It’s Back to True Reality for Reality TV Loser

Reality No. 1: Manuel Herrera needed money for a new car to replace a tired blue ’83 Toyota Supra with 196,000 miles and a bad attitude.

Reality No. 2: A zealous optimist, Herrera knew he could get the cash by beating out thousands of competitors and making it onto a TV reality show.

Reality No. 3: Over four days of auditions, Herrera beat out thousands of competitors and made it onto a new reality show called “The Mole.”

Reality No. 4: Back in Oxnard after the show swept him off to Europe, Herrera suddenly found himself driving . . . his tired blue ’83 Toyota Supra. Plus, he has to pay off a loan he took out for bills that piled up during his month’s leave from work for “The Mole.”

The Ultimate Reality is this: So-called reality shows are loathed by the critics and are about as real as the Tooth Fairy. But harsh judgments like those won’t keep dreamers like Manuel Herrera--known in Mole parlance as “Execution No. 1”--from going as far as unreality will take them.

“I’d never been anywhere,” said Herrera, an animated, affable man who works in customer service at a Camarillo cable TV office and proudly wears a La Colonia Boxing Club jacket. “All of a sudden, I’m in Paris. Paris! With a chandelier in my room and gold faucets, at a chateau that costs $1,500 a night!”

The food was exquisite and beautifully served. For Herrera, though, it was almost unbearably bland.

“I asked them, ‘Haven’t you got some salsa with this? Some jalapenos?”

Non, monsieur, they did not.

Back in Oxnard this week, Herrera was lingering over a jalapeno-studded pizza that was growing cold as he reflected on his fleeting fame. Forced to leave the show after the first episode, Herrera is doing back-to-back radio interviews and Internet chats. He and his 10-year-old son, also named Manuel, were flown to New York for an appearance with Rosie O’Donnell, and Rosie gave them a vacation at EuroDisney outside Paris.

“So this is my 15 minutes,” he said. “I can use 15 months. I’d like to be a role model for the kids in all the La Colonias: I want them to say: ‘Look at him. He’s gone to Paris. He’s been on a major reality show. If he can do it, I can do it!’ ”

Herrera’s concern for kids isn’t the product of some overheated network publicity machine. At 42, he has been active for years as a volunteer at La Colonia Boxing Club. He also pitches in with the Make-a-Wish Foundation and recently was appointed to a local community relations board. But to Herrera, all that doesn’t give him the bully pulpit of “The Mole,” as short-lived as the show may prove.

“If you’re a celebrity,” he said, “they listen to you.”

The idea of “The Mole” is simple: Five men and five women must work as a team to master various tasks, mostly in foreign lands. However, one of them is a saboteur. Each week, the contestant who does the worst on a test about the mole’s identity is given a one-way ticket home.

The group’s first task was to jump from a plane 10,000 feet above the Mojave. In a murky strategy of deception, Herrera figured he would confuse his competitors by pretending to be scared. But nobody was confused, and Herrera, in reality, was petrified. “Manuel, I love you,” he murmured as he jumped.

The group’s next stop was Paris, where they had to collaborate on locating a particular ATM and extracting cash from it.

“I was just so happy to be there,” he said. “I was so happy to be on the show. I was so happy to be in Paris. I was in such awe; when it came to the quiz, it was like I was too happy to study for the final.”

On his return flight, Herrera was so desolate he wept. He’d promised his parents he’d come back with enough money to take care of all their bills. He pictured his son fending off schoolyard bullies taunting him because his dad was a loser. He closed his eyes and saw his old car.

Herrera also had a list of organizations he would help--including La Colonia Boxing Club. He had gone to the club as a kid, and as an adult served as its president. He had taken its most famous alumni--Fernando Vargas and Robert Garcia--under his wing. Recently, he had publicly criticized Vargas for giving too little back to the club that had helped propel him to the big time.

But by the time he landed in Los Angeles, he was, again, unswervingly positive.

Now he’s too busy to think about the million dollars he could have had. After lunch, he had to rush off and pick up some photos for a Web site his friend is building, and then do an Internet chat with fans.

Today he returns to his job. He wonders whether customers coming in to grouse about their bills could possibly know the reality in his heart: “I was a contendah,” he said in his best mock-Brando.

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Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.