GILROY
– Two parents who lived in a recreational vehicle with nine
children for two years swapped places this week. The father went to
Santa Clara County jail, and the mother bailed out.
GILROY – Two parents who lived in a recreational vehicle with nine children for two years swapped places this week. The father went to Santa Clara County jail, and the mother bailed out.
Saturnino “Roscoe” Regalado, the biological father of eight of the children, was arrested this week and arraigned Thursday in Superior Court in San Martin on misdemeanor charges of vehicle trespassing and utility theft. The couple allegedly connected their RV to a Pacific Gas & Electric line without permission. He also had a warrant for being under the influence of a controlled substance, another misdemeanor.
Sandra Rodriguez, 29, who gave birth to all nine kids, went free Saturday on $5,500 bail. She was arraigned July 1 on nine misdemeanor counts of child endangerment, plus utility theft and trespassing.
Regalado was absent when police arrested Rodriguez June 30 and towed the RV, which had been parked at the south end of Alexander Street for two years.
Child Protective Services took the eight boys and one girl into three separate foster homes, according to Rodriguez’s older sister, Debbie. The children range in age from 7 months – a pair of twins – to 11 years.
Rodriguez is now staying with her sister in San Martin. Contacted Thursday, she said she has not seen her children since her arrest, but CPS staff are trying to arrange for her to spend two hours Monday with as many of the kids as they can get together.
“I went to CPS, and they said I’d have to take some classes” before they return her children to her, Rodriguez said.
How did a family with so many children come to live in an RV? It was never meant to be permanent, Rodriguez said.
“I told Roscoe when we got there that I didn’t want to stay,” she said. “We were living in motels for a while. I don’t know. It was cheaper than the motels.”
Rodriguez said two CPS workers took on the family’s case nearly two years ago, shortly after they settled into the RV. These workers arranged to send some of her sons to a horse camp and used to visit regularly, Rodriguez said, but they eventually dropped the case. According to Rodriguez, a worker told her the family’s living conditions were not too bad, and they were becoming overloaded with more serious cases, involving child abuse.
It was Gilroy police who decided to take action against the parents, Rodriguez said.
Living in an RV is not unusual in Gilroy, given the high cost of housing, and police normally leave such people alone unless they receive complaints. The number of children and the unsanitary living conditions set this family apart, police Sgt. Noel Provost said last week.
Debbie Rodriguez disagreed, saying her sister kept the RV clean. She did not, however, deny Provost’s claim that the vehicle’s toilet was rigged to dump sewage into an open, 15-gallon plastic container underneath the vehicle.
The family’s only running water came through a garden hose from a nearby Japanese community center, Provost said. The RV bore license plates that did not belong to it and was last registered as a junk vehicle, he added.
Regalado worked as a day laborer, according to police, but Debbie Rodriguez said the family subsisted largely on welfare. According to her, he controlled all family finances, did all the shopping and left Sandra ignorant of money matters.