Around Town: Here from Bulgaria, he's tasted success with wine as life line
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Milko Miladonov
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How does a successful gum salesman in southern Bulgaria wind up a wine dealer in Pittsburgh?
OK, that's probably not a question you've ever asked. I hadn't either, but since my wife and I met Milko Miladinov at a wine tasting at Cassis on the North Side in April, I've found that his immigration tale is engaging whether told over sangiovese or retold over coffee.
He grew up in Plovdiv, a town that predates the Romans, surrounded by vineyards and orchards. By the time he was 14, he knew how to make wine because his father, an engineer, grew grapes on the family land.
That would not be the young Mr. Miladinov's profession. After earning a degree in business from his hometown university, he took a job with Wrigley, the Chicago chewing gum giant, and helped build its market in Bulgaria.
By 1997, he was 25 and married with a young daughter. The salary of his wife, Maria, a pediatric nurse, helped but wasn't even enough to cover the utility bills, so he'd put in long hours in sales, getting home around 10 o'clock most nights.
PG STORE
Then he won the national lottery, only it wasn't money. His application was accepted to make him one of 3,000 in this country of 8 million eligible to move to America.
Neither he nor his wife spoke English. She'd taken French in school and he German. Many of their friends had gone as tourists to Germany, Spain and South Africa and stayed illegally for a better life. The Miladinovs couldn't pass on this opportunity -- as much as it scared them.
Maria was pregnant with their second child, but they spent the equivalent of $2,000 -- more than his wife's annual salary and about four months of his -- to hire a firm to translate their legal papers into English for the visa interview. They aced that interview and Mr. Miladinov went ahead to America.
He came here because a high school friend worked in a machine shop in Squirrel Hill. Mr. Miladinov expected a rough-and-ready coal town, not a city of universities and hospitals.
His hometown friend helped get him into an apartment with three Americans and a man from Nepal. Mr. Miladinov, who had a company car and an expense account in the old country, found a job unloading produce in the Strip District.
First Published June 15, 2010 12:00 am
