Miguel Villalobos, who runs the Pacific Karate Do Institute, just returned with a team of his students from the 10th Karate World Championships in San Francisco.
Nine out of the 10 students, facing off against the best from around the world, managed to medal in the sparring and form categories.
“We have talented students that deserve the attention,” he said. “They sacrifice time, they train and train. And they’re good people, good students.”
And Villalobos? “I’ve been enjoying karate my entire life,” he told the Sun. “I can do karate better than my life.
“I got involved just to learn,” he said. “I heard that in karate people move hands, like speed—I just heard those stories.” As a curious 14-year-old, he trained at a dojo on Hollister Street in his hometown of Goleta.
Later, he had the chance to be one of the first westerners to learn Shito Ryu from the founding Mabuni family.
“The Mabuni family kept Shito Ryu original,” he said. “They didn’t allow any westerner to watch them. Only Japanese students. We got in, and it’s a great honor and a great thing to say—a good feeling to be accepted.”
They accepted 12 students from the USA. “It’s an honor to say I was one of those students. I trained with the son of the father,” Villalobos said.
Villalobos attended Santa Barbara City College, and later got a job teaching karate at the YMCA on State Street in Santa Barbara. Then, in 1980, he moved to Santa Maria.
“We didn’t have much karate here,” he said. “We didn’t have the Shito Ryu.”
Even though it’s close, he misses Goleta dearly. “Goleta is my hometown and to this day I miss it tremendously. And I will miss it forever. I was raised there, married, my son born there, and I have a lot of good friends,” he said. “You move some other place, but the first place you grow up, it’s in your heart forever.”
In 2011, Villalobos fought off a diagnosis of cancer in his stomach and in his prostate. “It was hard,” he said. He made a choice between radiation therapy or surgery. “At first I didn’t want to have surgery, but I talked to my doctors, they convinced me.”
Ultimately, he said, karate helped him to recover.
“Six weeks after my surgery, my doctor sent me to teach,” he said. “Of course, I wasn’t able to walk exactly. Walking and sitting, that was the hardest part. And, you know, moving. But the more you’re moving around, it heals faster.”
This article appears in Sep 17-24, 2015.