Poor Find a Working Pal : Shoeshine Man Brings Food, Fellowship

Hershell Hardimon didn’t get over to the homeless folks around the Santa Ana Courthouse with his breakfast rolls and bread last Monday. “I didn’t have anything sweet,” he explained, “that would go very good with coffee in the morning.”

But he was there Tuesday. And Wednesday. Just as he’s been there virtually every morning for the past three years--passing out food and a dash of his special brand of cheer to people who have neither.

He’s up at 5 every morning to distribute the food he has picked up the night before. It has to be that way because Hershell works all day. He shines shoes--and repairs and dyes them--from a stand at the Auto Wash at the Woodbridge Village Center. He likes to make that point to the young men he sees hanging around the street when he makes his food deliveries.

“You know what I tell them?” he says. “I tell them I shine shoes. And I hope they get the message that you have to go out there and do something, and you can’t always be picky about what you do.”

At 52, Hershell is a big man, broad-shouldered but not fat. He wears a stubble of beard and a cap, and his eyes are alive and whimsical. He enjoys what he does. “I don’t let the bad things come to my mind first,” he says. “I don’t think that way.”

Hershell knows what it’s like to be hungry. He was born in Arkansas, one of 12 children his father tried to feed off a marginal farm. “We had land,” says Hershell, “but we couldn’t eat it.”

He remembers the people who would bring them food, and he and his siblings were always told to ask what they might do to pay for it. “But those people would say: ‘Nothing. It’s a gift.’ And I can still remember how good those unexpected meals tasted.”

He left home as a teen-ager and worked for several years on a ranch in Texas. He came to Orange County on a two-week vacation “and it didn’t rain the whole time. I knew this was heaven.” So the next time he came back, he stayed.

He worked for a Santa Ana auto dealer for 18 years, married and raised five children--two of them still at home. Then he struck out for himself, selling various wares at swap meets for several years before he set up his shoe business in Woodbridge nine years ago.

I hung out with him last Monday and saw a steady outpouring of real affection toward Hershell--everyone calls him by his first name--from the dozens of people who crossed our path. And the feeling is mutual.

When I expressed surprise that the yuppie image of Irvine would produce such enthusiastic and generous support for Hershell, he came as close to bristling as he did all day. “I know that’s said about the people in Irvine, but not my people. Anything I want, my customers give to me. I know all my customers. I have a lot of faith in them, and they have a lot of faith in me. We still got people with a heart.”

Hershell’s food rounds started three years ago. His wife and daughter both work across the street from the courthouse in Santa Ana, and they were appalled at the plight of the homeless people they saw there every day. So they told Hershell, and he checked it out--and felt the same way.

But Hershell never wastes time in breast-beating; he acts. He went to two neighboring supermarkets and asked if he could have the food they threw out daily to distribute to the homeless. He says they refused on the grounds that some of it might be spoiled and that they could be sued.

So Hershell went to the Vons store in his own shopping center and got immediate and enthusiastic support. They have been loading him down with food ever since. Vons manager, Terry Casey, played it low-key, telling me: “Hershell’s the main man. Not us.”

But Hershell was magnanimous in his praise of all the people at Vons. He also gets a regular supply of baked goods from the Coco’s across the street from his carwash.

On a typical day, Hershell will be up at 5 and off to Santa Ana from his Fountain Valley home. He brings breakfast bread and rolls to the homeless around the public buildings in Santa Ana, starting always with four elderly women for whom he has special compassion.

Then he will take the rest of the food he collected the night before to various churches and welfare centers on a rotating basis. He knows which ones have cooking facilities and has carefully sorted the food so that they get everything that requires cooking.

He’s at his stand by 9 in the morning, sometimes picking up a bag or two of food in his truck first. At the end of the day, he looks over everything that is going to be thrown out and makes his selections. He takes the food home where he and his family sort through it, removing anything that is spoiled and re-bagging the remainder. When he goes to bed, he’s ready for his early morning rounds. “I sleep well,” he says simply.

One of Hershell’s finer assets is his low capacity for kidding himself.

“I know,” he says, “that some of this food is probably going to people who don’t deserve it. People who are young and strong and still have a mind. But because of a few bad apples in a bushel, you don’t throw them all away. I don’t have time to pick and sort among them.”

Same thing with the police. Hershell says he gets strong support from the Irvine police, and when I asked him if the action of the Santa Ana police in confiscating belongings of the homeless upset him, he thought a long time before he admitted that it did. But then he added: “I can’t say too much bad about them, though. All in all, they treat these people well.”

Hershell gets angry at those who call the homeless “deadbeats.”

“Most people who say that are ripping other people off,” he said. “I don’t have time to talk to them.”

When critics are sincere, though, Hershell tells them: “If you got down and sick, it would be a different story. That could happen. We don’t all have strong minds, either. Most of these people who are down are down for a reason--and we all need a second chance.”

When I asked Hershell what steps he would suggest to help the homeless, he shook his head sadly. “Our political leaders don’t really care whether these people have a place to sleep or whether they need a doctor. That’s the hurting place. So many of them could get out with just a little help.

“Think of all those empty buildings around here that nobody is using. Why can’t we use them for the homeless at night? They can deal with their problems during the day but not at night when it gets so cold.”

He thought about that for a moment.

“I hate to see winter come,” he said almost softly. “I don’t know if they still have their blankets.” Then he brightened a little. “But we’ve got 30 or 40 at home to start them off with. And my friends here will get me more.”

But there will never be enough blankets. Or enough Hershells.