THE PICKER : A Woman Finds Treasure in the Trash of Balboa Island

She came riding through the pre-dawn drizzle into the soft glow of the Balboa Island alley street lamp. Her knee bumped into the white plastic shopping bag that swung from the handlebars as she pedaled down the slick asphalt.

“I like to go pickin’ in the rain,” she said as she stopped behind a duplex, eased off the seat and straddled the bike bar. She took a small flashlight from her pocket and focused the beam into an overflowing trash can. “This is like heaven. There’s no competition in this weather and the pickin’s are primo.”

Pushing aside a food bag, she pulled an orange ski sweater from the trash can.

“Look at this,” she said, holding it up. “It’s practically new. And if I don’t like the color, I can always dye it.”

She stuffed the sweater into the bag that bulged with loot she had already collected.

“I found four pleated lampshades tonight,” she said, flipping her damp hair back from her face. “I’ve been looking for those for a long time.”

She hopped back on her bike seat and rode back into the night, weaving from side to side down the alley, stopping at three more cans before turning the corner.

Deborah Alexander used to be a homeless woman. She would canvass Newport Beach alley trash cans and dumpsters like other people go to the office. But last year, she moved into a Costa Mesa apartment and got a job as a waitress, and now her pickin’ is one part recreation and hobby, another part compulsion.

“This is my only therapy, my freedom time,” said Alexander, 28. “I sneak out to pick. I can’t sleep unless I make at least one run. Then I go home and relish over what I got. It’s like Christmas every day. Wherever there’s pickin’s, there’s fun.”

In the eyes of police, she’s a scavenger, a person who digs through dumpsters or garbage pails and takes refuse illegally. In the eyes of the homeowners, she’s like a cockroach that comes out at night to feed on their garbage. But in Alexander’s view, she’s an honest “picker” who turns one person’s trash into another person’s treasure.

And the pickin’s are good in Newport Beach.

“These rich people throw out beautiful things instead of donating them to churches and it’s a shame,” she said. “All it may need is a little fixing. Once it’s all shined up, other people will want it.”

In the four years she has picked in Newport Beach, Alexander has found rings, diamond earrings, books with money in them, antique spool beds, silver trays, stereo equipment, Tiffany lamps, watches and a lot of expensive clothing, some with price tags still attached.

“It’s plentiful out there,” she said. “Some middle-class places in Costa Mesa are OK. But there’s jewels in Newport, and high-tech stuff.”

Yet, not everything she finds is pleasant.

“Some of the things are scary, too.” She said she’s been under windows where battling couples are throwing out each other’s belongings and that she’s found hypodermic needles mixed in the trash.

“You can really tell about a society like this,” she said. “I don’t go digging too deep.”

Alexander’s schedule and routes coincide with trash pickup days.

On Balboa Island, she usually starts at 3 a.m. to beat the trash trucks, driving down from Costa Mesa with her bike in the trunk. Working with a flashlight and wearing rubber gloves, she works her way down each alley until daybreak.

She wears a bungee cord around her neck to lash her treasures to the bike. Sometimes, she carries a knapsack and luggage carrier, all the time making frequent trips to the car to unload her booty.

And on some daytime forays, which she calls “stroller scans,” she cases the alleys while pushing her son in his carriage.

“Nighttime is good,” she said. “But any time can be pickin’ time. No one wants to go to the store with me because it takes me an hour to go three blocks. I’m always scanning the area wherever I go.”

One of the best pickin’ times is Labor Day weekend, when people close up their summer homes, throwing away silk dresses and other “good pickin’s.” Spring cleaning months are also lucrative, and she always watches for garage sales, because people tend to throw away what they don’t sell, rather than donate to charities.

Unlike other scavengers who seek recyclable items--which police in many cities cite as a problem--Alexander sticks to garage-sale type goods that she can sell or give away.

“Lots of people are doing it for lots of different reasons,” she said. “Some want food; some want drugs. Some just want the cans and papers. Some are ripping people off. The last thing I’d want is to be mistaken for one of those people.”

Alexander has been stopped and questioned by the police several times but has never been cited.

“It’s like a domestic call these days. They just ask what you’re doing. I don’t go on people’s private property and I don’t leave a mess. I try to be courteous. If I have to wonder if it’s trash or not, I don’t take it, or if it’s that good, I’ll ask.”

Newport Beach Police Sgt. Andy Gonis said the city has an ordinance prohibiting the taking of any “refuse, garbage or cuttings placed out to trash” without a permit. But despite occasional calls from citizens, few citations have been given, he said.

“We handle it appropriately, usually with a verbal warning,” he said. “Newport Beach is unusual because of the number of alleys. Likewise, people who live here become concerned when they see people hanging around those alleys.”

Alexander said the number of pickers in Newport beach is increasing rapidly. She estimates there are 20 regulars on Balboa Island, all older than 50. And on Balboa Peninsula, there are about 70 pickers within the 38 blocks from River Avenue to Balboa Boulevard. An additional 30 to 40 work other sections of the city, she said.

“There are a lot of people doing it now, especially the cans and papers. I have to go out and clear my turf every week. There’s no written code--it’s a big stick. It’s your timing and how often you cruise the alleys. You see each other in the alley and quicken your pace. Nothing can tear you away from that can.”

