Tom Modugno’s mother Helen packed up the car with kids and groceries after a morning trip to the then 101 Ranch Market. She pulled into her driveway in Ellwood when one of her other kids asked, “Where’s Tom?”

She rushed back to the market, and there was 3-year-old Tom, sitting, playing on the little rocket ride in front of the store. He was happy and really didn’t want to leave.

And, in essence, he never did.

Modugno’s father, Ralph, eventually bought the store in the 1960s and the family has owned it since. Tom and his brother Jon were around the store and worked there as kids.

“My brother Jon, he started so young he had to stand on a milk crate to reach the checkstand,” Modugno said. “My dad put him to work as a little kid.”

It’s been a family business, until now. Owner Tom Modugno has sold the iconic Old Town Goleta grocery store, Santa Cruz Market, and he officially is checking out. “It’s basically who I am,” Modugno said of Santa Cruz Market. “This store is part of the community. We have grown with the community.”

In the heart of Old Town Goleta is Santa Cruz Market, a destination for shoppers that is among the oldest existing businesses on the block. It’s where you can get chicharrones and fresh carne asada from the butcher shop, masa and corn husks for tamales for Christmas, ripe produce, Disney-themed piñatas and Mexican menudo.

Out front are the merry-go-round and horsey rides for just 50 cents.

All of it, inside a building that was originally an airplane hangar, built in the 1930s by Earle Ovington. Modugno did much of the research of the history of the building himself. He’s also a local historian who knows as much, if not more, than anyone else about the Goodland.

Modugno, who grew up surfing, loves Goleta and knows it in ways a politician or activist could not. He has lived it, every day inside the store, meeting and greeting, and getting to know the customers and his employees. He survived the COVID-19 pandemic, the floods of Old Town in 1995 and multiple recessions.

His experiences and interest in Goleta sparked the creation of his website, goletahistory.com, where he posts old photos and his original research about Goleta and the residents and businesses who have contributed to the area’s growth.

“A lot of local people didn’t know their own history here,” Modugno said. “That just fueled me to keep putting local stories up.”

There are two current Santa Cruz markets, and both of them were sold. The other is at 324 West Montecito St.

The two original markets that Ralph Modugno purchased were the Goleta store and a store on the Mesa, which is now Lazy Acres.

In 1990, the family lost the lease on the Mesa store and had to close it. They moved to the Montecito Street location.

“Over the Thanksgiving holiday, my brother Jon and I, my other siblings, friends and family all joined together with every car, van and truck we could find, and moved the entire store from the Mesa to Montecito Street, in one long weekend,” Modugno said.

In the winter of 1995, Old Town Goleta was severely flooded, including the market.

“I borrowed a pump from my neighbor who was a pool guy and went to go try to pump the water out of the store,” Modugno said.

Hollister was closed at Highway 217, so he parked his car there and started walking.
“Walking down Hollister was like something out of ‘Apocalypse Now.’

“Cars were being washed down the street, along with huge trees,” Modugno said.

The day after there was about three inches of mud covering the entire floor of Santa Cruz Market. The parking lot had about three feet of mud and trees and branches.

“The community came together and we had the store back open in a couple of days,” Modugno said.

At the store, Modugno is a friendly face to customers and employees. Mike and Lisa Rice have both worked at the store for 40 years. A lot of people believe they own the store, he said, because they manage it and run it with care like it was their own.

His longest-serving employee is Arturo Del Campo, who currently opens the store and manages produce, but has worked multiple jobs during his 4o-year tenure.

“I enjoy the people and my co-workers,” Del Campo said. “It’s like a second home.”

Del Campo came to the U.S. from Guadalajara, Mexico, when he was 10 years old, graduated from Santa Barbara High School and then got into the grocery store business.

He’s helped raise three kids.

“It brings food to our table, it pays the rent, you are able to survive and you enjoy what you do,” Del Campo said.

Even though Santa Cruz Market is independently owned, it’s a union ship. Del Campo and other full-time employees are part of the UFCW.

The store was sold to an LLC called Santa Barbara Markets, which Modugno said also owns grocery stores in Ventura County, and the store will remain unionized.

“Union’s been good,” Modugno said. “It’s been good in a lot of ways.”

Modugno said nothing will change. That includes the outdoor paper signs that advertise the weekly spare ribs, T-bone steak and produce specials.

He commissioned a mural of the old Goleta Slough and with a condor on it. None of that would get approved today in a timely fashion within city government circles.

“Santa Cruz Market is not going to change,” he said. “They are going to keep the same name, they are going to keep the same employees, they are going to keep the same products.”