Retirees Back on the Job Helping Others

Elbert Cotton retired as a sandblaster in his mid-50s and quit his job as a tough-talking high school football coach after nine straight championship seasons.

Life off the field and in front of the television set, however, didn’t sit well with the youthful man in sneakers who looks two decades younger than his 63 years. Just about the time football season rolled around last fall, he took a part-time job for minimum wage “just for something to do.”

Instead of yelling at 17-year-olds to knock heads, he coaxes 70-year-old victims of Alzheimer’s disease to join the paper-cutting activity at the game table.

“I’m just a different fella; my kids wouldn’t recognize me in here,” Cotton says. But only his approach has changed, he said. He is utilizing familiar skills.

“You have to deal with 36 different attitudes. You have to do things to psych them out to get them to do things.”

Once “mean and rough, with a different set of armor,” he said he had to “look mad and walk mad to get those kids to do what I wanted.”

Now, with casual pride, he said he has gained the trust of reluctant seniors who attend the adult day health center in the South Bay where he works 20 hours a week.

“It is difficult to get them to trust you, but I get the feeling that they really want friendship.”

He walks frail ladies around the park, makes them giggle when he blatantly cheats at cards, and “cons men into doing needlework.”

He has gradually drawn out visitors who once sat staring silently from chairs that lined the wall, and now jokes with them as they trace designs on paper.

And he works with the orthopedic therapist to get the seniors to exercise.

“My kids snatched 300 pounds. Here they use little weights without anything on ‘em. But it’s all mental. It’s basically the same--you have to know how to deal with them. We just get them to work with their hands.”

Cotton is a senior, too, but it’s easy to forget that. In sweat pants and T-shirt, the former Lincoln High School coach said if he weren’t walking his elderly charges to the bus stop at the end of the day, he would “probably be at some field somewhere screaming through the gates.” He took the afternoon shift because it matches the hours he used to coach.

Cotton is one of thousands of men and women past the age of 55 who have opted to go back to work--and have landed a job through the help of the Senior Aides Project. According to Frank King, director of the local chapter of the national program, about 66,000 men and women are working around the country in minimum-wage jobs landed through the project.

And for many, like Cotton, the jobs have extended their lives in unexpected ways, bringing rewards that far outdistance the monthly salary of $270.

Cotton is one of about 210 San Diego County residents who work at nonprofit organizations and government agencies through the program supported by both federal and local funds.

King said the waiting list for the aides positions ranges between 100 and 200 names. The jobs are intended to be temporary--until the senior can find unsubsidized employment--but few want to leave.

“Most are out of the job market and experiencing difficulty getting back in,” King said.

To qualify, the aides must be permanent residents with incomes that do not exceed $6,700 a year. And contrary to the mainstream job market, longevity is an asset. Applicants older than 65 are given priority.

Harriet Conlin, 74, retired six years ago when doctors told her that her job as a secretary at an auto body shop was too stressful and her “blood pressure was running high.”

She bought a mobile home for her retirement, but a bout with cancer robbed most of her savings and she could no longer meet the rent at the expensive Chula Vista mobile home park.

When she started working at the Southbay Adult Day Health Center in Chula Vista more than three years ago, she needed the money.

“But I personally don’t like old people. At first I didn’t think I would make it,” said the impeccably coiffed and manicured woman wearing a sweat shirt dotted with rows of pastel-colored hearts. “But then an old man came up to me and said, ‘You’re so pretty.’

“Nobody had told me that for so long.”

Unlike her former job where “it was very stressful with no cooperation,” the center provides a family atmosphere where younger, permanent employees treat her like a mother. “The girls are so nice to me. They would drop everything if I were home and needed medication.”

And as for the “old people,” she says, “Some days they drive you up the wall. But we have an awfully good time together. You get very fond of some of them and when they die it is hard.”

Even if she were to win a big lottery jackpot tomorrow, Conlin said, she would continue work at the center as a volunteer.

Since retiring from General Dynamics 12 years ago, engineer Eleodoro Madeo has taught manufacturing technology at community colleges and earned a degree in metaphysical arts.

“I love to teach and I love to lecture. I love children. I love people period,” he said recently.

But of all his jobs, Madeo said the job he found at age 74 through the Senior Aides Project has been “tops.”

