Craft Talk III

Gabriel’s roots are from Sinaloa, Mexico where his mother and father came from and settled in East Los Angeles.  His father worked hard and studied engineering at East Los Angeles Community College.  Gabriel was born in City Terrace and has 2 brothers and 2 sisters.  Gabriel’s family moved to Downey in 1983 when Gabriel’s father started working at Rockwell.  Gabriel attended West Middle School and Warren High School.  Having a tall and thin build, he started playing baseball.  He carried on with baseball at Cerritos College but still hadn’t put on enough weight to play there, so he transferred to East Los Angeles College and started pitching, he was picked up by the Pittsburg Pirates, but was later released, then did some time with the Dodger farm teams in Mexico.  He enjoyed his community service in Mexico with the team and has continued to work in community projects since.

Larry Garces was born and raised in Downey and attended Catholic school until starting college at UCLA, then finishing up at Long Beach State. Larry is the current owner of Security Land Escrow.  Security Land was established here in Downey in 1944, Larry’s mom started working there in 1947 and later brought the company in 1976. Larry took over ownership in 2002.  Escrow is a mutual third party to handle business and/or residual transactions of real estate, business sales, liquor licenses and mobile home sales. Larry is seeing sales pick up in Downey but mostly cash sales. The third generation of Garces has started part-time in the business, that would be Larry’s daughter, and she is attending Hope International University.