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Do you live in Paradise? How’s it going?Those are questions we want to explore this fall on IPR News Radio in our series, Which Way to Paradise: Struggle and Promise Up North.Parts of northern Michigan are booming and we are constantly told Traverse City, in particular, is a top 10 place to live, work, and play. Who is coming here and why? How has the region changed and who's missing out on the boom?

Which Way to Paradise: Goodbye Mexico (and leisure)

Peter Payette

Not many people move to northern Michigan so they can work more. But Adolfo Mendez did, and he works all the time. He has started three businesses in Traverse City.

When he arrived six years ago from Mexico, his friends told him he had a problem: he was a workaholic, they said. But he had no idea what that was.

“So I scared” he recalls. “What is that? That’s cancer? That some problem? I check. I go to my computer. What that? That one is the people they only work, work, work.”

Now Adolfo is working as hard as ever. He owns T.C. Latino Grocery and a restaurant, Taqueria T.C. Latino. He used to own a second restaurant but recently sold it. He opened the grocery because when he arrived from Vera Cruz, he couldn’t buy ingredients for food he likes to make, like mole sauce for special events.

T.C. Latino is a full-service grocery store with a meat market. It also sells soccer jerseys, phone cards and even pinatas for birthday parties.

But Adolfo Mendez doesn’t get to those birthday parties anymore. He’s too busy working. He says some of his friends have given up.

“Now they have a party and they not call me,” he says.

Credit Adolfo Mendez

Adolfo has even given up soccer, and he has no plans to have kids, despite his mother’s objections. She already has eight grandchildren, he says, and he can’t see why she needs one more from him.

Mendez came to Michigan to vacation because a friend pestered him to visit. He met his wife, Sandra Rios, at a casino. They run the businesses together and he says she's also a "hard worker."

He says he’s happy being a workaholic.

“If you feel happy with that, that’s okay. That’s your life,” he says.

This piece was produced by Antonia Cereijido from Latino USA. She was at Interlochen for our Transom storytelling workshop.