Jose Rodriguez: Searching for Dulcinea

Jose Rodriguez relaxes comfortably in an armchair in the receiving area of his warehouse in West Palm Beach, FL, where he works as an interior designer. He is discussing his latest project, a multi-million dollar renovation on an 18,000-square-foot mansion on Palm Beach Island. A bespectacled man of 59, Rodriguez has spent the better part of the last two decades providing his exquisite design services to local elites.

Just as in his work, nothing about Rodriguez is out of place. Clad in a burgundy crewneck sweater and dark jeans, Rodriguez very much looks the part, right from his ultra-fashionable tortoise-shell glasses down to the blue suede driving loafers he wears with aplomb. At first, or even second glance, one might never guess that this power player in the design community once came from the humblest of beginnings.

Rodriguez was born in Bayamon, Puerto Rico in 1960 to Ana Isabelo and Jose Rodriguez Baez. Like so many Puerto Ricans at in those days, Rodriguez’s family was poor and living conditions were extremely difficult.

“Puerto Rico, back in the ‘60s was like a third-world country,” he says. “There was no water. We had to go to the well daily, sometimes twice a day. For bathing we depended on rainwater that was accumulated in a well on the roof.”

The Rodriguez family owned a ten-acre plot of land on which they raised livestock and grew assorted tropical fruits. Even though Rodriguez considers himself lucky to have had a well on the property, there were no further conveniences of any kind. The stove was nothing more than a table with four stones with twigs placed in between to start a fire.

“We barely had electricity,” he says. “We had one light bulb; the rest were candles and gas lamps.”

In order to make ends meet, food that the land produced was often sold or shared with the workers the property employed. From an early age though, Rodriguez knew that he wanted more than what he had been given.

“For me, the harder the situation, the more it made me realize that I wanted to get out,” he says. “The only way out was education.”

Rodriguez grew up an avid reader, and became a great fan of Spanish literature. Even when supplied with the many novels, essays, and books of poetry at school, he couldn’t get enough.

“I read Don Quixote de La Mancha three times,” he laughs.

Rodriguez credits much of his desire to learn to the teachers he met throughout his formative schooling, especially his first grade teacher, Señora Nuñez. It was during his time in school that Rodriguez first caught a glimpse of the world beyond that of his immediate surroundings.

“We lived in this tiny bubble that we thought were happy with,” he says. “But once you start getting exposed to other people, and to classmates, then you start wondering what do I have to do to get [what they have]? And that’s what gives you the fire.”

Rodriguez used that fire to become a phenomenal success in his studies and was valedictorian of his 1978 high school class, graduating a year early at 17. He was accepted to the University of Puerto Rico where he studied medicine for three years, before ultimately deciding to pursue his dream to work in architecture.

“I wanted to be an architect,” he says. “My family pushed me toward medicine. For me, it was deciding to be the person that I am versus the person that they wanted me to be.”

It was also during this time that Rodriguez found himself behind an unfamiliar barrier: language. While attending university, he had landed a job working at a bank through a family friend. As a rule, nearly all Puerto Ricans grow up speaking Spanish in the household, and Rodriguez was no different. But, since Spanish was his only language, he encountered great difficulties applying for better positions in banking.

“I thought that because of my education that all doors were going to be opened for me, but I didn’t speak English,” he says. “Even Spanish banks want you to speak English.”

So in 1981, a 21-year-old Rodriguez packed his belongings, and set off by plane to New York City, where through a friend he had arranged for an apartment in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. Because he was born an American citizen, Rodriguez describes the process as “very easy” and encountered no issues at customs. Indeed, nothing more than his Puerto Rico driver’s license was required to prove his identity.

However, Williamsburg in 1981 was not what Rodriguez had envisioned for life in America. All of his perceptions of the United States had come from what he had seen in movies, TV shows and magazines. The reality of being a stranger in a strange land all but unable to communicate with English-speaking populace was a difficult pill to for Rodriguez to swallow.

“Why don’t you move to the Bronx?” a friend asked him, not long after Rodriguez’s arrival. “There are a lot of Puerto Ricans living in the Bronx; everybody speaks Spanish.”

But Rodriguez found himself unwilling to take the easy path, knowing that it would not improve his speaking abilities. So Rodriguez remained in Brooklyn, where he found that he enjoyed the eclectic mix of cultures that pervaded that borough.

“It was like I was thrown in the pool and I had to either swim or drown,” he jokes. “It took me about a year before I got comfortable.”

Within a month of his entry to the United States, Rodriguez landed his first job, one which would only last for three weeks. He worked the night shift as an ice cream salesman in Times Square during one of the area’s worst periods. Pimps and drugs were on every corner.

“Back then, you really had to watch yourself,” he says.

After his shift, Rodriguez frequently ran the whole way from his tiny shop on 42nd St. to the subway station. There, he would board the first of three trains back to his apartment in Brooklyn. Though he never complained about the difficulties he faced, Rodriguez knew that his job was not sustainable.

As luck would have it, Rodriguez received another job offer before his first month selling ice cream ended, one where he wouldn’t need to interact with people and could practice his English until he was conversational. A neighbor approached him about a janitorial position at an office building in Brooklyn. Rodriguez readily agreed.

“It was better than taking the train,” he laughs.

Rodriguez began working for the company that would employ him for the next five years. He proved himself so proficient at his cleaning duties that within his first year he was promoted to working the mailroom. Not long after that he received another promotion to the technical department where he installed phones and repaired computers. By the time he left the company in 1987, Rodriguez was a building manager responsible for two office locations.

About a year before leaving in Brooklyn, Rodriguez met his partner for life, Joe Accurso. The two have now been together for 35 years.

