“I thought it was a miracle that we were able to do that with the sale of records.”
I made a goal when I was in Oregon to raise a quarter of a million dollars by the time I was done, and so far in good faith, roughly about $37,000 has gone to vetted nonprofit organizations. That also includes funding local artists and their dreams and hopes and aspirations to have their own records and record their music.
We had a little bit of a miracle last year when the North Carolina floods occurred. I remember seeing in the news a mother seeing her son hold on for dear life, crying out, before he was swept away. He passed away right in front of her, and that little boy looked a lot like one of my family members. So the next day, I announced to everyone online that we were gonna donate our first $2,000 of sales. It didn’t matter if we had to dip into the cost of goods sold just to give it away to help some of those people in North Carolina. It just felt like the right thing to do. I thought it was gonna take two or three days to do it and within 28 hours, we raised $2,000. We gave those funds to someone who I trust at a church in South Carolina, and they drove north with propane tanks and food and blankets and water and generators, which they purchased from a mom-and-pop, like Ace Hardware, locally. I thought it was a miracle that we were able to do that with the sale of records. Whenever things like that arise, we just donate when we can.
I am very grateful for what I have, though I don’t have enough current space to put more records on the shelves. So I’m praying for a place. I have this dream to be in Waco where I own a building, maybe it’s a two- or three-story building, where I could live on the top story. The second story would be open to some nonprofits where they could come in and hold events, where they could do their nonprofit stuff and not pay overhead. And the bottom floor could have the record store that funds everything.
I listen to all music. People often ask me what my favorite genre is, and I tell them simply, I don’t have one. I’m forced to listen to all different types of music here in the store. But the other thing, too, is I believe that when you open your hearts and your minds to all different types of genres, then you better understand different people.
It’s the people (in Waco), you know. I think everyone has hard times, right? And then sometimes you become jaded. I became jaded, and I didn’t even want a record store, but I had to move these things. I just remember seeing all these people from throughout the U.S., coming to my record store because I had something that brought them a lot of joy. Some of them were Baylor students that were unjaded, good kids that believed in giving back to the community. It took some of the Baylor students to really soften my heart towards life in general. I have the best customers that anyone could wish for. They’re extremely kind-hearted. Sometimes they donate just to give because they believe in our business, and we donate back to the community.
After a career as a financial crimes investigator, Armando Cardoso moved to Waco from Oregon and opened Vintage Mio Records in September 2023. Between 4,000 and 7,000 people a month visit the small shop at 108 South Sixth Street, next door to the Texas Music Café. Cardoso estimates that he’s sold somewhere from 30,000 to 40,000 records since he opened the store, and he has an inventory of maybe 100,000 records. Vintage Mio is a for-profit business, but Cardoso is committed to sharing the love his customers have shown toward his store.
