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By Holly Blair

Taking risks is hard and scary sometimes, but it is necessary to fulfill dreams and live up to your own expectations, explains Carlos Hernandez, owner of La Abejita, a Mexican grocery store on Stone Drive in Kingsport.

“Close your eyes and jump,” he said. “You have to be willing to take risks to get anything, and faith, you have to have faith.”

Hernandez and his wife Eva have owned the business for two years now, a business that he traded his only truck for.

“It is funny how it happened,” he said. “While I was putting up posters for a party that I was having the owner asked if I would be interested in buying the place. All I had to offer was the Suburban, and she said, Okay.”

While employed at Strongwell Co. in Bristol, Tenn., he would host parties in Bristol on the weekends for extra money. That led Hernandez to a huge financial adventure.

“After the trade I have been adding and upgrading,” he said. “It is like walking up an escalator that is coming down. If you stop even for a second, you go back down toward to bottom.”

La Abejita means little bee in English.

“That is funny too,” Hernandez said about how the store got its name. “Eva lost her mother 10 years ago, and ever since then a little bee has been following us around,” he said.

Eva’s brother, who lives in Mexico, designed the sign and the bee on the front of the store.

“It looks just like a bee to you, but not to us,” Hernandez said. “The bee represents her mother, it has long lashes like her mother, and ‘pescaguapos’ [curls around a woman’s face] just as her mother did.”

Hernandez came to the United States with only two shirts, two pairs of jeans and one pair of shoes in 1998. Now he is a business owner and important part of the Kingsport community.

“I worked hard,” he said. “I have been very blessed and have found nice, good people that have helped me along the way. This, the U.S., is the country of opportunity. Some people don’t like to take risks, or don’t see it. But if I had kept my truck or stayed in Mexico, I wouldn’t be here today. Just close you eyes and jump, see what happens.”

With the cost of living constantly rising it is hard enough to support oneself and immediate family. But inside La Abejita you will see people finding the extra money to send back home to their families, or purchasing pre-paid phone cards to call home.

“I would say about 98 percent of the people who come here come for pre-paid phone cards or to transfer money,” said Hernandez.

Not just local residents visit the store.

“People come here during the year from Florida, Chicago, California, from all over while they are working here for seasonal or construction work,” Hernandez said. “We have had a lot of business from the people working on the new hospital they are building up the road.”

Hernandez said his customer base is diverse.

“Most of our customers are Hispanic, but not necessarily Mexican,” he said. “There are not only Hispanic people who come in. I would say it is about 60/40.”

Before sitting down to eat, Luis Daniel and Luis Gerardo walk up to the register to fill out their paperwork to send money back home to Veracruz.

“I have been here about three months,” said Daniel. “I have my visa and I come and work between six and seven months, then go home.”

They agree that the store’s wire service is convenient.

“It used to be hard to find somewhere to send money, but not now. Now there are places all over where you can send money from,” Gerardo said.

Every week they send nearly their entire paychecks. Both men work construction on a water line in Abingdon, Va. from 7 a.m. till 5 p.m.

“We used to send money from El Corita [a grocery in Lynn Garden], but tonight we came here to eat also,” said Daniel.

Outside in the parking lot is a camper from which Eva serves lunch and dinner. Daniel and Gerardo enjoy their dinner of “tortas,” a type of Mexican sandwich, and Coke outside under the camper’s awning.

“This is our first time eating here,” said Daniel. “We came here to send money home, but the food is very good.”

It is also Sally Hightower’s first visit to La Abejita.

“It’s good food,” she said as she ate her taco. Hightower just moved to the Kingsport area from Houston, Texas.

“There are not many places around here where you can get good, fast Mexican food,” she said. “In Texas they are all over the place, but this is good.”