Patricia Monterroso leaves her house wearing high heels, but if her unloading services company needs extra help, she doesn't hesitate to put on boots or sneakers to get in on the physical work.

“At 50, I'm proud to be able to unload if we're short-staffed,” says Patricia, the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, born in Gardena, California.

She has Five years ago, in The midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, she lost her job in the container loading and unloading industry where she had worked for 26 years.

“I started working in the warehouses because they offered flexible hours; I was a single mother. I learned all the ins and outs of unloading and storage, and then I was promoted to the office to handle staff recruitment.”

When her job was eliminated in 2020, and she was forced to reassess her employment situation, she saw it as an opportunity to create her own company, which she named Red Notice Solutions.

“I started with a team of five "When I started, I went more than a year and a half without getting paid. break a dollar into four pieces. It helped a lot that my husband had a job, and while the company was getting off the ground, I got a part-time job. We lived paycheck to paycheck,” she recalls.

Starting from scratch was quite a challenge because the container unloading industry is dominated by men.

“Thank God, in January 2021, a company hired me and offered me 20 containers a week to unload. By demonstrating my ability and hiring more people, in six months, they started giving us 60 containers a week; we were unloading 10 to 15 containers a day. That's how I started to grow.”

But to get to that point,He had to knock on 50 doors and wait months for an opportunity.

“The best recommendation is the word of the people you have served with hard work and honesty,” he says.

In the process of growing his company, he found that one of his biggest challenges was the competition and how to stand out from the rest.

“There's a lot of it, and as Latinos, we don't help or support each other; and the industry's policies have been a bit of a challenge, but I've overcome the obstacles with honesty work; and everything I've achieved, I've earned through hard work.

“It helped me train my "The team, who had the same drive and optimism as me."

Of course, she had many fears.

"It's the fear of not succeeding when you run out of savings. My husband and I invested everything we had, but I was very motivated by his belief in me, and my former boss was also very supportive."

The driving force behind her perseverance was the strong desire to leave her son a legacy.

"I'm doing this for my son; and because I have to fight for what I want," she told herself.

Her dream, she says, is to become part of a national business team.

“I want to go from coast to coast, establish contractors all over the United States, and do this heavy lifting through my teams.”

Has all this effort been worth it to have your own company?

“Absolutely, I can now pay myself a salary, and I see the fruits of my labor; and I learned that you are your own challenge, because you have to understand that it's very difficult for a company to get off the ground in six months. It's little by little, and you have to make smart decisions to grow.”

If there's one thing that fills her with pride, it's providing a salary to the people who work with her, and that they want to come back the next day to continue supporting her.

“My company wouldn't be possible without the people who are supporting me behind the scenes. I am nothing without my team that supports me. Because of them, I am here. Without them, I am nothing,” she says.

Although she acknowledges that finding staff has become complicated in the face of the anti-immigrant climate, she says that her team has managed ingenious to get the work done.

“Supervisors have stepped in to unload themselves, and it helps us a lot to work with the flexibility that people give us.We handled the pieces like chess to unload the containers.”

To Latinas, she says there is nothing they cannot achieve, and that they shouldn't be afraid of failure.

“If you fail, you'll learn to improve things; and if we can be mothers, wives, and take care of a house all at the same time, we can also build a successful business.”