LONG BEACH, CALIF. — Louis Caldera's life is a classic story of a first-generation American.
He rose from hamburger flipper at Bob's Big Boy to Secretary of the Army.
Other stops along the way: West Point, Harvard, a prestigious West Coast law firm, three terms as a California Assemblyman, and today vice chancellor of the CalState system. Next stop, president of the University of New Mexico.
By the time Caldera was 16, his father had left home and he stepped up as head of the family.
"Louis was very protective of all of us," said Lori LaFavre, eldest of the five siblings and Louis' senior by a year. "Louis just became older than anybody."
Caldera's parents, Benjamin and Soledad Caldera, emigrated from Chihuahua, Mexico, to El Paso with 1-year-old Lori in 1956. Louis and a younger brother and sister were born in El Paso. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1960, where the youngest son was born.
Benjamin Caldera exerted a strong influence on his children's lives until Louis Caldera reached his early teens, LaFavre said. She and her mother spoke with the Journal recently at LaFavre's home in Orange County, Calif.
The Calderas' father demanded that his children learn English and make good grades.
"That was the rule," LaFavre said. "We had to do well in school or my dad would be real angry."
Benjamin Caldera also made sacrifices to move his family out of a tough neighborhood in East Los Angeles to suburban Whittier, requiring him to commute for hours to his job at a cardboard box factory.
For the Caldera children, Whittier was an oasis, said Bob Caldera, Louis Caldera's youngest brother.
"It was a very fun place to grow up," Bob Caldera said recently as he showed off his hometown.
The Calderas walked to school through quiet residential streets lined with palms and tall jacaranda trees.
They hiked in the green hills overlooking Whittier and often rode the bus for a quarter to Huntington Beach. Louis, always athletic, enjoyed body surfing, his brother said. In all, the Calderas lived in five houses in Whittier.
"My mom worked her bones off to keep us in these neighborhoods," Bob Caldera said.

Taking charge
Life wasn't easy for the young family.
Shortly after they moved to Whittier, Benjamin Caldera suffered a serious back injury at the box factory and was unable to continue working there, LaFavre said. He used a $5,000 compensation payment to open a hair salon, but the business failed.
With money tight, the family contracted with a shopping center to clean a large parking lot each morning. For about two years during his pre-teens, Louis and his parents arose at 4 a.m. to pick up litter and sweep before he headed off to school.
Strapped with health and financial problems, Benjamin Caldera was "in and out of the picture" by the time Louis started high school, LaFavre said.
"That's when Louis took over Dad's role," she said. "By the time we were in high school, Louis was in charge."
Today, Benjamin Caldera operates a hair salon in Mexico City, she said.
Louis Caldera says little about the trauma his family experienced and plays down the responsibilities he inherited.
"I don't remember a lot of the details, quite frankly," he said. "We were learning the ropes as many immigrant families do. We got bumped around a little bit."
He speaks reverently about his father.
"I credit my dad with a lot of the things I've learned in life ... it was my dad who gave me the sense that when I do something, I've got to do it well."
Everybody pitched in to make ends meet. Louis worked full time at a Bob's Big Boy restaurant and LaFavre at a J.C. Penney. Their mother, hampered by poor English skills, found work as a housekeeper at a hospital.
Louis recruited his younger brother, Hector, to join him selling Fuller Brush products door to door. Louis also had the idea of buying candy from a discount store and selling it at a profit from their kitchen door.
"All the kids in the neighborhood came to our house to buy candy," LaFavre recalled. The proceeds went into the family budget.
While working full time and keeping up his grades, Louis found time to attend many of his brother's football practices, shouting encouragement and often running alongside players on the track, Bob Caldera said.
"He was my assistant coach," he recalled. "He kept me in line, kept me playing."
Caldera's political ambitions emerged early.
"His goal early on in life was to be political," said his sister. Louis held a student council seat throughout high school and spoke of his desire to become a California governor or senator.
Caldera knew his responsibility to support his family would not end with high school graduation in 1974.
He sought admission to West Point in part because it would pay him a salary in addition to paying for his education. He sent most of his salary to Whittier to help support the family.
Herman Bulls, a longtime friend who attended both West Point and Harvard University with Caldera, said he doesn't recall Caldera discussing his hardscrabble background.
"He is not a natural extrovert, but he is a very reasoned thinker," Bulls said in a phone interview. "He's a very personal person, and he gives more of himself than he expects from others."

Back in California
After graduating from West Point in 1978, Caldera led a military police platoon at Fort Dix, N.J., and was promoted to captain while serving in the Army from 1978-83.
While at Fort Dix, his mother; his sister, Christine; and his brother, Bob, moved in with him, allowing Bob Caldera to attend two years at a community college in New Jersey.
After serving five years in the Army, he earned both a law degree and a master of business administration from Harvard in 1987.
It was there that he met Eva, and the two were married in 1991.
A good student at Harvard, Caldera had the ability to get a lucrative job at a top firm on Wall Street but instead chose to return to Los Angeles, Bulls said.
"I am continuously humbled by Louis," Bulls said. "What makes him tick is the ability to do things for others."
Fresh out of law school, Caldera was hired by the Los Angeles law firm O'Melveny & Myers, one of the world's largest law firms with more than 1,000 attorneys.
Caldera worked in a department that handles public financing for government agencies and schools, said Richard Jones, a partner in the firm. One of the firm's biggest clients is the county of Los Angeles.
Caldera later worked for the county, defending it against lawsuits.
In 1992, Caldera was elected a California assembly member, representing a downtown district of Los Angeles. He was re-elected in 1994 and 1996.
Bill Boyarsky, a former columnist and editor for the Los Angeles Times, said Caldera was among several Hispanics elected in the early 1990s under a strategy engineered by former state Sen. Richard Polanco, D-Los Angeles.
"He was part of the Latino groups taking over power" in the 1990s, Boyarsky said. Polanco recruited mainstream Latino candidates such as Caldera who could appeal to a broad range of voters.
Caldera sponsored legislation that allowed property owners to form business-improvement districts, leading to the creation of several districts in Los Angeles and other cities, said Carol Schatz, president of the Los Angeles Central City Association.
Caldera also sponsored legislation that requires children riding bicycles to wear helmets.
"Now you can't drive around without seeing kids wearing helmets," said Jorge Castro, a director of the city's Metropolitan Water Board. "It was good, common-sense legislation."

