The Last Stop : Wrecked Remains of a Car-Crazy City End Up in Wilmington Junkyards

Bone tired and cranky, in need of a shave and a change of scenery, Otis Robinson roused himself from a catnap in his old Chevy van, surveyed the streets of industrial East Wilmington and took stock of his years as a junkman.

“I was making a little money doing body-and-fender work and a guy said, ‘Hell, you could be making real money in the junk business,’ ” Robinson recalled. “Well, we were in business three months and couldn’t even make enough money to pay the light bill.”

That was 18 years ago. And though they dissolved the partnership, Otis Robinson--the O in M & O Auto--kept the name and the business on McDonough Avenue. “It was the worst mistake I ever made,” he said, staring down a dusty street of wrecked cars and battered lives.

The homeless, junkies, prostitutes. They’re all here in East Wilmington--a tough place in the daytime, a no-man’s-land after dark--a place where people like Robinson eke out a living.

So he’s getting out, Robinson said. At 67, he’s selling his one-acre business to Blue Boy’s salvage next door. And if he has any regret--any regret at all--it was that he stayed a junkman as long as he did. “The junk business ain’t worth two dead flies,” he said. “It ain’t no business at all, to tell you the truth.”

No business for Robinson, perhaps. But if there’s a place to own a junkyard in Los Angeles, it might be in Wilmington, home to almost a third of the city’s 700 salvage and storage yards.

Big yards, small yards, some ramshackle and some neat. Yards that have been around for decades. Yards that seemed to crop up almost overnight.

In all, they provide the parts and burial grounds for many of the cars in Los Angeles. And over time they have become as much a part of Wilmington’s rugged landscape as the waterfront, a constant reminder of its industrial character and, many say, a misfortune of geography.

By day, the 200 or so yards are just another part of Wilmington’s identity, rough-and-tumble businesses that are bordered by refineries and, like those refineries, have a dirty job in keeping Los Angeles--a city on wheels--moving.

At night, they are something else again. Dark, eerie graveyards of metal and glass. And the roughest are in East Wilmington--on the border of Long Beach--where many streets are named for Civil War generals and the pop of small arms fire at night is a common occurrence.

“This area is the most dangerous in Los Angeles,” said Erchel Bean, a bear-sized city building inspector, as he drove his muddy red pickup along the railroad tracks east of Henry Ford Avenue. “I rarely find a week, coming down here, when I don’t hear a story about someone being killed.”

Though such stories are exaggerations, according to Los Angeles police, no one disputes that the streets of East Wilmington are mean and deadly.

“There have been murders. And not a night goes by without gunshots. It’s like the Wild West,” said Detective Mike Reeve, who directs the Harbor Division’s policing of the yards.

Added Detective Dick Brown, who regularly patrols the area: “At night, you don’t want to be out there. . . . Shots are fired constantly. Knifings. Clubbings. That kind of thing.”

Crime is as much a part of East Wilmington as the junkyards are part of the community. And neither fact much pleases Wilmington’s plain-talking, working-class residents.

“Any kind of junkyard you want, we’ve got it here in Wilmington,” complained community activist Bill Schwab. “We’ve got too many . . . and the people deserve better.”

Twenty or so years ago, Wilmington was just one of several harbor area communities with plenty of available land near the scrap yards and ships of Los Angeles Harbor.

But then Carson, moving to spruce up its image after declaring cityhood in 1968, cleared out many of its yards. And San Pedro’s industrial waterfront also was transformed, with gritty lots replaced by lower-maintenance, higher-profit enterprises such as ship container yards.

Land was cheap and available in Wilmington, and the 12-square-mile community soon found itself awash with salvage and storage lots for everything from motorcycles to motor homes, family sedans to fishing boats.

At large lots like Pick-Your-Part and Ecology, hundreds of people--from back-yard mechanics to bankers--walk each day through rows of broken, sometimes mangled, autos. Searching for engine parts, hubcaps, dashboards and taillights, they scavenge the cars as soon as they arrive. And when the time comes, those cars are hauled away for scrap to make room for others.

“The secret is fresh product,” said John Rosser, who manages one Pick-Your-Part lot on Blinn Avenue.

As he spoke, scores of customers, tools in hand, paid a $1 entry fee each to comb over thousands of cars neatly assorted--like fruit in a grocery--by make or model. “If I need to find something pretty fast, I come here,” said Alfredo Garcia, 25, of Inglewood as he searched for a wheel cylinder with his wife, Leticia, and cousin, Gilberto.

“We probably go through 35,000 to 40,000 cars a year” at Pick-Your-Part’s two Wilmington lots, said Cindy Galfin, property controller for the Anaheim-based company.

And over at West Coast Auto Wrecking, Bill and Ron Meyer run things just like their father, William, did for 22 years before his recent retirement.

The one-acre lot, in the southeast corner of Wilmington, deals only in General Motors cars. “They seem to break down pretty quick,” joked Bill, 36, as he stood near the yard’s tiny office, its outside wall adorned with GM hubcaps.

Every year, Bill said, the yard buys about 200 cars, which are stripped and sold for their parts. “Most everything I buy, I double my money on,” Bill said. “But it’s a lot of work taking them apart.”

Passing a battered 1990 Chevy Lumina, Bill explained that the car cost him $636. But each of its doors, he said, is worth about $600. “That’s how I make my living,” he said.

“It’s a dirty business,” said Bean, who patrols the junkyards daily. “They don’t make much money. And they earn every penny three times over.

“I know how hard they have to work to make ends meet.”

But Bean is hardly the junkman’s best friend. As one of three city inspectors assigned to keep the yards as safe and clean as possible, it’s his job to rattle some cages, to issue cleanup orders and, if need be, to close down businesses.

Health officials say a lot of environmental problems exist in the area--the result of decades of illegal dumping of everything from rubbish to toxic waste.

“Purely from an environmental standpoint, it is a disaster, no question,” said Anastacio Medina, an inspector with the county’s hazardous-waste control program who blames the city’s “poor land-use practices” for Wilmington’s concentration of junkyards.

Though the yards remain a problem, city officials in recent years have made strides in cleaning them up, largely through the efforts of inspectors such as Bean.

By his account, Bean issues an average of four or five cleanup orders every day.

But, for all their problems, most yards are legal and well-run, according to Bean and police.

Still, there are others whose trade is not used cars but stolen property, insurance fraud and a host of other crimes, including drug dealing and prostitution.

Every year, police estimate, well over $1 million worth of stolen cars are recovered from the Wilmington yards. And though statistics on specific crimes are hard to come by, authorities say there’s no doubt many of the businesses are a haven for lawlessness.

“You could find the scum of the earth around here,” Bean said as he stopped his pickup along one of the bumpy, unpaved streets that crisscross east Wilmington.

One recent afternoon Bean was ready to call it a day when he paid a visit to M & O Auto. He found Otis Robinson inside his truck, talking to friends and counting the days till he leaves the business.

When he does, Bean knows, there will be someone else to take his place--another caretaker of the scrap and junk that is sure to find its way here.

“(The yards) really do perform a service,” Bean said, driving away. “If we didn’t have them, I don’t know what we’d do with all the cars in Los Angeles.”

Wilmington’s Junkyards

Wilmington is home to almost a third of Los Angeles’ 700 salvage and storage yards, and most of those are in East Wilmington.