“When you meet somebody like that, you think that’s the person I’m going to spend the rest of my life with,” Rodriguez says. “He was very supportive of my dreams; he really helped me a lot.”

It didn’t hurt that Joe’s family took an instant liking to Rodriguez.

“He was a very trustworthy young man, the family really loved him,” says Joe’s sister, Regina Accurso. “He fit in with everybody so well.”

So highly thought of was Rodriguez, that he was once able to convince the entire Accurso family and friends to don plaid flannel shirts – a penchant of Joe’s – while attending one of Joe’s birthday parties.

Together, Rodriguez and Accurso moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania in 1987 where they bought a house in the countryside. There, Rodriguez began working as a dishwasher at a local fine-dining establishment. Once again, he found himself at the bottom of the ladder; and once again, Rodriguez proved his mettle. He worked his way up past cook, broiler, Sous Chef, and pastries before finally becoming Head Chef after eight years of hard work.

Unfortunately for Rodriguez, there were also human obstacles to overcome.

“I never knew what prejudice was until I moved to Pennsylvania,” he says. “It was an Anglo-Saxon community and I felt like I was the only Puerto Rican for miles. When they would see me in front of my house, they would call the cops. When I decided to go for a walk in the beautiful country, they would call the cops. The cops would bring me to my house like I was a criminal.”

On one of these occasions, after being escorted home by the Chief of Police himself, Rodriguez had finally had enough.

“I would like you to come inside my house,” Rodriguez told him.

“No, what for?” the Chief inquired.

“I want you to see how I live,” responded Rodriguez. “I want you to see who I am. Please come in.”

The Chief reluctantly agreed, and once inside he marveled at the state of the interior, which had been intricately designed and was immaculately clean.

“Wow, this is…very nice,” the Chief said.

“Don’t judge the house from the outside,” warned Rodriguez. “And don’t judge me because I’m dark.”

Rodriguez ran the kitchen for his last two years in New Hope. But the wear and tear of the work eventually took its toll, and Rodriguez knew he was ready for yet another change.

“I loved cooking,” he says. “But, it was too much. Even though I was doing the stuff that I liked, it wasn’t what I really had a passion for; that was interior design.”

So Rodriguez enrolled at The Art Institute of Philadelphia where he knew he was finally on the path to pursue his dreams.

“I loved it,” he whispers emphatically. “I loved it because I was doing what I wanted to do. I was getting to a point in my life where I was going to do exactly what I wanted, and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

However, when his bosses at the restaurant caught wind that he was attending school for design and not for cooking, they decided to punish Rodriguez by cutting his hours and scheduling him to work the night shift, as he had been taking night classes.

Undaunted, Rodriguez found two more jobs and worked all three concurrently to make up for the hours lost at the restaurant. He worked tirelessly over 40 hours per week and attended design school full-time until he graduated in 1997, once again as valedictorian.

“That was the greatest revenge I could take,” he says gleefully.

Within a week of graduation, Rodriguez was hired by Ethan Allen, a large interior furniture and design chain with over 300 stores across the United States. He worked diligently for the next decade and was recognized twice with prestigious Circle of Excellence award for his design and customer service.

Unfortunately, the loss of Joe’s father in the mid-2000s hit him hard, and it led he and Rodriguez to move from rural Pennsylvania all the way down to the sunny shores of South Florida in 2007. Rodriguez’s manager was able to get him hired at another Ethan Allen store, but a new area also presented new challenges.

“The design in Florida is so much different than the design in Bucks County,” he says. “And of course I came with this big target on my back from the Circle of Excellence, so those people were not very warm and fuzzy towards me.”

Rodriguez remained with Ethan Allen for three more years, before landing a job with Jack Fhillips Design in West Palm Beach. From there, he was sent all over the United States to perform his exquisite services in places like Chestnut Hill, just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, and Park Ave in New York City. After learning how much he enjoyed his work and meeting so many new faces, Rodriguez says he noticed a major change in himself while in the service of the heavy hitters he would design for.

“I became more assertive of who I am,” he says. “My bosses trusted me to go sit down with millionaires and say ‘this is what we’re going to do.’”

Unfortunately, a cruel twist of fate left Rodriguez with a difficult decision to make. Joe suffered a stroke, and Rodriguez knew he could not work a job that took him away from home and while caring for his partner. Rodriguez ultimately left his job, and dutifully assisted Joe in returning to health over the course of a year.

This put a real strain on the couple’s finances and Rodriguez knew he would need to return to work. One day, he received a call from a woman in nearby Wellington who was simply looking to have some pillows made.

“At that point I was willing to take anything,” he says.

So Rodriguez made a house call, and upon his arrival, found that his client was anything but fixated on pillows.

“She told me ‘I hate this sofa, and I hate this chair, and I hate this and I hate that,” Rodriguez says.

Though Rodriguez was eager for more work, he patiently explained that, as was the case with the majority of his clients, he wanted to get to her tastes and her desires better before taking on more complex projects. This so pleased his new client, that she ended up hiring Rodriguez for an extensive redesign.

“I ended up doing the whole house!” he laughs.

His client was delighted with the result, and Rodriguez would go on to become a household name for his exquisite services between elites in Palm Beach County.

Rodriguez established his own company, and continues to work for himself as an interior designer. He now serves clients in Palm Beach, Jupiter, and Wellington.

Would he do it all again? The answer is easy for Rodriguez.

“Of course! I have no regrets because it’s given me an appreciation for what I have today,” he says. “It’s been a long journey with a lot of challenges, but if you follow the yellow brick road, you will get to Emerald City.”

Rodriguez and Joe now live together in Vedado, a small community in West Palm Beach that is home to immigrants from over 19 different nations.

There, just like his legendary hero Don Quixote, Rodriguez has indeed found his Dulcinea.