Arlington Center Offers Hope in Hard Times

Another worker, Balthazar, 60, left to pick up food at the food bank next door. He explained how he left a municipal government job in Lima, Peru, eight years ago so his son could attend college in the United States.

For a few years, Balthazar worked six or seven days a week to make that happen. Now, he said, he will do anything for work: paint, lay bricks, hang drywall, mow, landscape. Anything. But there isn't any work. And his son has had to suspend his studies.

"I don't know if he can continue," Balthazar said. It's something he worries about constantly.

"Some people are depressed," he said. "It depends on the person. I want to keep fighting. My father was the kind of person who got up at 4 a.m. to work. I respect that. I work like that."

Tobar said he has become increasingly concerned about the mental state of the day laborers as work has dried up. When one worker became so depressed recently that he swallowed rat poison and had to have his stomach pumped and another remarked that there was no point in trying any longer, Tobar said he had to act.

"You can see it in their faces, the depression," Tobar said. "I don't know what could occur with desperate people who are starving. But I do know that desperate people often take desperate measures."

This year, Tobar called the county's Department of Human Services and received help for mental health counseling. He was testifying recently in the hopes of keeping that counseling, as County Board members consider a proposal to cut as much as $1 million in services, including substance abuse and mental health counseling, in Arlington's annual $925 million budget. Tobar worries that, with positions being cut, the counselors will be stretched and will have less time to come to the center to work with the laborers. The board is scheduled to vote on the final budget on Saturday.

County Board Chairman J. Walter Tejada (D) was an early supporter of the day labor center, for pragmatic and philosophical reasons.

"We have a history in Arlington of being a caring, inclusive community that values diversity. And we support people who are here trying to improve the quality of their lives in our region through hard work," Tejada said. "There are people looking for work and employers looking for workers. And if that activity takes place -- and it will take place -- the government needs to coordinate it so that it happens in some kind of orderly manner, that the needs and demands of work are met.

"We realize that this is a divisive issue in some places," he said, "but it does not need to be."

Although times are tight, Tejada said, the mental health of day laborers must be addressed to provide help to those who need it and to protect the community at large.

"Having a substance abuse counselor there is a proactive way of addressing the needs of the population. That's part of what a community needs to do. We need to take care of our neediest residents," Tejada said. "And ultimately, when people are able to find work, we all benefit."

Back at the center, officer manager David Benavides, a former Marine who served in Iraq, spent the morning calling employers who hadn't paid workers to get them to pay up.

The workers are friendly with one another, using nicknames such as Potato Face, Dracula, Gloves or Perro de Lengua, "Loose Tongue," because he gossips so much.

Benavides said that as times have gotten rough, he's seen tough workers curled up in a corner crying. Some people borrowed thousands of dollars to pay smugglers to get them into the country. And now that they can't pay their loans, the smugglers are harassing their families. "That's really tough for them," he said.

A worker who had lost his apartment and could no longer share custody of his children was ecstatic when he got a temporary job, Benavides said. He was showing off, inviting his friends for drinks.

But he drank so much that he passed out. And his friends stole his money. Now he's homeless.

"That's why we need a substance abuse counselor," Benavides said. "Going through these times is very tough. But alcohol only makes it worse."