Kindness for the Constant Gardener

We had missed connections a couple of times, but on Monday I put Ray the gardener’s money into a large brown envelope and drove to Inglewood to deliver the goods. He’s the guy who was shot in the chest by robbers Dec. 23 while landscaping a yard, then went back to work the next day with the bullet still in his chest because he had promised to finish the job before Christmas.

Readers sent Ray a total of $2,000 in amounts as small as $10, which struck me as particularly interesting because I had noted in the column that he’s an illegal immigrant.

A Beverly Hills woman sent Ray a $1,000 check, and several doctors offered to remove the bullet if Ray never got back to UCLA, where paramedics had rushed him. Emergency room doctors had told Ray the slug just missed his heart and didn’t penetrate deeply. They released him with instructions for a follow-up visit to have the bullet removed if it bothered him or moved closer to the skin.

Ray and his wife, a legal resident, live with their three children in an off-street bungalow, one of six very tiny three-room shacks that quiver beneath the belly of jumbo jets landing at LAX. The paint on Ray’s pale blue house is peeling, but the tiny front yard is out of a magazine, with lilies and other spring flowers in bloom.

He still hasn’t had the bullet removed, Ray told me. He can feel it close to the skin just behind his armpit, but it’s no longer causing him pain when he works, so why bother?

Ray’s kids popped in and out of the room as we spoke, politely introducing themselves. Ray and his wife have them on a strict routine: chores after school, then homework, one hour of television at 6, dinner at 7 followed by cleanup, then 30 minutes of reading before lights out at 8. And no hanging out with kids who cuss or haven’t been taught to respect their elders.

On weekends, Ray takes one or two of the kids to work with him so they’re reminded why they’re aiming for college. He also does it because his clients’ neighborhoods are safer than his own, where gangbangers and drug-dealing are part of the scenery.

The 11-year-old wants to be an architect. The 10-year-old plans to be a doctor. The 9-year-old, whose after-school chore is to take out the trash, says with utter confidence that he’s going to be president.

I reached into the envelope and began setting stacks of bills and checks in front of Ray, who put his palm to his forehead in disbelief.

“Wow,” he said when I showed him the $1,000 check, and he blinked back a tear. He barely makes his $900 rent most months, he said, and his wife has taken a part-time clerical job so they can put eggs and tortillas on the table. “I’m surprised, and I appreciate this very much. It’s very nice to know that people can feel this way about someone they never met.”

He said he was particularly shocked given the recent hysteria whipped up by a U.S. House proposal that would make him a felon, not to mention new stirrings from the Minutemen and panic in Costa Mesa, where city leaders have determined there is no greater threat to civic well-being than day laborers.

“When I leave for work,” said Ray, who crossed the border from Mexico 18 years ago in search of work, “I’m never sure I’ll be coming home to my family.”

Yes, I know. Illegal means illegal, and the debate on whether immigrants take more than they give is legitimate, as is the concern that they lower wages for others who cling to the bottom rungs.

But as I’ve said before, you can’t have a 2,000-mile border between unprecedented wealth and stark poverty and expect anything other than desperate crossings. Particularly when the wink-and-nod U.S. policy has been to make sure employers get all the cheap labor they need. And let’s not forget that U.S. subsidies to American farmers have driven many Mexican farmers out of business, and U.S. foreign aid to Mexico is the rough equivalent of what we spend in 10 minutes in Iraq.

But there’s now hope of sensible reforms, driven in part by the historic awakening that led to huge Los Angeles rallies, and Ray has his fingers crossed. He said he’d gladly pay fines if that’s what it takes to earn a legal stake, even though, as he points out, he and other illegal immigrants pay billions in taxes -- along with Social Security contributions they’ll never see.

As he walked me to my car, Ray asked me again to be sure and express his gratitude to readers. I called several of them, including the Beverly Hills woman who sent the $1,000 check.

Rohelle Erde told me that on the same day she read about Ray going to work 24 hours after getting shot, her 23-year-old son told her he wasn’t going to work in his cushy Beverly Hills office because he had a sore throat.

“The contrast between your constant gardener and my spoiled little brat was just shocking,” said Erde. “He just sounds like an incredible human being.”

Erde said her four grandparents fled pogroms in Russia, and she owes her life to their suffering, hard work and determination to give their offspring a chance at a better life. She works for an agency that serves troubled and abused children and her husband is a loan broker.

“The truth is that Southern California would not have the quality of life” she and others enjoy, Erde said, if not for the contributions of immigrants both legal and illegal. She’d like to see Ray get a chance to legitimately elevate himself, make his children’s dreams possible, and get whatever medical attention he needs for that bullet or whatever else.

She happens to be on a medical leave herself.

“I’m going for chemo for cancer,” she said. “I now have a chance to think about priorities and what’s really important, and I’m very lucky to have gotten into the John Wayne Cancer Clinic at St. John’s Hospital.”

Ray has had his own brush with death, Erde said.

“Now he’s got things to think about, and if he wants to upgrade himself and get his family into a better situation, I would be very happy to help out. Not that I’m talking about unlimited funds.”

I told her I was touched by her kindness, and that Ray would be, too.

“This is precisely the kind of person we want to live here in America,” Erde said.

“He has the traditional values we all were raised with. The values that made this country the great, rich, hopeful place it is.”

Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at latimes.com/lopez