He did well in school but also remembers hanging out with a rough crowd in his teen years and realizing that there was not much of a future in it.
"When I was 17, I joined the Air Force and it saved my life," he said.
After serving for seven years, Vargas was honorably discharged with the rank of staff sergeant.
He went back to Brooklyn, got married, and then took a job with a government contractor in Pennsylvania. From there, his business acumen began to take shape.
Over the next decade, he went from government contracting into telecommunications and eventually into marketing and public relations.
He was already running his own business, VARCom Solutions, when he joined the Herndon Dulles Chamber of Commerce in 2004, two years before it changed its name to the Dulles Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Vargas was one of the founding members of the chamber's Hispanic Business Committee and now, as the chamber's new chairman, says he plans to be a uniter, bringing business people together and building membership and consensus among groups that "traditionally do not join chambers."
One such initiative is the formation of the chamber's burgeoning Asian Business Committee, which will hold its first meeting this Monday, July 9, at the chamber's Chantilly facility.
Former Herndon Mayor Michael O'Reilly will be the new committee's interim chairperson.
"No, he isn't Asian, but he is on the board of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, an organization with a global view," said chamber president Eileen Curtis.
As far as the chamber's recent friction with the Herndon Town Council, Vargas says he plans to "do a better job of communicating" with that body in the future.
"I want to be able to have a very strong partnership between the chamber and the Herndon Town Council that includes regular, open and constructive dialogue," he said.