He works with mentally and physically handicapped children at the Albert Schweitzer Elementary School.

“I have never received such gratification as I have here. I feel as if I am really accomplishing something.

The students recognize me, and say ‘Hi Mr. El.’ It’s a good feeling. I can see the result of what I am doing, and it is being appreciated. Not only by the students but by parents.”

The well-groomed, white-haired gentleman in white shirt, gray pants and red golf sweater, who was once a chief contract negotiator at General Dynamics, has had two heart attacks in the past year. His doctors have urged him to quit his part-time job.

But he is unsure if he will comply. “The minute I step into a classroom where they love me I am in heaven. I believe I am going to another planet,” he said.

For Enrique de Vera, 66, who came to the United States four years ago after retiring as a college professor in the Philippines, working in occupational therapy at the Chula Vista adult center allows him to use skills he learned as athletic director at a university in his native country.

Although he is clearly overqualified for all the jobs he has undertaken since he came to America, (he also works as a receiving clerk at the Salvation Army on weekends and helps his wife trim cloth at her sewing job after he finishes at the center), he said he delights in the labor and feels the pay is good.

The job at the center provides the only semi-skilled job he has had here, and he is “elated for the service I render the elderly people.

“We are being compensated for the work we do. The livelihood in America is nice. I can learn so many things, and earn enough, so it makes you inspired.”

The Senior Aides Project, which was created by the Older Americans Act in 1965, continues to survive budget cuts because it is a successful, cost-effective program, King said.

“Every single penny that comes to this program from the federal government is utilized to pay the wages and fringe benefits to the senior aides,” King said.

All of the administrative costs of the program are raised locally as a matching fund. King said local funds come from the county, the city of Chula Vista, and on a much lesser scale, from a number of host agencies.

The host agencies relish the program nearly as much as the seniors.

Nowhere in the county has a senior aide made a more lasting impression than at the Naval Alcohol Rehabilitation Center training department at the 32nd Street Naval Station.

There, a big man with large hands dispenses information and advice, and wraps his arms around Navy men and women about 35 times a day.

Hugs in the military? “It’s a unique command,” said military supervisor Donna Scott, a hospital corpsman. Amidst military protocol and routine, she said, “we have love and caring going on. He touches everybody’s life here.”

Jim Spice became “Gramps” when he first began giving hugs to incoming patients at the alcohol rehabilitation center. When the center was moved to the Miramar Naval Air Station more than a year ago, he became caretaker of the small library that serves the training school for alcohol and drug rehabilitation counselors.

Like the patients, and most of the students, he is an alcoholic and “does more with talking than with books,” helping students ages 19 to 40 with personal problems as well as research topics.

The button pinned to his chest reads “official hug therapist,” and he is quick to show you a couple of magic tricks pulled from his pocket. He is not an amateur at making people laugh--he worked as a professional clown for 16 years.

When he tired of traveling with the circus, he moved to Chula Vista and became a “canine social worker” with the Chula Vista Animal Shelter. He was a dog catcher and worked in the office for 26 years, and retired as a senior officer before he reached age 60.

Spice thought he would spend his retirement traveling, he said. But after a three-week trip with his wife, he remembered why he had quit the circus.

He now “feels real lucky to be working--especially in this field. I always thought the circus was my favorite. But this is really my favorite. I appreciate it, especially after not liking my work for 26 years.”

His travels while in the circus now help him soothe homesick students. “A lot are from all over the United States. We have such a good rapport. They will name a town and I’ve been there. It’s like a piece of home.”

He said he enjoys the sense of family, and he often hears from former students and patients.

“Gramps is an institution here,” said Maj. Michael L. Colby, training officer for the Naval Alcohol Rehabilitation Center. “He is a recovering alcoholic and an example of what can happen. He is good for the office. It makes me feel good that we have a place for him to come every day.”

Spice, 68, who said he thinks his health would deteriorate if he weren’t working, plans to “work ‘til I drop,” and marvels that he has found his dream job so late in his life.

“This is the frosting on the cake--to love and be loved like I am,” he said.

“He has become a part of life here, he is a totally happy person to be around,” Scott said. “The day God created Gramps he was in a wonderful mood.

“Everyone checks in with Gramps in the morning for a hug. And on Friday we come by to get extra to get through the weekend.”