Recalling a Life of Honor and Strength

Out where the city meets what’s left of the country, Salvador Uribe lived the life of his dreams, a life that revolved around an uncompromising code of hard work and responsibility and doing what needed to be done.

When car horns blared from the highway in the middle of the night, Uribe would leap from bed, grab a flashlight and check the fences that surround Rancho Mission Viejo, Orange County’s last working ranch. The 47-year-old was the cattle boss and one of his animals might be in trouble.

Last Saturday, when his nephew began to go under while swimming in an old clay mine on the ranch, Uribe ripped off his shirt and boots. He couldn’t swim. He feared water. But he jumped in anyway, dog paddling out and pushing his nephew toward the shore and safety.

Sheriff’s divers found Uribe 17 feet under. He was 5-foot-10, 175 pounds, strong as a bull, but no match for a thicket of reeds and mud.

“He was a very humble person--honest, hard-working, quiet, a man’s man. All the cliches,” said Gilbert Aguirre, head of ranch operations and Uribe’s boss for the last 30 years.

On Thursday, hundreds of people--an eclectic group of ranch hands, civic leaders and family from across California and Mexico--packed a narrow, dimly lit adobe chapel at Mission San Juan Capistrano to pay tribute to Uribe, who was known to everyone as Chava.

The crowd spilled into the mission’s courtyard. Inside, men and women in suits and dresses sat shoulder to shoulder with vaqueros wearing snap-buttoned shirts as a mariachi band in the balcony rained down plaintive songs of loss.

“He was more than a cowboy, he was a husband and a father and our most loyal employee,” said Anthony Moiso, one of the owners of the Rancho Mission Viejo Co. “He symbolized the ranch. In many ways, Chava Uribe was the ranch.”

Later, Uribe was buried on the land he loved, in a small cemetery in a grave dug by two of his brothers. The ranch offered a backhoe for the job. The brothers preferred picks and shovels.

It was an extraordinary day for a man who lived an extraordinary life, one that took him from poverty in Mexico to success--and respect--in the United States.

“If you were to give him a sack of money and say ‘I’m going to meet you at the bottom of the Empire State Building and I want you to come with that sack,’ he’d be there,” Aguirre said. “He wouldn’t even know what was in the sack; wouldn’t have looked. And he wouldn’t know where the Empire State Building was either. But, believe me, he’d find it.

“He had, at best, a sixth-grade education. But he could analyze a situation, determine what needed to be done, and then he’d make a decision. He was a leader, not a follower.”

Prophetically, Uribe had a way of putting himself between people and their trouble--whether it was helping an experienced cowboy get out from under an angry bull, or rescuing a greenhorn guest who had lost control of his horse’s reins.

He did it so often, friends say, that when something--anything--went wrong on the ranch, all eyes turned to Uribe to right it.

“If someone needed help, he was always there,” said Shorty Gorham, 23, a cowhand who worked for Uribe. “He was a cowboy from 100 years ago stuck in today’s society.”

Uribe arrived at Rancho Mission Viejo from Jalisco state when he was a teenager on a crew of immigrants picking lemons. He was hired on as a laborer full-time. Within a few years, Uribe became a expert cowboy. A few years later, he took on responsibility for the entire herd.

“He took this ranch real, real serious. He didn’t own it, but he felt like it was his,” Gorham said. “He was so good at what he did, if I screwed up something, he’d take care of it so fast, cover up for you, that you didn’t even realize you’d screwed up.”

Uribe rarely left the ranch, preferring its rolling pastures and hidden canyons to the noise and cars of town. When he did venture into San Juan Capistrano for a quick bite to eat, he more often than not didn’t bother to take off his spurs.

Uribe personified a way of life. His death is a metaphor for the way that life has all but vanished in Southern California.

Uribe was Rancho Mission Viejo’s only full-time cowboy. When he was hired on in 1972, nearly 5,000 cattle ran on 52,000 acres. Today, 600 cows roam on about half the land. Rivers of homes snake across the other half.

Uribe witnessed the change. There were times when he and Aguirre were riding that they would come across a neighborhood beyond the fence where once there had been a windmill, a dirt road or a pasture.

“Houses,” Uribe would say. He didn’t talk much, didn’t have to. Uribe was a man of deeds, a man who routinely worked 12- to 14-hour days seven days a week.

Efren Malagon Jr. remembers the day he and another rider were looking for missing cows. Sitting on horseback at the bottom of a hill, the two were doing more talking than looking.

“We saw Chava way up on that hill,” Malagon said. “He rode down to us and all he did was shake his head. Said nothing. But we knew what he meant: We’d better get back to work.”

The Malagons and Uribes are two of the hundreds of immigrant families that have called the ranch--the last piece of what was once a vast Mexican land grant--home. Even today, 10 of the 13 families that work and live on the ranch are from Mexico.

“He was my best friend, a father figure,” said Malagon, who was raised on the ranch. “He taught me how to be a respectful cowboy, a gentleman. Growing up, I could go to him with my problems and questions. He knew all the deepest secrets of my life that even my dad doesn’t know.”

When he heard that Uribe had drowned, Malagon rushed out to the lake. It was late Saturday night and everyone had gone.

“I went around the lake screaming ‘Chava! Chava!’ but there was no answer,” Malagon said. “He’s up there now on another beautiful ranch, riding right now. When my time comes, I hope he has room for me to work with him again.”

Uribe is survived by his wife, Ana, two adult sons and twin 12-year-old daughters. The family, Aguirre said, is welcome to stay in the four-bedroom ranch house that was part of Uribe’s compensation. “We’re going to take care of her,” he said. “She can stay there forever.”

When he heard Uribe had died, Aguirre was shocked. When he heard how he had died--saving his nephew’s life, disregarding the risk, doing what needed to be done--he wasn’t surprised.

Salvador, he pointed out, is Spanish for savior.