Romeo Maldonado of Lakeville is retiring after 27 years at the Flint Hills Resources refinery in Rosemount, but he won't be doing much fishing.
The affable Maldonado, 61, is going home to Guatemala to help the impoverished village of San Lucas Toliman, where he grew up. A volunteer fireman in Flint's fire department for more than 12 years, he plans to teach firefighting, fire safety and rescue techniques to San Lucas firefighters. He also will donate some basic firefighting gear.
Maldonado said he was invited to join his hometown fire department, where most firefighters are equipped only with gloves and rubber boots. There's no siren to summon firefighters; they respond when they hear the city bell ringing.
"We are very poor. So I see a lot of needs," he said.
Maldonado studied in college to be an elementary teacher, but his life took an abrupt turn when he was about 19. He met a young woman from Minnesota who visited his Mayan village, which sits on beautiful Lake Atitlan between two dormant volcanoes. Patricia Smith was part of a mission team sent by the Diocese of New Ulm with a truckload of blankets and medicine to work in the San Lucas Catholic church and school.
The two soon were married and returned to Minnesota in 1970 to show off their first daughter to her Minnesota grandparents.
"I drove the [mission] truck to Coon Rapids and she said, 'We're staying,'" Maldonado said. It was January and he soon discovered that "this is Eskimo country."
He got a summer job laying sod, had another daughter, then worked 10 years making cranes for American Hoist in St. Paul until he was laid off in 1984. He applied to be an equipment operator at what was then Koch Refinery. He was hired by a music-loving manager who heard him playing an organ in the background when his wife answered the telephone.
