Alfredo Alvarado

Alfredo Alvarado, beloved father, brother and life partner, passed away at age 82 on the anniversary of his mother’s birth, in early 2021. A resident of San Jose, California, he was born in West Texas in 1939. His parents raised their family near the historic Alvarado family property located at the Rio Grande on the Mexican border. While an infant and small child, Alfredo was lovingly cared for and raised by both his mother and by his elder sister Angelina. A gifted athlete, Alfredo was an outstanding basketball player who made it to his high school’s regional competition to represent his school. He was selected “Most Handsome” by his classmates. In 1956, he signed up for the U.S. Army. Later that academic year, he was surprised and then ready to enlist, when the Army recruiter came to his campus and took him right off the basketball courts into basic training at Fort Bliss, Texas. In 1957, Alfredo was transferred and served at Fort Smith, Arkansas.

In 1959, he married his fiancée Rose at the old Holy Family Catholic Church, and together they moved to Santa Clara, where they first met. He became a barber and then a business owner, operating a barber shop at the Grandview Shopping Center on El Camino Real. Later, he worked at a colleague’s barber shop at the Cherry Case Shopping Center in Mountain View in the 1960’s. In the late 1960’s, Alfredo purchased and started a new barber shop in Sunnyvale at the Wolfe-Reed Shopping Center.

In 1969, Alfredo bought and operated a car wash from the Ivankavich family in Santa Clara. The first year of business brought such heavy rains that the fledgling business, unable to make payroll, only survived due to the generosity of a significant loan from Alfredo’s sister Natalia and her husband Elpidio Conde. During this same time period, he obtained his real estate license and sold homes with Lynette Realty in San Jose on the Alameda.

In the late 1970’s until the early 1980’s, he worked as a barber at the Lawrence Square Shopping Center in Santa Clara. In 1977, he sold his car wash and purchased another local car wash, from Santa Clara businessman Cal Dodson.

Alfredo loved driving his Silverado truck; Mexican food; dancing to Tex-Mex music; attending Catholic Mass; trips to Texas to visit his family; garage sales; speaking Spanish; planting and tending fruit trees; spending time with his siblings; purchasing real estate for investment and lengthy trips to plant, garden, and work in countryside locales. The years he spent at his beautiful ranch in Sutter Creek, with many acres of rolling hills, ponds, meadows, and set amongst the towering pines and redwoods, were moments in which he loved life the best. He built a small ranch house there and found the setting incredibly idyllic, peaceful, and beautifully scenic. Later, the time he spent working on rural acres in Gilroy brought him tremendous enjoyment.

Alfredo is survived by Rose Alvarado of Santa Clara; his son, Michael (Maria Luisa); his daughter Amanda (Dan); his grandchildren Steven, Cassandra, James and Lizzie; and his siblings Natalia Conde, Angelina Mata, Lorenzo Alvarado, Felipe Alvarado, Evalina Sosa, and Lydia Salcido, as well as many nieces and nephews. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Parkinson’s Foundation, https://www.parkinson.org. His loss will forever leave an enormous hole in our hearts. Private services will be held in February 2022. Interment at the Santa Clara Mission Catholic Cemetery.