Ilonggo Trailblazer in Pennsylvania

By Alex P. Vidal  

“Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.” —E. B. White

ARMED only with “faith in God”, skills and experience in the farm in his childhood, the story of Alex Soqueña can be considered a combination of the conquests of Orpheus, Artemis, and Odysseus, all skillful and talented gods in the Greek mythology.

From a humble beginning in Sta. Barbara, Iloilo in the Philippines, Soqueña, a father of two, managed to conquer adversity in life from a ragtag farm boy, jeepney driver, engineer in a reputable international firm, and now a trailblazer in the world of international forwarding service in the United States.

Soqueña, 52, one of the most productive and active agents of New Jersey-based Magcor International Forwarders Association (Magcor), a Filipino-run balikbayan box forwarding company, hails from Lanag, a small village with a population of 2,276 in Sta. Barbara, a landlocked municipality in the coastal province of Iloilo, Philippines.

“That’s where I began my struggle early in life,” hissed Soqueña, exhibiting a smidgen of nostalgia while showing the calluses or corns on his fingers and palms, the thick, hardened areas of skin acquired through repeated friction or pressure when he was a teenager.

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To eke out a living, Soqueña worked in the farm while studying at the Sta. Barbara National Comprehensive High School (SBNCHS). After finishing high school, he asked permission from his father Pastor to take up engineering in college.

Pastor initially had misgivings about the course and its length, but Soqueña persevered and earned a degree in electrical engineering at the Western Institute of Technology (WIT) in La Paz, Iloilo City in 1995.

His baptism of fire came after graduation when Soqueña trained in Olongapo City and became part of the crack engineers picked to build the highly touted 18 villas for the 18 leaders that attended the 1996 APEC Summit in the Philippines.

The villas, located in Subic Bay, near Olongapo, were a major part of the infrastructure project for the summit built to house 18.

The villas served as a showcase for the Philippines’ ability to host a major international event and were designed to provide both accommodation and security for the attending leaders, thus Soqueña and his fellow engineers earned raves and accolades in the engineering industry.

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Before being recruited in his first job abroad, Soqueña stayed in Maypajo, Caloocan City in Metro Manila and dabbled in driving a public utility jeep plying the Divisoria route for a living.

His accomplishments in the APEC Summit villas project didn’t escape the attention of well-intentioned contractors abroad and in 1997, Soqueña was recruited by Scottish-American Buddy Quin to work in a multi-million-dollar project of J. Ray McDermott in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The Ilonggo trailblazer landed in the global company’s $247-Million project, handling tasks in the testing commissioning division and was the project’s certified terminator.

Operating in over 54 countries, McDermott International, Ltd provides engineering and construction services to the energy industry.

McDermott has more than 30,000 employees, as well as a fleet of specialty marine construction vessels and fabrication facilities around the world.

His stint at J. Ray McDermott, a company acquired by McDermott International in 1999 that specialized in oilfield construction and later expanded into engineering and construction services, especially for offshore oil and gas projects, earned Soqueña assignments in 42 countries all over the world.

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“God has been really good to me because I never spent a single centavo from my own pocket while working in Dubai,” he revealed.

Soqueña’s love affair with McDermott International, a global energy services company, providing engineering, procurement, construction, and installation services, ended when he immigrated to the United States together with his wife, Cheryl, a registered nurse, and their son, now a US navy.

The Soqueña couple produced another child, a daughter now in high school, when they settled in Enola, a census-designated place (CDP) located along the Susquehanna River in East Pennsboro Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania in 2007.

Soqueña’s first job as immigrant was with the D&H Distributing, distributor of IT, business technology, electronics, consumer solutions, home solutions for reseller and retailer serving SMBs, verticals and consumers.

Soqueña left the company to start a Cinderella-like journey in his new love interest—international forwarding—where he started his own business, Magcor International Forwarder’s-Pennsylvania, which delivers balikbayan boxes and packages from “the US to any point of the Philippines.”

“In this business, I manage my own time,” Soqueña stressed. “With faith, nothing is impossible with God.”

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Soqueña credits his patron saint, St. Michael Archangel, for his “safe journey” while picking up, loading and unloading balikbayan boxes daily from the residential areas to the Magcor warehouse in Metuchen, New Jersey.

He considers the Immaculate Conception religious necklace given by his customer as a “gift” that guides him and his aide, Carlos, on the road.

Most recently, Soqueña and Carlos overcame a “very close call” while their van was entering the 95-south ramp at Portchester, New York when a speeding car running on the opposite direction “almost struck me,” he narrated in a social media post.

“I know God was with me at the moment I hit the brake very quickly. (I was) just an inch away from a fatal accident. Thank you, Lord, for keeping me safe always,” concluded Soqueña, who makes it a habit to distribute gifts to his neighbors, co-agents, and high school alma matter, where he was recently invited but declined as inspirational speaker.

Soqueña has older brother Melvin, a teacher in Iloilo; two sisters—XZ, an accountant in Iloilo, and Verenice, an accountant in Coquitlam, Canada.

Because of his experience and what he has been through in life, Soqueña quipped, “I’m always proud of my achievements and I fear nothing with God on my side.”

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)