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Dr. Jeff Garcia, local optometrist and retired Navy Captain, is man on a noble mission
Then there are those citizens who go above and beyond the call of duty. These are the folks who use their resources to improve the lives of people to give their valuable time, building bridges to society’s disadvantaged - to serve their community.
Lemoore’s long and rich history has revealed many men and women who have spent a considerable portion of their lives working to make Lemoore a better place.
The list is endless: Luis, Billingsley, Vieira, Stone, Badasci, Warkentin, Clement. All familiar names, all of whom have brought respectability to our little town by their all-consuming love and respect for it.
It may be time to add another name to the tally.
Dr. Jeff Garcia has earned his spot on the list. The soft-spoken, shy unassuming optometrist and recently retired Naval Reserve Captain, is one of those quiet “heroes” who has used his resources, his friendships, and his community service to make Lemoore a better place.
Garcia is also the founder of Family Eye Care and is one of Lemoore’s best-known citizens, if not it's most unassuming.
Lemoore Mayor Ray Madrigal put it best: “Jeff is what I would consider an anchor institution in our community,” he said. “His selflessness and generosity inspire others to want to make a difference. We are so fortunate that he decided many years ago to settle in this area.
“As Mayor of Lemoore, I appreciate the gaps that are filled by Jeff’s good works. He will rightfully go down in the annuls of Lemoore as someone who understood that our community is only as good as the individuals who are part of it.”
Garcia’s service has not gone without recognition. In 2011 he was Lemoore’s Citizen of the Year, and under his leadership as their president, both the Lemoore and Kings Lions Clubs earned Organizations of the Year. His business, Family Eye Care, was the 2016 Business of the Year.
In 2017 Garcia’s company was named the California Small Business of the Year.
He served as a Lemoore Planning Commissioner for several years and as a member of the Lemoore Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors for three terms, serving as its president twice. The man doesn’t rest on his laurels as a talented optometrist, content to run his business. He uses much of his spare time making his Lemoore a better place.
“For me, in general, in my DNA, I just like to be involved in things greater than myself,” said Garcia. “I want to be an integral part of my community, and it has always been one of my goals to get involved and make a difference. Growing up in San Diego, that’s not easy to do. So, it was also one of my goals to end up in private practice in a small community, and it turned out that Lemoore was a small community. It’s been a great community to have a practice because of the opportunities, because of its size, to get involved. That’s been an important part of not only my professional career but personal life as well.”
And at 51, Garcia has plenty more to contribute.
Garcia grew up in National City, near San Diego, a solid student who dreamed of one day enlisting in the Navy and using the G.I. Bill to attend college. He was born in Yokosuka, Japan, the son of a retired Navy Chief and Japanese mother, Shigeko Kruse. His father died while Jeff was in high school, but his mother, 89, recently attended his Navy retirement ceremony.
“I was a good student,” admitted Garcia. “I never missed a day of school because my mom and dad were very, very supportive and instilled in me the importance of education.”
Following his graduation from Sweetwater Union High School, Garcia, with friends in tow, joined the U.S. Navy. “We didn’t have a lot of money to pay for college,” remembered Garcia, making the Navy and its generous G.I. Bill a lucrative proposition. He joined the Navy Reserve, allowing him to attend college while serving one weekend a month and a two-week deployment during the summer.
In the meantime, Garcia attended U.C. San Diego where in 1989 he earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, the first step in his march to an optometrist degree.
The next step in his ladder of success came in 1993 when he fulfilled a lifelong dream by earning his doctorate in optometry from the Southern California College of Optometry. Garcia was fortunate to have been selected to receive the Navy’s Health Professional Scholarship Program while in Optometry School. He promoted to lieutenant following his graduation.
It was also the year Garcia found a new home in Lemoore, where he served at Naval Air Station Lemoore as the facility’s Optometry Department Head. “I went on active duty for three years in Lemoore as part of my scholarship payback,” he said.
During his naval career, he’s participated in medical missions worldwide and was responsible for providing care to over 30,000 indigent villagers during Medical Readiness Training Exercises in such far-flung locales as Peru, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Thailand, and Alaska.
He also got his first taste of community service when he joined the Lions Club, a relationship that continues today. He liked the club because one of its primary missions was to eliminate preventable blindness worldwide, providing vision services to those less fortunate.
He left the active Navy, bought Dr. Brent Meek’s local optometry office, and decided to make a go of it in Lemoore. He must have done well because in 2012 Garcia, his business thriving, moved his practice to its current location in Lemoore. He also has a branch office in Hanford.
“My goal is to continue to provide the best eye care and customer services possible to the families here in Kings County, and we strive always to have the latest technology to assist in providing cutting-edge eye care locally.”
He remained in the Naval Reserve until just recently when he retired as a captain after 32 years of combined, reserve and active duty. Upwards of 200 persons attended his impressive retirement ceremony at the Lemoore Civic Auditorium on Sunday, Jan. 21.
“It was important to me to have my civilian friends and family attend the service. I saw it as a great opportunity to expose them to the experience an important and historic part of a Naval tradition, the Navy Retirement Ceremony. I also wanted to show appreciation to them for all the support they’ve provided to me for the past 32 years of service, whether they were co-workers, staff members, Lions Club members or friends,” he said. “They did support me all those years that I was gone on weekends and throughout the summer.”
His list of community service is indeed impressive:
As a local optometrist, Garcia provides free exams and glasses for the Annual Project Homeless Connect in Kings County. He also offers free eye care and glasses for local families in need through the Lions Club, and his practice.
He was on the ground floor with the Lemoore Lions Club when he developed and spearheaded the annual Summer Brew Fest, which since its inauguration has blossomed into one of the town's most significant yearly fundraisers.
He also helped to start the Kings Lions Club and was its founding president. The Kings Lions also created a Brew Fest. Both events donate 100% of the proceeds to various community needs, scholarships, and other local programs.
The list of community projects he and the Lions’ clubs have accomplished is impressive:
• Youth services projects
• Adoption of the Kings Lions Complex
• Annual Lions Speech Contest
• Canned food drives and Christmas ‘Movies with Santa’
• Scholarships
• Eye Exams, glasses, and surgeries
• Community Easter Egg Hunt in Stratford
• Lemoore Senior Citizen Center upgrade
• And more
The former San Diego high schooler, Navy corpsman, optometry student, Ensign, businessman, Navy Captain, planning commissioner, and service club president is still a relatively young guy, and judging from his past actions, he’s liable to be around a long time, mean that Lemoore’s citizens are likely to be the better for it.
