of a restaurant where he worked, Flores’ success story didn’t happen overnight.
But now, some 40 years after arriving in the area, he is one of the most recognizable figures in Las Vegas’ Latin American community.
“I’ve had my moments of loneliness,” he said in his native Spanish, “But God had a mission for me in Vegas.”
That mission began for the 60-year-old when his left his hometown of Fresnillo in the Mexican state of Zacatecas for Ciudad Juarez in the late 1960s. He left formal education at the age of 8, after only three years in elementary school, for an education “from the streets.” Flores’ fate changed one summer night when he met Las Vegan Sergio Gonzalez, a gardener and landscaper who introduced him to the idea of crossing the U.S. border and coming to Southern Nevada. When the meeting occurred, Gonzalez was in Juarez visiting family members, who Flores had met while living in the city.
Flores, eager to escape poverty and the cartel-fueled violence in Juarez, was easily sold on leaving. Gonzalez arranged for Flores and three others to cross the Rio Grande via a flotation device made of rubber tire shells and wood blocks to neighboring El Paso, Texas, in 1974.
Less than 24 hours after arriving in El Paso, and without knowing any English, Flores was on a flight to Las Vegas.
“Airport and border security then wasn’t what it is now,” Flores explained. “My (smuggler) told me to just pass through and say yes if anybody asked questions.”
When the plane arrived in Las Vegas, his American dream came to life.
“The sight of it — the lights, the casinos — was incredible,” he said. “It was just like I had seen in the movies, except I was actually here.”
For the better part of the next 17 years, Flores spent his days, nights and early mornings mowing lawns, scrubbing floors, cleaning pools, washing dishes and preparing food as a line cook. He once spent weeks sleeping on the floor at a restaurant where he worked before Gonzalez offered him a place on the floor at his house.
“The guy had kids, so the conditions were, I had to be out of the house before 6 a.m. when they got up for school, and back in the house no earlier than 10 p.m., after they went to bed,“ Flores explained. “Most days I’d be home around 3 a.m., and leave for work by 6 a.m. the next day.”
Flores eventually arranged for his wife and eldest son, Victor Jr., to join him, and he had two more sons here. His middle son, Edgar Ronald Flores, now an Assemblyman representing Nevada’s 28th district, is named for President Ronald Reagan, who granted Flores amnesty with the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. If Flores had a daughter, he said would have named her Nancy.
“He had incredible gratitude for Reagan, to go against what most of his party wanted and sign for my father’s amnesty” Edgar Flores said. “It brought a certain peace of mind, and really helped open new doors for him.”
As his work opportunities increased, Flores started writing a column and selling advertisements for El Mundo newspaper, a Spanish publication circulated throughout the valley. He could finally afford to move his family to their own home, a modest two-room apartment in the troubled Naked City neighborhood, near the north end of the Las Vegas Strip.
It was through selling ad space he met Jaime Martinez, a Michoacán, Mexico, native who had lived in Las Vegas for two years via Los Angeles. Martinez was in the process of founding what he called the Las Vegas valley’s first carnicería, or Hispanic meat shop, named after his rancher father’s favorite steer, in 1991.
He recruited Flores to be to be a part of La Bonita, and the rest is history.
“He had the right personality and attitude,” Martinez, now 59, said. “He was always there when we needed help, and always wanted to do more for us.”
After nearly 20 years working as a freelance ad salesman for La Bonita, contributing to the meat shop’s growth into four Latin American supermarkets across the Las Vegas valley, Flores was tasked with helping find a store spokesperson in 2010, to help the company through the recession.
“He knew people in the media, both here and Mexico,” explained Armando Martinez, 30, the son of Jaime Martinez who now manages La Bonita with his father. “So we put him to the task.”
After dozens of YouTube video and in-person auditions from actors and models as far as Mexico, the company still hadn’t found a personality that resonated with their brand, Armando Martinez said. So the company asked Flores to think of some pitch lines and try out for himself.
With lines like “mi raza bonita” (my beautiful people) and the punchline “wow,” he was a natural fit, Armando Martinez said. And within a year of making Flores its official pitchman, the job became so involved, the store asked Flores to leave his other job as a manager at Lindo Michoacán restaurant to work full-time with La Bonita, in 2011.
“I think he always had this up his sleeve,” Armando Martinez said. “We needed that natural energy and happiness, and nobody brought it like he did.”
Once an empty-handed immigrant with nothing but 100 pesos, then worth about $20, in his pocket, Flores now serves as the face of the valley’s largest Latin American grocery chain, directing La Bonita’s community outreach through TV, radio and Facebook. Known affectionately as “Mr. Wow,” he also spends his days encouraging fellow La Bonita employees and greeting customers as they come into the stores.
He wears his signature, short sleeve button-up La Bonita logo shirt, not only during the workday, but “just about everywhere” he goes. He said he has been recognized as far as Mexico and even Guatemala on vacation, and also been invited as far as Canada to give motivational speeches.
“It’s all about social media,” he said. “People around North America know me from there.”
Flores, who often uses the term gracias a Dios (thank God) in conversation, describes himself as "open-minded” and “spiritual,” not religious. He attends services wherever he’s invited, including Catholic and Protestant Churches, as well as Islamic Mosques. He swims and boxes each morning before work, takes Zumba classes and jogs at Red Rock Canyon. His favorite author is Regina Brett, and his favorite book Brett’s “God Never Blinks.”
He’s a frequent invitee to give motivational speeches across the Las Vegas valley, at churches and small businesses, where he says offers his time free of charge. Soon he plans on writing a book about his journey through life.
But for now, the empty-nested pitchman, now divorced, lives each day “with gratitude,” and says he hopes he spends the rest of his career “serving (his) purpose” with La Bonita.
That’s just fine with his children, who say they keep a close relationship with their father, and who themselves have been given opportunities to live their own American dreams as a result of Flores’ hard work.
“It’s an understatement for him to say he worked incredibly hard — he never had a day off,” Edgar Flores said. “He did everything he could do to make us feel like our lives were perfect, and we’re very grateful.”
