Going the Distance for Homeless : A bus driver from San Juan does all she can to help strangers in need. After all, she’s traveled that road before.

From the driver’s seat of a bus, Loretta Altieri sees a side of south Orange County that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

But Altieri, a full-time driver for the Orange County Transit District with different routes throughout South County, doesn’t look away when she sees a homeless person sleeping on a bench or a passenger who has no job or home.

The 57-year-old San Juan Capistrano resident may drive defensively, but she lives with her guard down, impulsively doing more than most would to help strangers in need.

There have been many evenings when Altieri has reached the end of her shift and seen people waiting for another bus that she knows will never come. Her husband, Alex, has learned not to count on her getting home right after work, because Altieri often tells stranded passengers to wait while she takes her bus back to the yard, then returns to give them a ride in her own car.

And sometimes, when she finds out they have no place to go, she offers them shelter at her house.

For example, there was the live-in housekeeper who had just lost her job and was looking for a motel along Altieri’s bus route. Altieri sensed the woman was troubled and started a conversation.

Before long, the bus driver--whose warmth, empathy and need to nurture provide shortcuts to friendship--was inviting her passenger to move in with her until she could find another job. The woman lived with the Altieris for several months, cooking and cleaning for them in between job interviews.

Then there was the 70-year-old man Altieri saw sleeping on a bench along her route on a particularly cold night last winter. The man, who was nearly blind, had been a passenger on her bus a number of times. Altieri called her husband, whose response, as usual, was, “Bring him home.”

They expected him to stay just for the night, but the man ended up sleeping on their living room couch for three months. They finally had to ask him to leave--and take his empty beer bottles with him.

Altieri, whose faith in the better side of humanity is almost unshakable, was disappointed but not disillusioned.

Even after she was reminded of her vulnerability by a disgruntled bus rider who gave her a strong shove before disembarking, she didn’t stop being open and friendly with her passengers.

Altieri doesn’t dismiss the risks involved in reaching out to strangers, but it’s against her nature to substitute caution for caring.

“God has given me this enormous capacity to want to help people,” she says.

Altieri, who has six grown children from two previous marriages, has acquired a large extended family as her genuine interest in all kinds of people has drawn them into her life. In addition to her six natural grandchildren, there are 10 other youngsters who call her grandma.

Also among her adopted relatives is a young woman named Sara who was once a passenger and is now like a daughter to her.

Sara, who asked to remain anonymous, used to take the bus to and from work. One day about three years ago, she was upset when she came on board, and Altieri saw it instantly.

“Loretta greeted me with a big smile and started a conversation with me,” Sara recalls. “I had never seen such a warm, loving, understanding person.”

Soon Sara, who says she is normally a very private person, was crying as she told Altieri about her marital problems. And after that, Sara continued to confide in Altieri during her commutes on the bus.

Sara became one of the few passengers to get close enough to Altieri to find out why the bus driver is so tuned in to people in trouble--especially those who are eager to help themselves but need someone to lean on while they get their lives back on course.

Altieri identifies with them because there have been a number of periods in her own life when she has felt desperate and alone.

Sitting at her kitchen table on a recent evening with Alex, she talked about her own hard times, which started in Rochester, N.Y., early in her childhood when her 1-year-old brother died of a brain tumor and her father, an abusive alcoholic, abandoned his family.

Her mother supported Altieri and her older sister by working as a housekeeper. The girls were left in the care of a neighbor who didn’t seem to notice they were out most of the time, roaming the neighborhood and sleeping on strangers’ doorsteps.

When Altieri was 5, a social worker came to her home to investigate a report of child neglect. Not long after that, she and her sister were placed in a foster home. They were never again to live with their mother.

Altieri says she was physically abused in that first foster home, then separated from her sister and moved to another home where she never felt she belonged. At age 7, she finally was placed in a home with loving foster parents. She stayed there until she was 18.

She says her father visited her until she was 8, then dropped out of her life until she searched for him at 16 after her foster dad died. She found him living nearby with his second family. Even though she maintained a relationship with him until his death in 1979, “I never felt loving toward him or love from him,” she says.

But she was close to her sister, who grew up in a foster home nearby and visited often. And especially to her mother, who came to see her every Wednesday night and never forgot her birthday.

“She had a big, big heart,” says Altieri. “She always showered me with a lot of love.”

But she doesn’t think her mother--an uneducated German immigrant--ever tried to get her children back.

“She was ignorant and backward and didn’t know how to fight the system,’ Altieri says. “I loved her dearly, and I never blamed her because I always knew she was a victim of my father beating her and leaving us. I always understood.”

Altieri got married at 18 and quickly started her own family. But when she was pregnant with her fifth child, she says her 31-year-old husband told her he didn’t want to be tied down anymore and he left. She says he gave her no financial support, and she and the children were forced to become vagabonds, living with neighbors and friends until she was able to earn a living.

She says the second husband she hoped would take care of them turned out to be abusive with her and the children. She stayed with him four years because “he convinced me he needed help and I wanted to believe it.” And she had her sixth child before she left him.

Then came a long period of single life, when she was often frightened, lonely and angry as she struggled to pay the bills and handle the stress of raising teen-agers alone. She also had a lot of guilt to contend with.

“I was a Catholic with two divorces and I thought I was going to hell,” she says.

She turned to alcohol to ease her pain. But she was determined never to lose her children the way her mother had, and she managed to earn enough to keep them in Catholic schools even when she was falling apart inside.

Her life began to turn around after her oldest son introduced her to his church and she became a born-again Christian.

Today, the self-confident, happily married brunette behind the wheel of the bus bears no resemblance to the chain-smoking, heavy-drinking bleached blonde she once was. But, she says, her own struggles continue to be a link between her and people such as Sara, who ended up in financial straits after divorcing her husband.

Sara’s friendship with Altieri still had gone no farther than their visits on the bus when the driver told her, “If you need money, my husband and I can help.”

They ended up giving Sara a loan and renting her a room in their house, where she stayed until she earned enough money to pay them back and make it on her own.

Meanwhile, Sara says, “Loretta and I became best buddies. We diet together, sing together, walk together and encourage each other in everything.”

When they talk about their dreams, Altieri describes the shelter she’d like to build for the homeless, whom she sees as victims of “horrible circumstances beyond their control.”

“Everyone,” she says, “has reasons why they are the way they are.”

Altieri doesn’t have the resources to build a shelter, so she continues to help the homeless and others on a small scale and keeps hoping someday she’ll be able to do more.

She says giving energizes her. “I fly high for so long after I help someone. I get worn out by monotony and selfishness.”

“Maybe,” she muses, “my shoulders are broader than other people’s.”