In the big time
Caldera's highest profile job was Secretary of the Army from 1998-2001. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., nominated Caldera for the post, and he served under President Clinton.
Caldera oversaw an annual budget of more than $60 billion and had responsibility for all matters relating to Army manpower, personnel, reserve affairs, installations, environmental issues, weapons systems and equipment. The secretary of the Army is the highest-ranking civilian official in that branch of the military.
Caldera devoted his tenure to beefing up the Army's recruitment efforts and improving educational opportunities for soldiers.
The Army changed its slogan to "An Army of One" under his watch to emphasize career opportunities for soldiers.
Caldera also announced a plan in 1999 to improve Army recruitment by offering soldiers a wide number of college-level courses through the Internet.
Today, the program enrolls 100,000 soldiers worldwide, he said.
Also under Caldera, the Army tailored its recruitment message for Hispanics, hiring a San Antonio, Texas, advertising firm and emphasizing educational and training opportunities in the Army.
One critic contends that the message is deceptive because the primary purpose of the Army is combat.
Jorge Marisco, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, says Hispanics lured into the Army by promises of education and job training are more likely to find themselves in combat roles.
Caldera responded that the Army offers "tremendous opportunity" for young people of all backgrounds.
"The Army has been a vehicle for economic and social mobility for people for generations," he said. "The Hispanic community has a high unemployment rate. If the Army isn't hiring them, we're doing them a disservice."
Caldera has been relatively high-profile in Democratic Party politics and remains on the board of advisers to the New Democratic Network, a Washington political action committee that cultivates and raises money for promising Democratic politicians.
Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democratic Network, said Caldera advises the group on national security issues. He described Caldera as "determined," "committed," and "incredibly nice."
"He's one of the hardest working people I have ever known," Rosenberg said. "He's been able to command a tremendous amount of respect from people who know him."

Debate over choice
UNM regents refer to Caldera as an "untraditional" choice for president.
They consider his professional experience in the Army and politics a plus. It also doesn't bother them that he sits on the boards of directors of four large corporations, including Southwest Airlines.
But some UNM faculty leaders say Caldera is too untraditional, lacking a background in scholarly research. His job experience at a university is limited to his current job as vice chancellor of USC, which he began in 2001.
"I think the notion that the president of the university doesn't have to be an educator is a dangerous notion," UNM English Professor Hugh Witemeyer said recently. "It represents a step in the militarization and corporatization of the university."
Caldera responds that the president's role has changed in an era when universities are ever more dependent on federal and corporate research funding.
"The president is the resource gatherer of the university," he said. The president must be "out there" seeking money from corporations, foundations, state and federal agencies.
"Policy-makers want universities to be relevant to the lives of ordinary people in the state," he said. "If the university is going to succeed, it has to be successful at attracting resources."
Caldera says it's his "passion for public service" that led him into higher education.
He doesn't rule out someday returning to politics as an elected or appointed official. But for now, Caldera said, he wants to remain in higher education "for a significant portion of my life."
Fatherhood has also led him to slow the pace of his career changes.
"Those changes were easier to make when you're single," he said. "It gets a lot harder once your kids are starting to grow."

A change of view
Today, the view from Louis Caldera's office in Long Beach is one of a city gleaming with prosperity.
From his sixth-floor office at California State University, he can see ocean-going cargo ships coming and going from the Port of Long Beach, one of the world's busiest.
Luxury hotels and upscale shops and restaurants line Ocean Boulevard behind his office. He and his family live in nearby Palos Verdes, one of California's most exclusive oceanside suburbs.
On Aug. 1, Caldera, 47, will trade all this for Albuquerque's Central Avenue, the Frontier Restaurant and a view of the Duck Pond from Scholes Hall, the UNM's administration building.
Caldera says he welcomes the change.
"I think, actually, a smaller city will suit me fine," he said. Crowds, congested freeways and the fast pace of Los Angeles make it "a difficult city to live in," he said.
Caldera's daily schedule matches the pace of his city. He spent May 8 negotiating his UNM contract by phone and fielding congratulatory calls and e-mails. That night, the former Secretary of the Army caught a red-eye flight to Washington, D.C., to participate in a national security advisory group.
In between, he attended an evening rehearsal for his eldest daughter's first Catholic communion. He and his wife, Eva, have three daughters, ages 7, 5 and 2.
"In Los Angeles, you worry that kids grow up too fast," he said. The city's wealth and Hollywood's influence "distort the values you try to raise your kids with."
"We think (Albuquerque) will be a good place to raise our daughters."

Journal staff writer Michael Coleman contributed to this report.