For Heidi Cruz, Grapefruit Juice Was Key to Political Career

Heidi Nelson Cruz, the wife of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and a managing director at Goldman Sachs, has one piece of advice she often gives to the young graduates she mentors: Be the person willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done, no matter how small the task may seem.

Or, in shorthand, she tells them the Bob Zoellick story.

In 2000, fresh from working on George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign, Mrs. Cruz arrived in Florida to help out with the recount. A newly minted Harvard M.B.A. and eager to make herself useful, she approached Robert B. Zoellick, whom she knew slightly from the campaign, and asked what she could do to help.

“And he very seriously looked up from his desk and said that he wanted some grapefruit â€" grapefruit juice,” Mrs. Cruz recounted in an interview last week in her husband’s Senate office.

A bit miffed but undaunted, she grabbed the keys to the rental car from Mr. Cruz, then her boyfriend, and headed to the grocery store. “And I’ll admit, she was ticked,” Mr. Cruz said.

Mrs. Cruz bought the grapefruit juice, arranged it in an ice chest â€" “and it was beautiful,” she said â€" and left it on Mr. Zoellick’s desk with a Post-It note that read: “Per your request.”

“So the next day, I thought, O.K., you’ve got to prove yourself, he needed grapefruit juice, fine,” she remembered. “So I said, ‘Mr. Zoellick, if there’s anything that you need today, I’m here and I’d love to help, there’s a lot going on.’ ”

Mr. Zoellick’s next request was equally simple: “Raisin bread.”

“And I was not deterred,” Mrs. Cruz said. “I was like, Got it! Ran and got the key, do-do-do-do-do. Got it, put it on his desk.”

The next thing he asked her for was help with some talking points. And later, when he was appointed as the United States Trade Representative in Mr. Bush’s new administration, Mrs. Cruz received a late-night phone call: “He said, ‘You’re the first person I’m calling and I want you on my team,’ ” she said.

Indeed, Mrs. Cruz’s first job in the Bush White House was as a special assistant to Mr. Zoellick, who recently joined Goldman as the chairman of its international advisory board.

So why, exactly, was Mrs. Cruz considered for the job? “The reason he said why is, he said, ‘Do you know for a week, I had been asking people for grapefruit juice and no one would get it for me?’,” Mr. Cruz recalled.