{ EDUARDO ESTRADA | 45 YEARS OLD | CIS MALE - HE/HIM | BOARD MEMBER OF ESTRADA SECURITY/OWNER OF HMB FARMER'S MARKET | OCEAN COLONY }
Eduardo Estrada was born into the rather small Estrada family in Guatemala City in 1978 to rather loud fanfare. As the only child of his aging mother and father, the family and its friends celebrated that the heir to the Estrada namesake was male. Considering the civil war that raged through the entirety of the 80s, Eduardo’s father chose to relocate the family north, eventually settling in Anaheim County, California where the older Estrada’s brother had already made his home.
The Estrada Brothers used the last of their money from their father (a famed politician who had recently passed) to start a small business helping with security installations and occasionally being bouncers in the front of local liquor stores. Considering the two had extensive experience in street fighting when they were in their 20’s, the business picked up rather quickly and soon Eduardo’s father and uncle were hiring others to help pick up the slack the two couldn’t handle on their own. With that, Estrada Security was created, and Eduardo was accidentally staring down the barrel of a family business to enter when he was old enough.
With the weight of the family name on the young boy’s shoulders Eduardo was enrolled in the best schools possible, even having a live-in Nanny to help educate him before regimented schooling age. He spent the days of his childhood at school and then the evenings helping his mother around the home they all shared together considering the men of the home left each evening to earn as much money as possible. The business thrived and Eduardo did as well, but he felt himself wanting more. He didn’t like the idea of just working for the family, he wanted to make his own name and the more he moved into his high school years the more he realised what he actually enjoyed doing. Eduardo wanted to help others find the success that his family had and, with his father and uncle’s business-savvy minds helping teach him how to run a business, Ed found himself passing those lessons on to his peers. Or really anyone who would listen.
Once he graduated, Eduardo skipped college in favour of joining Eduardo Security. He had assumed since he’d spent half of his teens leaning the book keeping and business dealings that once he was ready to join the business, he would be somewhere in the office space to start with, but his father had other thoughts. The older man insisted on Eduardo working his way up from a starting position as a bouncer. As much as this frustrated him, Eduardo understood the lessons his father was trying to instil in him. It wasn’t until his father’s passing that Eduardo was given a spot on the board of directors. He was 26 and looking to give a leg up to those he’d met on each step up the family’s corporate ladder. His uncle understood the vision he was trying to create for the business and ensured that Ed was left in charge of finances, allowing him to allocate some funds to ‘start up’ companies if he say value in them.
It was through work that Eduardo met Joaquinn Ignacio and as soon as he was able to help finance the dream his friend had in opening his own club. The two became rather fast friends and Eduardo was proud to see J’s business flourish. He admired the man’s insistence on making sure the women he employed were well looked after, something he had seen first hand during his bouncer days wasn’t always the case. His friendship with J morphed into more of a brotherly relationship and within a year of the younger man relocating to HMB, Eduardo found himself looking for real estate there too. During the few months looking for a house of his own, it became quite apparent that the two were more than happy to stay housemates and Eduardo has lived with his makeshift brother for 5 years now.
