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Segismundo Lucas Valdes is the owner and founder of PE Enterprises, Inc—the parent company of GoWesty Campers. He was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1960. In 1962, he and his family immigrated to the US as political refugees. In 1964, they moved to San Francisco, where he and his two brothers and sister were raised by his parents, four grandparents, and a great-grandmother. He attended Riordan High School in San Francisco and graduated in 1978. At age 17, he moved to San Luis Obispo to study Mechanical Engineering at Cal Poly, SLO. He earned his BSME degree in 1984 and his professional engineering license in mechanical engineering (PEME) in 1990. He was married to Kathleen Mary Steers in 1985. Later that year they had a son, Lucas Grant Valdes. In 1988, their daughter Clara Rae Valdes arrived. All four members of the Valdes family currently work together at GoWesty.
Here is the story of GoWesty, in his words:
GoWesty started life as Ziggy’s Garage. What? Four years and two more student-loans-spent-on-tools later, I graduated from Cal Poly SLO with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and was off to my home ground, the San Francisco Bay Area, with a brand spankin' new diploma and in search of riches. Eight years later, married to Kathy, and now with two kids—Lucas Jr. and Clara—a Professional Engineering license, and all student loans paid back in full... it was back to the beautiful central coast in search for a better life for our young family. Life in a cubical in the Bay Area? What the heck was I thinking! My dad, Rene, was horrified. Imagine the look on his face when I told him of my plans to give up my engineering career, “To do what?” So there I was, on my back in a one-bay shop, working on—you guessed it—Volkswagens and Porsches. You can take the engineer out of the grease pile, but you can’t take the grease monkey out of the engineer! My dad predicted doom and regret. Today, he and I are both glad that did not turn out to be the case... A couple years later, around 1994, good fortune came to our young family. For one thing, we found a bit larger house to rent here in Los Osos, just big enough to include the piano uncle Rey gave to Clara on her birthday (not just any birthday, but her actual birthday). Anyway, with the help of a friend, I loaded the piano onto a small trailer and headed for the new house. On the way I wondered how the heck just the two of us were going to get that piano off the trailer and up all those stairs… As we turned the corner onto the street the house is on, there he was: Taylor (and a few friends) playing hacky sack in front of the house they were sharing as roommates, right across the street from our new place. Taylor turned out to be a gear head just like me! What luck! He and his friends helped us move the piano, and that was the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship. Taylor is still here working with me, albeit after coming and going a couple of times, getting degrees and/or married, and/or lost in places as far away as Humboldt, Alaska, New Zealand, and Pozo. We worked together on and off for several years under the name of my second company, PE Products, restoring vintage Volkswagens and Porsches, and making seat belt kits for those and other vintage vehicles. Around 1999, I got a call from Gary Smyth, who was operating a tiny online parts company out of his garage he called GoWesty Camper Products. He was interested in our approach to the problem of finding the right tires for Westys, and our approach to solving a host of other problems related to these vehicles. One thing led to another, and before you know it, we were doing all of his new product development, warehousing, shipping and receiving. In September of 2001 (yep, that horrible September), I purchased the GoWesty name from Gary and, with the hard work of a dedicated staff, turned what was essentially just a name into a center of all things Bus, Vanagon, and Eurovan. And here we are today. Over thirty of us are now living, breathing and loving these unique vehicles, in this most unique of places, on the beautiful central coast, Los Osos, California. Not Pismo Beach, but still all the clams you can eat! And here we are, indeed… Our Mission
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GoWesty! Camper Products is a privately owned company specializing in parts, accessories, sales and service of Volkswagen (R) campers. It is not affiliated in any way with Volkswagen of America or Volkswagen AG. "Vanagon", "Bus", "VW", "Volkswagen", and "Eurovan" are registered trademarks and should be considered as such throughout our entire website.
