Most people assume that carrying six figures in student debt is a young person’s crisis. Garrett Quintero is proof that assumption is wrong, and dangerously so.
I first connected with Garrett in February of this year through an unexpected introduction. I was riding along with a Meals on Wheels volunteer team in Richmond, Virginia — reporting a separate story on food insecurity among seniors — when the route coordinator, a woman named Darlene, told me about one of their regular delivery drivers. “You should talk to Garrett,” she said, between stops on Westover Hills Boulevard. “He’s got a story that’ll stick with you.” She was right.
When I sat down with Garrett Quintero at a corner booth in a diner off Broad Street a week later, he arrived early, ordered black coffee, and folded his hands on the table the way people do when they’ve rehearsed what they’re about to say. He is 62 years old, broad-shouldered, with the deliberate calm of someone who has spent decades managing other people’s expectations. He drives for Uber full-time. He volunteers on weekends. And for the past four years, he has carried $51,400 in federal graduate student loans — a debt he took on at 58 years old, convinced it was an investment in his future.
The Degree That Was Supposed to Change Everything
Garrett spent most of his working life in municipal government — budget analysis, contract management, the unglamorous backbone of local administration. In 2020, at 56, he was passed over for a director-level position he had spent three years preparing for. The reason cited in his feedback: he lacked a graduate credential. “They handed the job to someone twelve years younger with an MPA and two years of experience,” Garrett told me, his voice flat. “That was the moment I decided to go back.”
He enrolled in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Master of Public Administration program in January 2021, attending evening classes while working full-time. He finished in May 2023 — at 59 — with a 3.8 GPA and $51,400 in federal Direct Unsubsidized Loans. He was proud. His fiancé, Marcus, who is currently completing a nursing degree at Reynolds Community College, threw him a small graduation dinner.
The promotion never materialized. His department underwent restructuring six months after he graduated, and Garrett, now among the higher-paid analysts, was offered a lateral transfer or a voluntary separation package. He took the separation package in November 2023 and transitioned to full-time rideshare driving — earning roughly $61,000 in gross income in 2024 after expenses, according to the tax summary he shared with me.
When Two Crises Arrive at the Same Time
Garrett’s loan payments began in October 2023, just as he was transitioning out of city employment. Under the standard 10-year repayment plan, his monthly payment was $612. That figure, by itself, was manageable on a government salary. On Uber income, amid rising fuel costs, fluctuating demand, and vehicle maintenance expenses, it became something else entirely.
The second blow came in early 2024, when COBRA coverage from his former employer lapsed after 18 months. He transitioned to a marketplace plan through Healthcare.gov — a plan that did not include his previous pharmacy network. His blood pressure medication and cholesterol prescription, previously covered at a $45 combined copay, now cost him $340 out of pocket per month. “I started cutting pills in half,” Garrett told me quietly. “Not because I didn’t know better. Because the math didn’t work any other way.”
He is, by his own description, deeply private about money. His family — a sister in Charlotte, a brother in Northern Virginia — does not know the full scope of his financial situation. Marcus knows, broadly, that things are tight, but Garrett has shielded him from specifics. “He’s in school. He doesn’t need to carry my problems on top of his own,” Garrett said.
Finding the SAVE Plan — and Then Watching It Unravel
In the spring of 2024, Garrett called the Federal Student Aid information line after seeing a social media post about income-driven repayment options. A representative walked him through the SAVE Plan — the Saving on a Valuable Education plan introduced by the Biden administration in 2023 — which calculated payments as 5% to 10% of discretionary income for most borrowers.
Based on his adjusted gross income and household size, Garrett’s projected payment under SAVE dropped from $612 to approximately $284 per month. He applied in May 2024 and was approved. For about seven months, that lower payment held. “It felt like I could breathe again,” he said. “I wasn’t ahead. But I wasn’t drowning.”
In the summer of 2024, two federal appeals courts issued injunctions blocking the SAVE Plan, ruling that the Department of Education had exceeded its statutory authority. Garrett’s account was moved into administrative forbearance — technically meaning no payments were due, but also meaning the program’s future was unclear. He had planned his budget around that $284 figure. Now he didn’t know what number to plan around at all.
Where Things Stand Now — and What Garrett Is Doing About It
When I met with Garrett in February 2026, his loans were still in forbearance. He had spoken with a nonprofit student loan counselor through the National Foundation for Credit Counseling in January — a free session that helped him understand his fallback options. The counselor outlined two alternatives: the older Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan, which would set his payment at roughly $390 per month based on current income, or returning to the standard plan at $612 if the SAVE Plan is ultimately struck down by courts.
On the prescription side, Garrett enrolled in Virginia’s Pharmacy Connect program and applied for manufacturer patient assistance through both of his drug companies — a process that took approximately six weeks and reduced his monthly prescription costs to $90. That change, modest as it sounds, gave him real room to maneuver. He now uses the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s generic substitution whenever possible.
He is not where he planned to be at 62. He expected to be in a senior role at the city, building toward retirement. Instead, he logs into the Uber driver app at 6 a.m., manages his loan forbearance notices in a folder on his kitchen counter, and waits for courts to decide what his monthly payment will be. “I made the right decision going back to school,” he told me near the end of our conversation, and he said it slowly, as if testing whether he still believed it. “I’m just not sure the system was built for someone who made that decision at my age.”
Driving back from the diner, I thought about Darlene’s introduction — how casually she had flagged Garrett as someone worth knowing. The Meals on Wheels circuit in Richmond is, in its own way, a kind of informal registry of people navigating difficult circumstances with dignity. Garrett delivers meals on Saturdays. He doesn’t accept them. That distinction matters to him, deeply, and it tells you almost everything you need to know about who he is and why his situation is as complicated as it is.
There is no tidy resolution here. The court cases are ongoing. The loan forbearance is temporary. The future of income-driven repayment, for Garrett and for roughly 8 million other borrowers who were enrolled in SAVE, remains genuinely uncertain as of the date of this article. What Garrett has, for now, is information he didn’t have a year ago — and a slightly lower pharmacy bill. For a man who built a career on budget management, that is at least a place to start.
Related: I Discovered $27,000 in Hidden Debt From My Marriage While Drowning in Medical Bills at 59
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