Volume 3, No. 2. January 24, 2002
Fish out of water
He is a native of
Puerto Rico. He spent his entire career at waterparks in his native land, in
the Philippines and in Florida. So forgive Rafael Suarez his confusion one morning
last autumn when he got up to head for his new job as operations director of
the Elmwood Park Zoo in Norristown, Pennsylvania.
“I get dressed, putting all these layers on like you’re supposed to
do, I walk out and get this shock of cold air, and I see something white on
the windshield,” he said. “The first thing I thought was that it was
mist, like you get in the tropics. I turn the wipers on, and nothing happens.
I go, ‘Whoa! what’s going on here?’ I touch it, and, ‘Whoa!
this is ice!’ I didn’t have one of those scrapers, so I got one of
my credit cards and scraped the whole thing with that.”
Suarez has several such experiences of his first winter north of 80 degrees
mean temperature. Like the time he decided to clean his dirty windshield with
wiper fluid while driving down the highway. “Whoa! it turns to ice. I had
to stop. By then I had a scraper.” He has also already built four snowmen.
“Every time it snows, we have to go out,” he said of he and his two
boys, ages 4 and 1 (and 37). While the current cold snap keeping even Vermonters
indoors has settled over the northeast United States, Suarez said he is adapting
just fine. “I adjust easily. It’s like the tropics, you get used to
it. I’ve been there, and now I’m in another extreme.”
Moving from the Tropic of Cancer to the Northeast Corridor isn’t the only
extreme move Suarez made upon transplanting himself to Norristown. Rafael Suarez,
a fixture at waterpark trade meetings, is running a zoo.
This is a man who entered the amusement business as a lifeguard at Plaza Aquatica
in Puerto Rico where, by default, he helped manage the crews finishing up construction
on the park. He quickly became a lifeguard supervisor and over the course of
seven years he rose through the ranks to become operations manager. He was then
hired to help develop Splash Island in the Philippines, eventually becoming
director of the park. After five years there, he moved to Orlando, Florida,
to become a waterpark consultant, handling several accounts in Mexico, but meanwhile
looking for steady employment.
He came across a listing for Elmwood Park Zoo and submitted his résumé.
Executive Director Steven Marks liked the common thread he saw running through
Suarez’s career path: developing operations from scratch, just the kind
of talent Marks wanted to help grow his 16 acre, 150-animal zoo. Suarez had
never worked at a zoo before, but his educational background was in science
and biology. “You send a résumé and you figure, ‘Oh
well, we’ll see.’ They called me for an interview and I said, ‘From
what?’ From where?!’”
Just as he’s adapted to the cold, he said he’s adapting just fine
to his new role in the zoo industry. “Operations is operations,” he
said. He notes two primary differences: animal management, which waterparks
don’t have, and revenue dependent more on donations than admissions and
retail. “But the rest of the operations are basically the same. The maintenance
is the same. You are dealing with what the guests see, cleanliness, proper signage
and guest services. Our safety standards in the waterpark industry are really
high, and I had to implement higher standards for safety here.”
Suarez’s mission is to shape up operations as Elmwood Park Zoo launches
on a major 20 year master plan that will expand the collection’s focus
from North America to the whole Western Hemisphere. “We have to try to
establish procedures and plans and operations so we can grow,” he said.
“We want a state-of-the-art zoo. If we fix everything we have now, then
when we grow it will be easier.”
In that light, Suarez brought a key aspect of his tropical waterpark training
to his new northern zoo job. “We’re non-profit, but we have to operate
like we want to make a profit. I’m turning that mentality here.” It’s
a mentality that can weather just about any storm.
©2002, Minton Enterprises
LLC
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