- April 23, 2024
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(Click here for more Standing O Award winners.)
Mike Cavaliere
Contributing Writer
For Oscar Alvarado, life is like a puzzle. But it took time to make the pieces fit.
They didn’t quite fit as a kid in Ecuador, when his father moved to the United States for work and he didn’t see him for the next 11 years. They were wrong in New York, too, when he was a punky teenager and his cousin dared him to join the Navy. And so he did.
“I don’t like losing,” he says with a grin.
The Navy led to a degree at Stetson University, which led to banking, which led to night classes for his master’s, and then he started an accounting side-business.
Pieces started falling into place.
“It was two shifts a day,” Alvarado says. “We knew we were growing, but we were limited because of time.”
When his bank at the time closed, though, he had to make a choice: Find a new firm, or be your own boss?
“A ship is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what it is meant for,” he says. “You need to take risks.”
But Alvarado is also an avid chess player. He doesn’t take uncalculated risks. He won’t move a single pawn before assessing the “opportunity cost.” He won’t play with a timer. He’s the type who doesn’t like to rush; he’ll sit, stare at the pieces and watch them move in his mind.
“Chess is — it’s like meditation to me,” he says. “It’s like a puzzle. ... You have to think five, 10 moves ahead. … It’s not only adding, it’s investigating.”
And he gets a thrill from investigation. He’s a problem-solver. He can’t bear to be 10 cents off when he’s accounting — “I’m to the penny!”
Crunching numbers, for him, is like strategizing the perfect time to attack with his queen. It’s a rush. And working with numbers, trying to achieve that perfect purity of zeros on a balance sheet, is special. It’s almost holy.
“An accountant is like a priest because you need to confide everything to that person,” he says. “It’s not only about the books … it’s about (people’s) lives.”
Growing up, Alvarado watched his mom run restaurants, then later work in factories after moving to the U.S. She was always working, but still the family seemed perpetually strapped for cash — even with his father sending money back home from overseas.
“I was motivated to not let that happen to my (wife and three) kids,” he says. “I wanted to be sure I was always with them and to provide.”
So after coming home from the bank, he’d go to night school. He’d launch a business. He’d work after working and, soon, “it was one customer after another.”
Then he’d work harder.
Next, Alvarado might go for his Ph.D. He and his partner, Juan Godoy — another immigrant, from Guatemala — recently closed on a new unit in City Marketplace. They plan to open satellite offices in Ormond Beach, St. Augustine. They’d like to do business with companies internationally.
“It’s the family, man,” he says. “That Latin blood.”
That’s what drives him. And he’s always sharpening his skills.
Beside the door at A&G Bookkeeping in St. Joe Plaza — you can’t miss it — is an oversized, hand-carved chess board. It’s heavy, weathered, with etchings in the sideboards.
“It’s priceless,” Alvarado says, an heirloom from the Philippines. “It’s been with me since 1988.”
The stools are shaved to look like knights. There’s dust gathered in the grooves and edges that Alvarado halfheartedly tries to wipe away.
“When customers come to us, it’s not just business,” he says. “It’s more than that. … It’s personal. I think that’s what’s taken us all the way.”
He sits, moves his rook, dances fingers over his king. He can never get back all the hours he’s spent at that board — nearly three decades of sitting and staring and solving, always solving.
“Life is a puzzle,” he says. “You just have to find where the pieces fit.”
