Why I built this.

I’m Michael Garcia, and I was born and raised in Indianapolis. My parents weren’t.

My mom grew up on a ranch in Mexico. My dad grew up in the Bronx. Neither of them finished college. Before I was born, the home they’d built in Mississippi was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, with my sister barely two years old. They didn’t have the luxury of quitting. They relocated to Indiana and rebuilt their foundation from the ground up. A hurricane couldn’t stop them, and nothing has since.

I grew up watching that, the kind of work that doesn’t quit and the kind of success you earn the hard way.

That’s why I do this. The people who keep other homes running, roofers, HVAC techs, plumbers, electricians, the trades, are some of the most underappreciated there are. They work hours on end, in the heat and the cold, keeping a roof over other people’s heads and the lights and water on, something most of us take for granted until we don’t have it. My own family knows what it’s like to lose that and have to rebuild it.

So I started Project GRVE to make their jobs easier, because they deserve it. Not as a faceless agency, but as someone who genuinely means everything he does for the people he works with. I want to grow with this city and the businesses in it, and never lose the relationship that makes the work matter.

A roof over your head isn’t a given for everyone. I don’t forget that, and it’s part of why this work means what it does to me.