Born and raised in a middle-class New Jersey home, Alexander said she started taking trash when she was about 19. Seeing people throwing out furniture and other “big stuff,” she and a friend rode around in a pickup truck, gathered the discards, fixed them up and sold them at garage sales.

“You become addicted to it,” she said. “It probably stems from the less money you have will instill creativity. Plus things in the trash always attracted me more, those earthy things; they had a history to them.”

She said there were no problems in her family or upbringing. “I had a lot of respect for my elders. It would not be my structure to go out and do something like this. My mother couldn’t understand. She would get embarrassed.”

In 1982, she came to California, moving in with her parents in Fullerton and working as an artwork framer. Two years later, she moved in with friends in Newport Beach and started using cocaine and marijuana.

“Once you go into Newport, you do drugs. I just got caught up in the whirlwind of it. Everything that could happen, happened. I got evicted from one place; I lost my car; I became estranged from my family. One thing led to another. I was pickin’ heavily then.”

The last straw for Alexander was when a roommate started freebasing cocaine. Disgusted, she just “upped and left,” becoming homeless. For the next two years, she lived a “different level of life,” sleeping in cars, eating at shelters, sometimes waitressing, always pickin’.

“I was fed up with everything and nothing mattered,” she said. “I gave up. I spent a lot of time alone. I always felt intimidated, ugly and stupid.”

Alexander said she sometimes didn’t eat for a week.

“I can remember being so tired and not having anywhere to lay down. But I would not sleep on the street. And I kept myself clean by crawling into yacht club windows to take showers. It’s a whole different life, with no toilet paper and no place to get a drink of water. Dirty forks or spoons aren’t what you worry about.”

She made friends with other homeless people with whom she sometimes shared a motel room.

“Once you’re in that circle, you’re in it,” she said. “Once you lose your house and go homeless, you sort of end up staying homeless. It’s real hard to get out. You basically need a miracle to start anew.”

It was during this time that she met a fellow picker who sometimes allowed her to sleep in her garage, fed her, let her take showers and cared for her when she was sick.

In return, Alexander helped pick and sell the discarded goods at garage sales, making about $900 a month toward the rent.

“We’d scan the alleys every day, come home to cook dinner and then go out from 6 (p.m.) on, sometimes all night,” she said. “It was like a full-time job.”

Two years ago, when she became pregnant, she decided she had to turn her life around.

She moved in with a friend to establish a place of residence, cleaned houses to earn money and was approved for welfare assistance. She had her baby, then spent more than a year as an outpatient in a court-ordered county drug rehabilitation program.

“I learned so much about myself. It was real difficult and it hurt a lot, but the counseling got me back to my mom and I was so grateful for that. I found out it’s OK to be who I am.”

Today, Alexander shares a Costa Mesa house with a boyfriend, and has a 2-year-old son, Matthew.

“From where I was then and where I am now is a big change,” she said, sitting by the window seat of her kitchen, the toddler playing on the spotless floor.

“I understand myself and I am content. I now like and need a regular job. Pickin’ has taken a back seat. With a child comes the fears. What if I got picked up or mistaken for a robber?

“Pickin’ is scary sometimes, and not as intriguing as it was before. Matthew is more important. Different responsibilities play higher.”

She stood and walked from room to room of the house, pointing at lamps, ladder-back and white wicker chairs, lace-draped tables, desks, prints, hand-painted baskets, knickknacks, a spool bed and a closet full of neatly stacked sweaters and other clothing.

“I had nothing before,” she said. “Everything in here is pickin’s.”

In her son’s room, dozens of stuffed animals sat in a little makeshift hammock draped in one corner. Other toys spilled from every nook and cranny.

“I love to fix things, to have 100 screws and 101 holes to put them in,” she said. “It’s really neat when you can get a toy shiny and working again.”

She enjoys giving things away to friends and others who “need or appreciate them the most.”

“Everybody always needs something and it’s neat to find it and be able to give it,” Alexander said. “For instance, (a friend) never will buy pants. So I save the new ones for him. And I like to fix up baskets for babies, with all kinds of little stuffed animals and toys.”

Alexander said people come to her to find things they want to purchase, such as dining tables, chairs or lamps.

“I’d say, ‘Lord, find me a can opener,’ and I’d see one that night,” she said. “You almost develop a sense.”

Alexander realizes that what she does is socially unacceptable.

“Lots of people wouldn’t be caught dead doing this,” she said. “Some people find out about me and drop me (socially). Or you end up someplace and someone says ‘that’s the girl that was in our trash can.’ ”

She went out to her garage, where couches, stereo receivers, vacuums, lampshades and a potpourri of other goods were stacked.

“Look at what Mommy found you the other night,” she said to Matthew, holding up a yellow Tonka toy truck. “All I have to do is clean it up.”

She laughed.

“Yesterday, I was out getting some cigarettes. This man said, ‘That’s a beautiful blouse.’ I said ‘Well, thank you,’ and paused. Then I said, ‘I found it in a trash can on Balboa.’ He looked shocked. I don’t think he believed me.”