Garcia had attended Thomas Edison High School and was a grocery store stockboy for several years before being drafted into the Army in January 1968. The 20year-old specialist four, an automatic rifleman with Company C of the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry, 4th Infantry Division, had been in Vietnam for 10 months and was counting the days until he could come home when be died on March 5, 1969. Garcia was survived by his mother, a brother and two sisters.