For Spanish Visitors in search of Adventures in Rocky Point have been able to find Willy Kushnick on Calle Matamoros, across from the Rocky Garden Restaurant, for the past three and a half years, where he rents quads. Recently he has opened an auto repair shop in the same location.
When Willy came to Puerto Peñasco in the spring of 1995, he started his business with one 3-wheeler and $3 in his pocket. He would take visitors out to the estuary on the back of his quad, a 4-hour trip, for $35. When he had saved enough money, he bought another quad, and then another. He rented them as a set and took his customers for excursions on them. Now he owns 8 Honda quads and has 4 more coming.
Willy came from Phoenix, where he worked as an auto mechanic at 3 different dealerships. He felt "burned out" on auto repair, and when he came to Puerto Peñasco he said he would never, ever, fix another car engine. He brought only his hand tools with him.
But Fate must have had another idea for Willy. He soon became known around Puerto Peñasco as the man to call when you had any kind of mechanical trouble--from a stalled motor home to a leaky faucet. He could repair any kind of motor vehicle--RVs, cars, trucks, quads, motorcycles, Jetskis, boats. Eventually he began doing more and more repair jobs while still renting quads. It was only a matter of time till he had to open a shop. Now he is thinking about expanding by stocking parts for RV's and perhaps in the future doing car rentals as well.
One of the advantages of the location of Willy's shop (aside from the fact that it's near a lot of activity) is that there's a small lot behind the shop with hookups for RVs. So if he has customers who have to wait for parts to get their vehicles repaired, they can park right there and stay in their own homes instead of having to rent a hotel room for several days.
Willy has a Siberian Husky named Bandit, who has one brown and one blue eye. The day we were there, he was in the dog house, so to speak, because he had gone out searching for adventures in Rocky Point, and Willy had had to spend hours looking for him. He seemed a little subdued, but not at all repentant. He just wagged his tail and looked at us expectantly.
A series of boys' books by Horatio Alger that was popular in the U.S. early in this century featured heroes who pulled themselves up from poor and humble origins to become rich and successful. Willy could be one of those heroes. He started here with almost nothing, and while not yet rich, he still has time to get there. Meanwhile he is successful because he's he's his own boss, he's living in a place he loves, and he's doing what he's good at.
