THE TRUCK CATERER : Customers in Jobless Line Provide a Steady Income

In nine years outside the welfare office in Echo Park, Karim Elias and Mo Harari have seen some ups and downs, but they’ve never seen it this bad--or, frankly, this good.

For the customers of their quilted-steel catering truck, bad times mean that the line of welfare applicants at this Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services office stretches around the block even before the office opens at 7 a.m.

For Elias and Harari, a steady supply of customers is held captive by five- or six-hour waits on the Beverly Boulevard sidewalk.

Not that these vendors of coffee and KitKats, burritos and cracker sare getting rich; many of their customers can’t afford a pack of cigarettes, so they sell them one at a time. At 15 cents each, the margin is hefty.

Other customers try to pay in food stamps, which the catering trucks can’t legally accept. Like hospital emergency rooms, the pair must also do a certain amount of charity work.

“We’re human,” Harari says. When people beg for food, “at least a few we have to help.”

Coming from Egypt 15 year ago, Harari brought with him the usual immigrant notions. “We heard money was growing on trees in America,” he says, smiling.

Now he spends his days selling snacks to a clientele that often can’t afford a bag of potato chips. Many are homeless; all are poor. One customer lives under the eaves next to the front door of the office, his foam mattress and blankets strewn with newspapers, a big battery-powered wall clock propped against the wall showing precisely the correct time.

Many people, including young ones, lean on canes and crutches as they clutch peach-colored slips of paper with their numbers in line. A guard sweeps a metal detector over those lucky enough to get into the building. The sidewalk parodies a parking lot, crowded with the shopping carts of the homeless and baby carriages of mothers applying for Medi-Cal. Mangy dogs wander the nearby streets. Feverish children crouch by the truck.

Why face this misery every day when your business has wheels? Elias, 57, whose lined face, knit cap and jacket too warm for the weather make him look like some of his down-and-out customers, says they tried other locations, but none had such a steady clientele. And they figure that the lines won’t get any shorter any time soon.

“It’s an election year, and we hear a lot of promises about the economy, but they should show us something,” Harari says.

A man playing Marvin Gaye on a battered boom box interrupts his sing-along efforts to hawk tapes to those in line. He wants to talk politics.

“Mr. Bush ain’t doing right,” says Otis Wilson, 45, and unemployed far longer than his benefits lasted. “He’s doing lots of good stuff overseas, but this is America. Why doesn’t he drive by and see us?”

As unemployment payments run out for thousands of people in Southern California, welfare rolls have swelled. About 1.3 million people in Los Angeles County--about one in eight--are on public relief or food stamps or both. That’s about 200,000 more than a year ago.

“I know their faces,” Harari says. “The same people come every month.”

His job has its hazards. When people come out of the office, frustrated that their third five-hour wait in two weeks hasn’t gotten them any benefits, they take it out on the vendors. “If they get mad inside, they come out and face us,” Harari says. “They curse us.”

But the Egyptians hear the dreams of their customers too. One says he’ll be rich after he wins a $2-million lawsuit. Another says he’s making a movie that will earn “$100 million, or at least $40 million, even if it’s no good.” Wilson says he’s planning to get into concert promotion and make a fortune.

Harari, who says he holds an MBA and once worked at a big New York bank, says he feels lucky just to have a job. But he worries. When several catering-truck workers were recently slain in another part of town, he shuddered. Harari has no plans to return to Egypt, but sometimes wonders about the wisdom of staying here.

“We didn’t figure it would be like this,” he says. “It’s not easy to live in America.”