Organizing for the people: Steven Soto works to further the futures of Mexican-American grocers.

Steven Soto sometimes suffers from inner turmoil.

His professional duties as president and chief executive officer of the Mexican-American Grocers Association take him away from spending time with his three teenage children.

"That's probably my crisis, not being there all the time for my children and watching them grow," he says somberly.

If he could give anyone advice, it would be "family is first, because in the end that's all you have. Nothing can't be rescheduled or changed in lieu of something you've got to do with your kids," he emphasizes.

Soto certainly isn't around to see his children off to school in the morning. He leaves his La Verne home at 4:45 a.m. and arrives at his downtown Los Angeles office promptly at 5:30, in time to make phone calls back East.

By 6 a.m. he knows his contact at Philip Morris Cos. in New York is in his office, and his contact at Miller Brewing Co. in Milwaukee is in his office at 7 a.m. Los Angeles time, he explains. The rest of MAGA's staff comes in at 8 a.m.

His perseverance has paid off. Soto has been president of the Mexican-American Grocers Association for 10 years and in that time has multiplied its membership from 200 to 10,000.

Soto, who is "very astute" and "always speaks his mind," has "brought this organization from nothing into a prominent organization," says Morrie Notrica, owner of L.A.-based 32nd Street Market and a friend of Soto's.

"I felt the only way corporate America was going to listen to us was by having a big voice and having a big stick," says Soto, who is half-Mexican and half-Native American.

Most of MAGA's members are neither Mexican nor Latino themselves, but 30 percent of business at the members' stores must come from the Latino or Mexican population. Every major grocery chain in the nation belongs, Soto says.

"I think in the next five years we'll have close to 60,000 or 70,000 members," he says confidently. "That's my goal. I know it can happen."

To make this goal a reality, black-haired, bearded Soto says the association plans to open offices in San Antonio, Chicago and New York, with the San Antonio office opening by November 1993. The association has about 250 members in Texas.

It already has members nationwide, but won't be looked at as a national trade association until it runs offices across the country as well, Soto explains.

Another of Soto's goals is for MAGA to open an institute downtown where unskilled workers will be trained as cashiers, managers and for other grocery store posts. The training institute is expected to open in January.

Typical of many in the grocery industry, Soto grew up working in his parents' grocery store in East Los Angeles 

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Because he was the boss' son, Soto says he was always expected to perform better than the other employees and wasn't always praised for it. "Even if we (he and his brother) were there 18 hours, you never got the type of satisfaction that you were looking for at a young age," he says.

He started working in the store at age 13, sweeping floors and dusting shelves.

That was where he learned Spanish too, since his bilingual parents, who spoke both Spanish and English, never spoke Spanish in the home.

Soto worked his way up and held the title of vice president of operations at the East Los Angeles store from 1972 to 1977.

Then in 1978 Soto and his brother Manuel started operating another store their parents owned in Pico Rivera, Save More Market. The two ran the store until 1985. From there Soto returned to run the Los Angeles store until he started working at MAGA full-time six years ago. Previously he had worked there only part-time.

Soto's parents and uncle founded MAGA in 1977 because they felt that as independent grocers they weren't getting their fair share of deals from large manufacturers or their fair share of advertising dollars, among other things, Soto says.

He adds that many large corporations view independent Mexican and Latino grocery stores as small and insignificant. "I love the challenge of turning that around," he says.

Soto recalls a trip he took back East, when he first became MAGA's president, to visit a large corporation. The association's advertising agency showed the corporation's representatives ads depicting Latinos in nice homes.

Do you think this is reality? a marketing representative from the corporation cried, adding that she thought of Mexicans as living in a ranch or in an apartment with several children in one room.

"I couldn't believe the question," Soto says. "I first thought, 'Jesus, this person is racist."

As it turned out, that was just her perception of the community. Soto ended up inviting representatives from the corporation to come to Los Angeles, see how Latinos lived and visit the stores. "That company is probably one of our better clients" now, he says.

Soto is quite a diplomat, according to Notrica. "In his position you have to be a diplomat, like Henry Kissinger," he says.

Soto says he made more money running a grocery store than he does at MAGA, and that his annual salary is somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000.

"Being president of MAGA is not going to get me a new car. It's not going to get me a Mercedes Benz or a new home," he says. "It's more of helping others."

Soto's philosophy for good leadership is to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, more experienced and on the same "motivational high" that you are on, Soto says.

"I've been successful in surrounding myself with the right people. I'm only as good as my staff is," he says.

Soto's parents own one store, La Quebradita, in East Los Angeles. Every so often they tell their son they will buy another store if Soto will leave MAGA and run it.

"My work's not done," he says he tells them.

Steven Soto

Native of: El Sereno

Resident of: La Verne

Age: 38

Education: High school diploma from Cathedral High School