[3] Sarmiento studied in various locations in South America, for eighteen months in the office of Oscar Niemeyer, before coming to the United States.

In 1951 while visiting his sister-in-law in Missouri he rear ended an architect who worked for the St. Louis based Bank Building & Equipment Corporation of America.

He was hired soon after and served as the head designer for the corporation from 1951 through 1961, after which he founded his own sixty-person Sarmiento Associates office based in St. Louis, Missouri.

The smaller branch banks tend to be more playful, eye-catching, Googie projects.

Sarmiento lived in Santa Monica, California and was still active in the preservation of his buildings until his death in 2013.