Crisis Looms for Latinas Near Retirement

She is already seated at a table Wednesday afternoon when I enter a small front office at Latino Health Access. With her are two volunteers from the Santa Ana nonprofit that has just completed a study of middle-aged Latinas as they approach retirement.

Her name is Beatriz Murphy, a Mexican immigrant from Sonora whose surname hints at Irish roots buried along with her father when she was 3. She’s now 55, the mother of three grown children she raised mostly on her own. She is small, slight and shy. Flashes of a youthful spirit still flicker in her green eyes. But her face appears prematurely aged, a sign of the depleting pressures of poverty.

She’s been selected to be my interview subject, the person who will put a face on the dry data of dead-end lives. Her story is a case study in the fears and insecurities faced by poor Latinas like her. They are working women who have arrived empty-handed at the vestibule of old age after a lifetime of labor in Orange County’s underground, immigrant economy.

We meet here at the office, I’m told, because Beatriz is embarrassed about her crowded living conditions. Five family members cram into a one-room cottage where she sleeps in a bunk bed and cooks on a portable grill. Later, when I ask what’s her one wish in life, she’ll let herself dream about having a better house some day with a room of her own.

I don’t usually like formal, arranged interview settings. To Beatriz, who sits stiffly, this must seem like a job interview. She actually borrowed her outfit from a sister, to appear more presentable for me. She’s wearing a coral coat over a cotton dress with a floral pattern in complementary red-orange hues. Reddish highlights help mask the gray in her chestnut hair, which looks thin and slightly disheveled.

Her work history is typical of the thousands of immigrants hired to wash the cars, clean the houses, cook the food and care for the kids of those of us in the mainstream economy. They help us build our secure futures, while they work themselves into financial ruin.

Did I say work history? Not really. Nobody ever kept track of it for Beatriz. Not officially. Her memory holds the only record of where she’s worked.

Her employers were usually white. They lived from Palos Verdes to Los Alamitos. Sometimes she served as their live-in nanny; sometimes as a housekeeper commuting by bus. She was almost always paid in cash. No payroll, no health insurance, no paid holidays.

Today, she is diabetic and works only sporadically. So after 20 years of labor accumulated from job to job since she was 15, there is no trace of her contributions as a productive employee.

She and her family will have nothing to show for it.

No savings, no pension, no home equity, no 401(k). But worst of all, she will have no Social Security since neither she nor her employers ever paid into the system. She can’t even say for sure what Social Security is.

“I’ve heard of it, but I didn’t pay much attention,” says Beatriz, who never learned English.

And now, how does she feel about facing such an uncertain future?

“Well, I feel sad that I wasn’t able to do something for myself,” she says, speaking with a soft voice and expressive hands. “I never thought I’d need help. Now that I’m sick, I do worry more about it.

“But now it’s too late.”

Beatriz is one of 108 low-income women who participated in the study of Latinas between 45 and 64. All of them live within a targeted Santa Ana ZIP Code, 92701, a pocket of what we used to call the underprivileged.

Are they ready for retirement? Will they be able to get good health care when they need it most? Will they remain independent, or become a burden to their families and society?

The answers, to be released Wednesday, are alarming, says Mary Paul, a gerontologist and board member of Latino Health Access, which promotes health care education.

“We find that these women are absolutely vulnerable,” she says. “We need to do something quickly to prevent a catastrophe.”

The overall concerns about the security of aging baby boomers mask the severe crisis facing the poorest segments of society, says Paul, who also sits on Orange County’s Senior Advisory Council.

Statistically, Latinos stand out as a young population. Yet nearly one in five Latinas are older than 45. And the older segment is growing fast. By 2020, the Latino population older than 60 will increase 336% by county estimates.

Being old is hard enough. Being old and poor is a real hardship.

Among the women in the study, 60% were widowed, divorced or alone. The vast majority--90%--had no idea what it takes to qualify for Social Security benefits. That means many of these women won’t be eligible for Medicare when they turn 65, says Paul, since the federal health program is linked to Social Security eligibility.

What they need is more information, she says. They need to be told how to find available resources, especially for preventive care.

“I am desperate to change the future for these women,” says Paul.

Beatriz was born in Ciudad Obregon and moved as a child to Ensenada, where her mother worked as a seamstress. Beatriz dropped out of school after the sixth grade; she started cleaning houses to help the family.

She first came to the United States as a teenager about 1960, entering on a visitor’s visa with a group of friends. For the rest of her life, she went back and forth between the two countries.

She met her husband during a pilgrimage by train to Our Lord of the Afflicted, a shrine in Michoacan. They had four children in Mexico, but one died in an accident.

Getting married, she says, is her one big regret.

After she separated, Beatriz returned to California, this time with her surviving children. Today, she depends on them for support, limited as their own earning potential may be.

“Thank God, they don’t leave me,” she says.

Beatriz tells me she has never collected public assistance. And she never applied for a formal job because she’s undocumented, always preferring to be paid in cash. The only time an employer paid her by check, it bounced. She lost a week’s wages.

“I was always too inhibited and didn’t know how to defend myself,” she says. “I just put up with it and never complained.”

Five years ago, Beatriz started feeling tired and thirsty all the time. She had headaches. But instead of seeing a doctor, she drank Coke and coffee to boost her energy. Finally, at the urging of a concerned friend from her Christian church, she went for a checkup and discovered she had advanced diabetes.

“These women are without health insurance,” says Paul, “so they don’t see the doctor until they get desperately sick.”

Beatriz has never had a pap smear to detect cervical cancer. She has had only one mammogram, several years ago, not yearly as a recommended at her age for early detection of breast cancer.

Some time ago, Beatriz became ill and had to be taken to the hospital with vomiting and diarrhea. She recovered but she still feels upset about the $1,000 bill she was unable to pay.

“I feel very ashamed,” she says. “I’ve never had a bill like this. I always shop at discount stores because I don’t like to get anything on credit.”

She has saved all her statements and still wants to pay the debt.

But how?

Perhaps, she muses, the hospital would allow her to work it off in the cafeteria. They don’t have to put her on the payroll, she offers. They could just take her wages to wipe out what she owes, seemingly unaware of repeating the same mistake of her entire working life.

Beatriz leans forward, folds her hands and touches her lips, as if in prayer. “Oh, my God,” she says, “I just don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com