Revisiting the Hookers of Indio

The hookers of Indio troll a gritty strip of four-lane highway out by the railroad tracks. Their few blocks of turf on Indio Boulevard are bounded roughly by a Motel 6 at one end and the “Why Pay More . . . Motel 7” at the other. In between are a truck stop and coffee shop, a carwash, a vacant lot and a handful of faded motels.

The hookers of Indio, all six or so of them, know what it means to be hot. Indio sits way out in the desert, past Palm Springs and just off Interstate 10--a place for gas or a date milkshake on the way to Phoenix. Temperatures can hit 120, and there’s not much shade or air conditioning on Indio Boulevard.

“In the summertime,” said one, “it’s so hot it burns your brain.”

She is 33 years old, the mother of four children. A bulge could be detected beneath her black canvas shirt. “This fifth one,” she said, “I’m putting up for adoption.” She nipped on a Coke can that smelled of booze and said her boyfriend doesn’t mind her work.

“He just tells me to be careful, and only pick up the elderly gentlemen.”

The hookers of Indio cater to a broad range of clientele: retirees, truckers, migrant farmhands, the odd televangelist.

One of the hookers, Rosemary Garcia, was picked up last month by a man in a Jaguar. They turned off Indio Boulevard and a police officer stopped the weaving Jag. The driver turned out to be the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, and the rest is tabloid history.

It was fun at first. Reporters and camera crews bounded up and down Indio Boulevard, recording the action. Rosemary, clothes new, makeup fresh, hair combed, appeared on Hard Copy and Geraldo. The National Enquirer ran a detailed list of their rates. But the hookers of Indio soon came to realize the telecams and tape recorders were bad for business.

“It’s been slow, all the customers are scared, and on slow days it’s hard to dodge and duck the cops,” said one hooker. “I mean, it’s a highway, for God’s sake. We are walking down a highway and trying to look inconspicuous. Right.”

She was a skinny woman of 29, with a tangle of black hair. Her arms were pocked with bluish puncture marks; like most, she’s a heroin addict. She was seated in a back booth at the coffee shop. She pushed her black tank top off one shoulder and rubbed.

“I got beat up two nights ago,” she said. “I think I got a dislocated shoulder or something. They took my money. Seventy dollars. The jerks.”

If a movie is made of the hookers of Indio, Julia Roberts should not get the part. Asked how to find one, Officer Jose Javier Garcia gave this advice: “If you see a girl who is dressed ugly and her hair’s all messed up, that’s probably one of them.”

Garcia is 29 years old. He came to the desert as a Marine and stayed. His Jersey City, N.J., roots are revealed in his accent and street-wise demeanor.

“I feel sorry for them,” he said of the hookers, most of whom he knows by name. “Some of them have been using since they were 15 or 16 years old, the poor girls. They try, but they can’t stop. It’s a disease. A lot of them are real sweet girls, smart girls. They don’t like the life, the sex. They hate it. They cry in the back of my car when I pick them up.

“The way these poor girls look,” the cop said, “if a man is going to go out and pick one of them up, well, he must have a big problem. That’s my personal opinion. These are not your typical call girls. They have all kinds of problems, diseases.”

Swaggart paid a $205.50 fine to settle accounts with Indio, and back in Baton Rouge presented himself as the devil’s victim. Don’t judge me, the preacher told his followers, until you “have walked a mile in my shoes.” Better they walk Indio Boulevard. That is where the true victims are found.

The hookers of Indio harbor no great ambitions. The pregnant one said her main hope was to qualify for welfare. Asked if he knew any who had escaped the life, Garcia thought and thought, but came up empty. Even Rosemary, despite all that interview money, has returned.

The woman with the sore shoulder believes the only way she’ll escape her heroin habit, and Indio Boulevard, is to go to jail for a long time. In Los Angeles, where she grew up, there had been other ways to support her habit.

“You could shoplift,” she said, “hook up with a good man, lots of things. I don’t know how I got here, doing this. I don’t understand it.”

She studied the ceiling for a long moment, her eyes wet. And then she sighed.

Outside, it was twilight. A strong wind had kicked up. It would be a cold, long night. She left the coffee shop and shuffled away in her skimpy top and shorts, sticking close to the highway’s edge. But the trucks just roared on by.