The long and short of it
Garcia mid-clip in his dorm with fellow Spartan Aaron Dennings, ’13 Finance.
Pedro Garcia has perfect hair. And so do his 60 regular clients.
The senior broadcasting major has scheduled as many as 10 haircuts a day between classes, homework and his part-time gig at Cumulus Radio, which locally owns KGO, KFOG and 107.7—“The Bone.”
While he’s never been trained to cut hair, he says it’s in his blood. His grandfather and great-grandfather were barbers. Grandpa Garcia even had his own shop in El Josefino de Allende, Mexico. “I just picked up some clippers when a friend said he needed a haircut,” says Garcia.
Adept at doing all male haircuts, Garcia says he has learned by watching barbers. And if he needs to learn how to give a new cut, he looks it up on Youtube. Before his junior year, he brought his clippers to campus to see if he could make some money on the side, and, he says, “it blew up—quick.”
He has cut hair (and vacuumed it up!) in the common area of Joe West Hall and in his living room in Campus Village B. To drum up business, he once set up shop on the porch of a fraternity house. Not bad for a student who decided to major in broadcasting instead of business.
Before landing his current position at Cumulus, Garcia interned at CBS Radio—and for the Raider’s radio broadcast. But he’d prefer television. When he graduates this semester, he hopes to work at ESPN. “Whether I’m on camera or behind the scenes, I want to be involved in sports,” he says. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”
Either way, he’ll be ready for his close-up.
