By Molly Balison
No one knows the ins and outs of Interfaith Sanctuary’s emergency shelter better than Ernest “Buzz” Garcia. As Facility Director, he keeps the building running, the lights on, and the chaos maintained. Few people know that he wasn’t always the head honcho of the shelter, but rose from humble beginnings.
Originally from San Francisco, Buzz wound up in Boise after one too many unpaid traffic tickets came back to bite him. “They just decided to pull my driver’s license,” he said. “Which makes it really tough when you have to drive to work.”
He started biking miles to work under the blazing California sun until both physical and mental exhaustion caught up to him. Eventually, he lost his job and his housing.
Unable to provide for his family consistently, his wife and daughter made their way to Boise in search of resources and landed at Interfaith Sanctuary while Buzz resorted to couch surfing in California while trying to find a job despite the barrier of not having an ID. In January 2009, After six months of trial and error, Buzz decided to join his family at Interfaith in hopes for a fresh start. Walking into a homeless shelter was a foreign feeling to him. Staying at one overnight for survival was even more humbling.
Buzz found himself in a waiting period — waiting on stability, waiting on housing, waiting on hope. However, he is not one to sit idle, so he started volunteering with the Work Ready team, a group of guests who volunteered within Interfaith to become equipped to enter the workforce. He could do anything from fixing light fixtures to water heaters. Fixing things gave Buzz some control when life seemed to unravel.
“For the first six months, it was pretty bleak,” he said about his early time in the shelter. “But then, things started to come together.”
Their case manager’s compassion and determination to help eliminate barriers, lifted Buzz’s family out of hopelessness into a home. Right before Thanksgiving in November 2009, they were able to find and rent a mobile home. Having stability, thanks to the resources that helped build them up, was a relief.
After being housed and employed for a year, Buzz felt compelled to return to Interfaith as a volunteer. He found a friendship with the Operations Manager at the time, Dan Ault, who recognized Buzz’s skills and began tasking him with projects big and small. The staff realized much of an impact Buzz had in the shelter and offered him a job.
“They go, ‘Do you want to be facilities or do you want to be maintenance?’ and I go, ‘How about facility maintenance?’” he said.
After spending seven years as Facility Manager, he was promoted to Facility Director in 2015. He has been an integral part of holding the emergency together ever since.
“There’s nobody here who really knows what I do well enough to train someone else in it,” he said.
From couch surfing in San Jose to holding the keys to one of Boise’s most critical shelters, his journey is one of resilience, routine, quiet redemption, and unwavering work ethic. He proved that with persistence and purpose, both struggle and success can happen under one roof.
Buzz expressed that being homeless for a time allows him to empathize with guests while also being a source of authority and not letting his experience interfere with his work. “You don’t know where they are or where they’re going, you just see them at their lowest point,” he said. “You can be living in a homeless shelter with no income but work your way back to proving, owning your own home, driving a new car, and pulling your own weight.”
He encourages folks experiencing homelessness that no matter the number of years they’ve spent making mistakes and attempting to start over, there’s still an opportunity to rebuild.
The director never expected to be a homeowner, let alone maintain a homeless shelter, but he found his calling after decades of searching. “Just because you haven’t done it yet doesn’t mean you’re not going to do it,” he said. “It’s never too late to move forward.”
