Joseph and Maricela arrived in Canada in 2021 with fifteen years of mechanical engineering behind them and no fixed expectation of what came next.
Joseph started where the work was — managing fleet maintenance for a large agricultural operation across the Okanagan. Hundreds of vehicles, regional routes, everything that kept crops moving from field to market. When something broke, it cost real money. Two years of that taught him what a serious maintenance operation looks like when downtime has real consequences.
Then he was handed something harder. Build an automotive shop from scratch — no existing team, no systems, no infrastructure. His role: general manager and lead mechanic, responsible for getting the whole operation running. Twelve months later it was: hiring, workflow design, diagnostic standards, client intake, all built from nothing.
That year changed what he saw when he walked into any other shop.
Working in service management roles across Kelowna, he kept running into the same thing. Clients who had waited four or five days just to get their car looked at. Repairs that were really attempts — swap this part, call you if it doesn't fix it. Service advisors who couldn't explain the work because they hadn't been there for it. Nobody following up. Nobody accountable for whether the repair actually held.
Maricela had watched the same thing from the outside — as a client, as someone who understood what a real service operation looks like. She and Joseph talked about it for a long time. The gap was obvious. Nobody in Kelowna was filling it.
They founded Kelowna Protech Elite Mobile Mechanic in 2024. Maricela as Director and Co-Founder, building the operational and client experience side. Joseph as Lead Mechanic and Service Manager, setting the diagnostic standard the company runs on.
The model is different from anything else in the local market. Joseph and the team come to the client — driveway, parking lot, wherever the vehicle is. Every diagnosis starts from the vehicle's own data: PCM readings, wiring schematics, electrical circuit analysis. Before any work is approved, the client knows what was found, what caused it, and what the repair actually requires. Not what it might require. What it does.
The company runs professional-grade Autel diagnostic equipment and uses Meta smart glasses for documentation on complex repairs. It operates like what it is: an engineered diagnostic process applied to every vehicle, every time.
Since opening, Kelowna Protech has built a 4.9‑star rating across 45 Google reviews. A lot of those reviews mention the same thing — they'd already tried somewhere else.
The problems Joseph and Maricela saw in 2021 are still there across most of the market. Kelowna Protech was built specifically because they are.