HOME MAKER

He woke up and instinctively wiped the sleep from his eyes and the sand from his face.

Sleeping on the beach was nothing new for Thiago Martins, who had been homeless for three months and had become used to panhandling and scavenging for food.

But what Martins saw that morning on the Santa Barbara shore was different.

“They were setting up fields and goals in the sand for beach soccer,” Martins said. “Being from Brazil, I knew all about soccer.”

So he got up, shook himself off and asked whether he could play. Little did the Brazilian who spoke only Portuguese know he was on his way to living the American Dream and making a little history, albeit for a futbol club born in Mexico.

*

Martins scored the first goal in Chivas USA history -- a third-minute strike at San Jose in the expansion club’s second Major League Soccer match -- and afterward faced a quandary: He wanted to dedicate it to someone. But to whom?

There were his parents, Luiz Atarato and Ana Maria, who had surprised him by making the trip from Sao Paulo for Chivas’ first two games.

There was his “Mexican family,” the Torres clan, who took him in and showed him the way in Santa Barbara; his “American family,” the Smiths, who “opened their arms, hearts and home” to Martins while he was in college; and there was his coach at Santa Barbara City College and UC Santa Barbara, Tim Vom Steeg, who discovered Martins playing in a park.

Martins, 28, decided to dedicate the goal to them all.

“I had to,” he said. “When things are going tough, that’s when you find out who your true friends are.”

When Martins arrived in the United States in 1996, he knew no one and did not speak English or Spanish.

“I had about a thousand bucks in my pocket,” he said. “And a backpack with my belongings. That’s it.”

Reared in one of Sao Paulo’s rougher neighborhoods, the Zona Mooca, Martins said he had all but given up on soccer as a career by the time he reached his late teens.

“It was all about girls, parties and drugs,” he said. “In Brazil, there’s no middle class. My family ... lived two blocks from a big ghetto in Sao Paulo.

“If I had stayed, I’d probably be doing drugs with my friends and just hanging out. When you’re born close to the ghetto, there’s not much to do with your life.”

He viewed America as a land of opportunity and applied for a tourist visa when he was 18. It arrived a year later.

“I saw that soccer was getting bigger here after the World Cup in 1994, and I wanted to try something better, make a better living,” Martins said.

Arriving at Los Angeles International Airport, Martins was overcome by the blur of activity. Then he saw a bus with “Santa Barbara” on its destination placard and took it as a sign from above -- St. Barbara is a venerated saint in Brazil.

“Her beauty is in helping people in their struggles,” Martins said. “I always pray to her to help me.”

In Santa Barbara, he stayed in a hotel for two months, until his money ran out. Then he made his way to the beach, where trouble awaited.

Not every night was spent under the stars and in the sand. He was arrested on numerous occasions for vagrancy and lighting fires on the beach, for warmth.

“I didn’t know the rules; in Brazil you can sleep on the beach and light fires,” Martins said. “I didn’t know English so I couldn’t read signs. It was complicated for me to understand. I was just trying to survive.

“For those three months I was homeless, I learned a lot of stuff.”

Such as?

“Where the shelters and soup kitchens are in Santa Barbara to get free food on Wednesdays and Sundays,” he said. “I learned that coffee shops throw away their old bagels at the end of the night, at closing time.”

He also figured a way to get a shower at the harbor. He would wait for someone to emerge from one, and before the coin-operated door closed, he would rush through it.

Shaking a Big Gulp cup from 7-Eleven, he stood at different spots on tony State Street in downtown Santa Barbara, begging for spare change.

“At night, the homeless are like crazy people and a lot of people from the war,” Martins said. “It was tough. I survived here and there.”

Until he woke up at the beach one morning and saw soccer being set up in front of him.

“I was able to communicate with them because Portuguese is similar to Spanish and the players were Mexican guys,” Martins said.

Daniel Torres Jr. remembers coming home from school and seeing Martins on the couch.

“I was like, ‘Whoa, who is this guy?’ ” recalled Torres, who was 13 at the time. “My dad just saw him out on the street one day and asked him if he needed a place to stay. That’s how my dad is, helping people.

“He was a cool guy, and he liked soccer. And we all like soccer.”

The 11 members of the Torres family reside in a six-bedroom Carpinteria home. Martins made 12, and he was no mere couch potato while with his new family.

He learned Spanish. He worked with the family in the fields picking flowers and took on other odd jobs -- dishwasher, pizza deliveryman, valet, bartender.

“Then he started playing with my dad’s Sunday league team,” said Torres, who later asked Martins to be his sponsor for his first Holy Communion. “He was scoring like four goals a game. The other players asked my dad, ‘Who’s the Brazilian?’ My dad just said, ‘I got him off the street.’ ”

One of his opponents in the league was Vom Steeg, the college coach who was playing as a defender.

“I got a phone call asking me if I had seen this long-haired Brazilian guy,” said Vom Steeg, whose father, Al, was a missionary in Brazil. “I hadn’t, but we were going to play him the next week.

“He was up top and I was a defender, so I covered him. I’ve covered a lot of forwards, Eric Wynalda for example, but no one was as strong as Thiago. He was just so powerful. When the game ended we talked, and I asked him if he was interested in playing at City College and getting an education.”

And so Martins joined Vom Steeg at Santa Barbara City College and went with him two years later when the coach landed his job at UC Santa Barbara.

Maita and Duffy Smith were friends of Vom Steeg and helped smooth Martins’ adjustment to a major college. He was a building block in the Gauchos’ quick rise to national power.

Martins earned a degree in geography at UCSB, then began his professional soccer career with the San Diego Flash of the A-League. Stopovers with the Minnesota Thunder and Pittsburgh Riverhounds ensued, and he was chosen the A-League most valuable player in 2003 with Pittsburgh after he had 22 goals and seven assists.

MLS then came calling, and Martins joined D.C. United, though he would twice tear a ligament in his left knee and later undergo a third surgery.

*

Martins was selected by Chivas USA in the ninth round of the MLS expansion draft and has been a steady hand on an unsteady team.

Along with Ezra Hendrickson, he has started all 19 of Chivas USA’s MLS matches and is second with 1,646 minutes played.

The physical Martins leads Chivas with 36 fouls committed and is second with 44 fouls suffered. But although he has attempted a team-high 44 shots, 16 on goal, his production has been suspect; he has three goals -- tied for second on the team with Isaac Romo -- and one assist.

“I’m missing a lot of goals I usually don’t miss,” said Martins, who reportedly has a base salary of $42,500. “I scored 22 goals in 24 games in the A-League.

“It’s just a phase. It happens to every single forward. When I score again, the gates will open. But the coaches, I don’t know how long they’ll be patient.”

As patient as he has been, he hopes.

“I’m pretty much a lucky guy who’s always in the right place at the right time,” he said. “I know I’ve worked hard and I’ve had a lot of struggles, but I don’t think my story’s over yet. I have more to do. I want to win a championship for Chivas.”