Within a year, Andy had saved up enough money to buy a car and like so many emigrants before him, he headed West not stopping till he hit Santa Monica Beach-literally! As he put it, “Everybody wants to go to California.”

Persistence and a series of odd jobs eventually led to a job as a machinist for an aerospace company at LAX, now owned by Honeywell. His supervisor, also a Polish emigrant, took Andy under his wing and give him opportunities to learn.

“I wanted to learn. I was always asking questions. Wanting to understand how everything worked. I was working manual machines but I saw people being trained on CNC machines so I went to my boss and said that I want to learn too. The next day I was on the CNC. I’ve loved it ever since.”