When he was only 12, he entered that family because he needed to work. Approximately forty years later, the owner decided that she would continue the company built in a lifetime.
The story of Deolinda Alfonso comes from Coronel Moldes, in the Argentine province of Córdoba.
He came from a family with few resources and had begun very young to work for the Moreyra family, thus trying to contribute to the economic needs of the family.
What at first was simply a job, however, turned into a bond destined to last for decades.
Deolinda remained next to the same family for about forty years, gradually becoming a person of absolute trust for Juan Moreyra and his wife Elena.
Juan was the owner of Moreyra Gomas, a historic tire business he had built and carried on for over sixty years.
He and Elena had no children.
And when the time came to think about the future of the company, the two stood before an inevitable question: to whom to entrust what they had built?
The answer, later told Juan, was the same for both of us.
Deolinda.
Before Elena died, the two spouses had already talked about the possibility of leaving Deolinda the company.
In December 2020, now ultra-octaneous and struggling with health problems, Juan made that decision concrete.
He did not choose an outside investor, nor someone tied to him by a blood constraint.
He entrusted the company to the woman who for decades had worked alongside them.
When the story became public, Juan explained with great simplicity that, having no children, they had decided to give her the whole activity.
For Deolinda it didn't just mean to receive an enterprise.
It meant taking responsibility to carry out a story to which he devoted much of his life.
"The witness passed me. It is a great commitment," he said.
Maybe that's what makes their story particular.
Forty years earlier, a 12-year-old girl knocked on that door because her family needed financial help.
No one could imagine that, many years later, she would have been the person chosen to guard and carry out what that family had built over six decades.
It was not an inheritance determined by the surname.
It was the result of a confidence built day after day, for almost a lifetime.