New Business Brings Sweet Blessings to La Feria Native Turned Entrepreneur

Special to La Feria News

My name is Jaime R. Martinez. I am 44 years old. I have been married to Sonya for 22 years and we have two sons. Aaron is a student at Texas A&M Kingsville and Justin is a high school junior at La Feria High School.

I was diagnosed with IGA Nephropathy and 5 years ago, I had a kidney transplant and it led to me being retired/disabled from AT&T. This led me to go back to school and since I always enjoyed cooking, I took some culinary classes.

A couple of years later, I found myself with a Certificate from South Texas College in Commercial Cooking. I would never imagine that I would have this certificate after I already had a certificate in Electronics Servicing from TSTC. STC is where I learned to bake cheesecakes and found that I really enjoyed doing this.

I found a location in my hometown and I worked on getting the proper paperwork, permits, etc to open up my own cheesecake shop. On my 5th Kidneyversary, I had the grand opening to Sweet Blessings Cheesecakes. I give thanks to God for my new outlook to life and I am very grateful for all the blessings since my transplant, hence the name SWEET BLESSINGS.

I hope to be able to give back to my community and the youth of the area. I am currently a youth leader at St Francis Xavier Catholic Church in La Feria and I enjoy working with them, so there is no question, I will be closed on Wednesdays when we have Youth Group Meetings and Confirmation classes. For anyone who would like to go into business, I say, Go For It! Make sure it is something you love doing, as for me, I am enjoying this experience one day at a time.

I would like to thank my friends, family and God for everything that has led to this part of my life I call Sweet Blessings.