‘Best in West’ : Welcome to Car Wash With Heart

The gospel hymns were blaring from the portable cassette stereo and Isaiah Yates, perched on a couch, was swaying and humming to the music, interrupting himself occasionally with a contagious chuckle.

The 57-year-old Yates was watching as his three or four workers sudsed up and then scrubed down a couple of Cadillacs, a few vans, a flashy sports car and a Plymouth. A plywood sign leaning against Yates’ clapboard house on the corner of 28th and Commercial streets in Southeast San Diego proudly proclaimed “Shop The Best In The West.”

Welcome to Yates Car Wash. There are no big machines here, just lots of Joy dish-washing liquid, three five-gallon buckets and two heavy-duty hoses. For $5, you can get your car washed inside and out, the rims and tires scrubbed and the dashboard polished with Armor All.

For another $7.50, Yates will have one of his on-again, off-again employees wax your car by hand at the modest business adjacent to his home.

In the 10 years that Yates has lived on the busy corner, which now overlooks the San Diego Trolley’s East Line, he has supported himself from the vacant lot next door. He sold used cars, then peddled barbecued ribs and chicken.

Now, he washes cars.

“Sometimes we do none,” said Yates, a Pentecostal preacher who is affectionately known as the “Rev” to the locals. “It goes up and down, but it averages out to 10 or 15 cars a day.”

Yates pays his help $2 a car for a wash, and he usually recruits his workers from the throngs of youths parading up and down 28th Street, a neighborhood of older commercial buildings and run-down homes.

“I like to take the kids off the street,” said the stocky preacher. “For a lot of people, it’s the only job they’ve got. Sometimes they don’t have any food to eat and I give them a job.”

Charles Randall and his wife, Yvonn, came to Yates about a year ago for a job and have been washing cars as a team six days a week since.

“It’s kept me off the streets,” said Randall, scrubbing down a Cadillac. “I was hanging out on the street doing nothing. They’re going to have to pry me away from this place.”

His wife is more pragmatic: “At least I know where he’s at if I’m working with him,” she said pointing to her husband of one year.

Draped in red, white and blue flags and gold tinsel--leftovers from the days Yates sold used cars--the tiny car wash has become a semi-landmark in Southeast San Diego.

“I used to come to the junk yards a lot and I saw this place,” said Jose Albert Garces, who now has his black Datsun 280ZX washed and waxed regularly at Yates’ place. “I came here and couldn’t believe the good job they do.” When the trolley’s East Line opened last month, the Metropolitan Transit Development Board managers noticed Yates’ car wash and decided to send its security cars and small trucks there for regular cleaning, said Peter D. Tereschuck, a MTDB transportation manager. Tereschuck figures he’ll send about 15 vehicles a month at $4 per car to be cleaned by Yates.

At the car wash Tuesday, it had been a particularly busy day for Yates. As the afternoon rolled on, entrepreneur Yates took a seat on the couch and turned up the volume on one of his favorite gospel tunes, “I’m Going On Just the Same.”