A new home
Jordan Valley native steps into top slot at Ontario Home Depot store
By Larry Meyer
Argus Observer
Wednesday, January 7, 2009 11:15 AM PST
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| Richard Madariaga poses in the lawn and garden area next to new lawn mowers at Ontario’s Home Depot store. Madariaga was recently promoted from assistant manager to manager of the store. |
ONTARIO — The Ontario Home Depot has a new manager, but he is not new to the store or the area.
Richard Madariaga arrived at the Ontario Home Depot store just before it opened and is a native of Jordan Valley.
“I’ve been with Home Depot for 10 years,” Madariaga, said. “I started in the Boise market.”
Madariaga graduated from Jordan Valley High School in 1993 and attended Albertson’s College of Idaho and Boise State University, majoring in general education and construction management.
“I was in construction — home building,” Madariaga, 33, said. “I saw an opportunity with Home Depot.”
What he said he liked was the opportunity to advance through the company. He liked how the company treated its employees and customers.
“They trained me all the way up the ladder,” he said.
Madariaga said he was already interested in the home improvement field but had never worked in the retail end. Home Depot’s training helped overcome his initial shock, he said. After he was hired by the company, he had his choice to work at the Milwaukee Avenue store in Boise, the first Home Depot in the Treasure Valley, or the Meridian store, which was still under construction. Madariaga decided he would be able to learn more working at an established store rather at one where everything was new.
He worked his way up from associate and department supervisor to assistant manager in just a few years and had moved to the Eagle store. When the opportunity at the Ontario store, nearing completion, became available Madariaga transferred and became the assistant manager at the establishment.
“It was a lateral move,” he said, and a decision by he and his wife to move out this way to be closer to family. Her family is in Cambridge and his is in Nampa and Jordan Valley.
“So we are now in the middle,” he said. The Madariagas have one daughter and another child on the way. He said enjoys the outdoors and enjoys seeing the country, and moving this way has put him in a better position to do those things, particularly with family in the high country.
