Charity Recycling Operation Held Together by Luck, Prayer

H i. My name is Don and I am an obsessive recycler.

Don is this guy’s real name, but he won’t let me use the other one, the one that, in his past life, people would pronounce after the word doctor .

Don is 67, a retired M.D.

Don will probably kill me because I mentioned that.

It is first names only here in the yard--”We don’t want to go tooting our own horns”--which looks to be heaped with trash. It is where the UC Irvine Associated Students Recycling Center used to be.

“I know a lot of this looks like junk, but it’s not junk,” Don says. “Not to me.”

Don sees things differently than most.

He is into broken typewriters, obsolete lab equipment, kaput microwaves, rusted chairs, musical instruments, books, overhead projectors, blackboards, used cans of paint, old furniture and absolutely everything else for which there is some possible use.

He is looking for a boat.

Then Don and Jim and Dwayne (actually there are two Dwaynes), and Roger and Travis and Mike and Sandy and Bob and Jack--am I leaving anybody out?--fix everything up and send it into a new life. For free.

The bounty goes to Orange County Social Services, to abused women, the homeless, public schools in Orange and Los Angeles counties, Indian reservations and a whole bunch of hospitals, schools and research programs in Mexico. There are invariably other grateful and worthy recipients too.

And this makes the guys feel good. They are all retired, except the younger Dwayne, and most of them have at least one heart attack under their belt.

They’re enrolled in something like a 12-step program for helping other people out. They’ve been doing this for more than four years; it is strictly volunteer.

Fact is, counting the things they just flat-out buy themselves, some of them actually pay to work here. They say they can always use more help.

“We’re just a bunch of guys,” Don says. “We don’t have any meetings, which is wonderful. . . . The biggest part of meetings is to decide when the next meeting is.”

Don lights up another generic menthol cigarette, in defiance of his cardiologist’s advice and nearly everybody else’s as well. Don had his heart attack last year.

“This is kind of pay-back for everything I’ve taken out of society,” he says. “I think that everybody should pay back.”

“And it really is a lot of fun,” he adds.

Oh, come on.

“No, really ,” Don says, smiling big before he bursts into a rolling laugh. His face is an amazing pastiche of crisscrossed lines. His grayish-red beard seems to curl back to reveal his teeth.

Don, who is the director of this bunch of guys, is talking now over the drone of the San Diego Freeway. He talks a lot. His mother-in-law, for example, is “a doll, an absolute little doll” who loves “Bonzana,” “I Love Lucy” and “Murder She Wrote.” She’s visiting Don and his wife for her annual three-month stay. She is 86.

We are on our way back from Long Beach, hauling a load of old wood doors, chain-link fencing, a table, assorted open cans of paints and solvents, a broken chair, plastic binders, etc.

Don’s buddy, Vince, was getting rid of some things. Except Vince told one of his employees to make sure and watch Don because, Lord knows, he might walk off with the cart that’s holding the paint cans soon as someone turns his back.

The ’85 Dodge truck that Don is driving has a screwdriver stuck in the ignition because it has no keys. Don himself donated this monster to the cause. It is filthy. The front passenger door doesn’t open; the glove compartment won’t stay closed.

And heat is blasting from the dash board--although the Santa Ana winds are keeping things nice and warm outside--because the radiator needs to be kept cool.

Which is how this charity recycling operation works too. It is held together somehow, with luck and a prayer. It is a maze of improbable combinations that hum.

“Boy, I’m really glad we got that security monitor,” Don says about part of the Long Beach haul. “I already have two cameras for it.”

“Trouble is, there are too many people that think this is beneath them,” he goes on. “Gee, you mean you get your hands dirty? Well, what difference does it make? That’s why they made soap and water.”

Earlier I stated that this operation is strictly volunteer. Actually, this is not 100% true.

Accompanying us on the trip to Long Beach, for example, are two young men who, given their druthers, would be someplace else. The court assigned them to help Don as part of their community service sentence for having committed a crime.

One guy says that he ran a stop sign and then didn’t show up in court. The other guy says it is “basically none of your business” what he did.

But this was when we first set out. Both guys loosen up considerably and spontaneously offer that as community service goes, this gig is not too bad.

“It’s better than Caltrans,” the mysterious lawbreaker says.

“And there’s a purpose to it,” the other one adds.

“Yeah, it’s fun,” Don says. “Look at all the junk I got. And it has a purpose. If we didn’t take it, it would go to a landfill. . . . And it’s really amazing. You never know what you’re going to find.”

Which is exactly how I feel myself. Amazing. Don and Jim and Roger and Travis and Mike and Sandy and Bob and Jack and the two Dwaynes. Who could make these guys up?