Gilroy
– Dan Ornelas is a quiet man and a self-professed loner. All his
careers have dealt with things rather than people.
As a child, when he and his large family roamed California as
migrant farm pickers, he worked with fruit. Later, as head gardener
for Gavilan College, Bellarmine College Preparatory school and San
Jose State University, he worked with flowers, trees and
bushes.
Gilroy – Dan Ornelas is a quiet man and a self-professed loner. All his careers have dealt with things rather than people.
As a child, when he and his large family roamed California as migrant farm pickers, he worked with fruit. Later, as head gardener for Gavilan College, Bellarmine College Preparatory school and San Jose State University, he worked with flowers, trees and bushes.
Now, at 76 years of age and living out of a broken-down station wagon, he works with bottles.
Ornelas doesn’t drink alcohol, but he makes his living picking up after other people’s parties, scavenging the recyclables they throw away as garbage.
From about 8 to 11 almost every morning, this small, slim man can be seen pushing a shopping cart around town, filling it with bottles, cans and plastic containers he pulls out of trash cans. He gets about $7 or $8 a day from a recycling yard for his efforts. Other than modest Social Security checks, this is his only income.
At 8:15 Wednesday morning, the pickings were looking slimmer than usual. Even though scavenging bottles doesn’t pay well, Ornelas has a lot of competition – generally much younger than himself.
“I’m late,” he said, “but I can’t see before 6. … You’ve got vampires doing this (work) at 2, 3 in the morning; that’s what I call them, anyway.”
Although Ornelas looks much younger than his age, he says he is starting to feel more like it.
“I’m starting to get up later and later,” he said. “I’m burning out now. Before, I didn’t used to get so tired. Now I get tired quicker.”
Ornelas has always lived with little. An Apache Indian by blood, he was born in Tempe, Ariz., one of at least 14 children he knows of. The family moved to California before he was old enough to remember.
“When we got here, I was picking out in the fields, living in campers, living in cardboard boxes out in the fields – whatever I could get.”
Ornelas came to Gilroy in the late 1950s and has lived here ever since. Back when he was a campus gardener, he could afford his own place, but today’s $700-a-month apartments are out of his reach.
“At that time, the rent wasn’t so high,” he said. “You could get a hotel room when I first got here for $10 a week.
“It’s not that I haven’t bothered,” he added. “I try to save money. Every time I’ve got a little bit saved, something comes up.”
He used to sleep during the winters at the emergency shelter in the National Guard armory. Now, a local family lets him sleep in the station wagon in their backyard.
Their oldest daughter, who looks to be about 6 years old, sometimes accompanies him to free, hot dinners at The Lord’s Table in the St. Mary Elementary School gym. He calls her his “adopted grandkid.”
Ornelas’ face relaxes and brightens when this girl is with him, but normally he keeps his features bunched together in a weary scowl. He’s never been married, has no kids he knows of and is out of touch with his own family.
“I’ve been a loner,” Ornelas said. “I don’t have a use for people. They just get you into trouble. … I just keep away from everybody.”
He says he especially avoids making friends with transient people who drink or use drugs.
“If you hang around with winos, you’re going to become a wino,” he said. “The only time I socialize is when I see them over at The Lord’s Table or when I see them at recycling.”
Otherwise, he just says, “Hi” and moves on.
