His Uniform Was Only Half the Story

Richard Ortega’s new uniform arrived Thursday morning.

For 20 years, he wore the Ventura street department’s standard orange shirt.

But his bosses wanted to do a little something for him, something special to acknowledge his status as chief caretaker of the city’s venerable downtown.

To many people, his job wouldn’t sound like much. Scraping gum off the sidewalks, picking up litter, steam-cleaning pavement: It’s not a career we’re trained to crave. Ortega, though, felt privileged to do it.

A clean downtown sidewalk filled Ortega with pride. Ventura, after all, was his town. At 51, he still hauled his board down to Surfers Point, just as he did at 15. His parents still live in Ventura. Twenty years ago, his wife Karen turned their midtown home into a day-care center; when she had outside chores, Ortega would run home at lunch to help out with the kids.

Dozens of Ventura children have known him as a kind of day-care father, fixing sandwiches for them and reading Dr. Seuss.

Ortega was excited about his new uniform. It consists of khaki pants and a white shirt embroidered with his name. A patch denoted him as the city’s 1994 Employee of the Year. Another said “Making Ventura Even Better”--a city slogan, but one with deep meaning for Ortega.

“He’d be the guy who’d get up at 2 a.m. and drive out in a storm to put sandbags in front of the stores that might flood,” said Natalie Siman, owner of a downtown clothing store called Natalie’s Fine Threads. “Nobody called him from the city to do that. He’d just do it.”

Ortega sometimes would scrub the tile on Natalie’s storefront. It wasn’t part of his job description, but to him, it came with the territory.

“You know, I have a lot of pride in your corner,” he’d tell Siman.

But Ortega’s passion spanned more than tidy bricks and mortar.

He didn’t smoke, but he carried cigarettes--just in case one of the homeless people downtown wanted one. He delivered firewood--free--to people who couldn’t pay their heating bills.

A friend once gave him a bag of clothing and Ortega couldn’t have been more excited: “This jacket should be perfect for a guy I know who sleeps in the park . . . “

Ortega was excited about his new uniform. Nobody else in the city would have one like it. Nobody else would be as instantly identified with a particular neighborhood.

The uniform arrived Thursday morning, but already it’s just a poignant keepsake.

Richard James Ortega, a relentlessly cheerful man with a million-kilowatt smile, suffered a fatal heart attack at about 7 a.m. He is survived by his wife and their 22-year-old son Desmond.

Fittingly, Ortega died on the job--steam-cleaning Main Street, as he had each morning for so many years. When a downtown hotel resident complained about the noise, Ortega didn’t shrug him off. Instead, he bought the man a pair of earplugs.

By Thursday afternoon, flags throughout the city were flying at half-staff.

At the street department, Ortega’s co-workers were devastated.

“Richard has such an impact on all of us,” said his boss, Frank Preston. “He had one of the most menial jobs in the city, but he did it with the world’s largest smile. People thought, ‘If Richard can do what he does every day, I sure can do what I’ve been assigned.’ ”

Preston said Ortega turned down a number of opportunities to advance, saying he couldn’t abandon the people downtown.

“He didn’t just have a job with the city,” a co-worker said. “He was the city.”

A fund to offset Ortega’s burial expenses has been started at the American Commercial Bank.

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