Sylvia

Sylvia was raised in Imperial Valley, working the fields with her parents.

Her father was an agricultural worker in the valley mostly working with lettuce, watermelons and tomatoes. The whole family followed in his footsteps: one sister, two brothers. She remembers getting up at 1:30 a.m. to be in line at 2:00 a.m. so that when the buses headed towards the fields at 5:00 a.m. they were on it. “By 5:30 a.m. you’re working,” she said. “We used to carry machetes in the back of our car,” she added smiling, “so when they needed someone to cut lettuce, we were ready. You can’t carry machetes any more these days.”

She and her sister followed the harvesting seasons, mostly lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers. At one point she left the fields to package dates at a factory in Indio. Her fingers were always sticky and the air was thick with sugar. It took her years before she ever ate a candy bar, being so bombarded with sweetness eight hours a day. She remembers how she and her fellow workers would drive through a mini-mart with their trunk unlatched, tell the cashier how many six-packs or cases of beer they’d want to buy, and the attendants would fill the trunk with ice and beer. “Can’t do that in San Diego!” she laughed.

Eager to do something different with her life, she went through cosmetology school. At the outset she was repelled by the idea of combing someone else’s hair, so she concentrated on a career as a manicurist. Though she graduated in 1979, making her one of few people in San Diego who did nails, there wasn’t a market for it yet. “There was only King’s on Fairmont and University,” she said. “And they didn’t have room for me there.”

So she ended up doing telemarketing for the Paralyzed Veterans of America organization. She was good at it. In two days she was a manager. That’s also where she met her husband, not as good a salesperson as she was, but “a wonderful man.” He landed a job sampling beer, of all things, working out what food pairings were best for the various ales and lagers he was sent every week. Sylvia never saw him drunk, she said, but in the end he died of alcoholism. She probably wasn’t looking for signs of alcohol abuse, however, since she had her hands full with two young boys, both with ADHD; one who was more kinetic, the other defiant. The boys are grown now, ages 28 and 30, but still have issues complicating their lives.

“One of my boys I got mad at because he stole my EBT card and bought $40 worth of junk food,” she recalled. Then he started stealing things, from club sandwiches at the local 7-11, to breaking into an elderly couple’s house and showering, shaving, eating their food and falling asleep watching television before they came home and discovered him. He eventually found good work at the shipyard doing construction, but was fired for spending too much time “fighting with shadows,” Sylvia said.

Life took a sharp turn in 1997 when she was 38. Her grandmother died, then her father, followed by her third son dying of crib death, at three months old, on Thanksgiving Day. “About ten years later I suddenly realized I had been .. you know, suspended… numb, for those ten years.” She started taking medications for depression. Caring for her special needs sons and keeping the household together was a full time job. Sylvia still found time to cook pancakes and oatmeal to feel the homeless in her neighborhood. But she needed to pay the rent, having separated from her husband. She did babysitting for her sister’s family, but they kept cutting her hours and her pay. At one point she was three months late on the rent. She started selling her jewelry and everything else she owned. Eventually the landlords had to enforce things and she moved with her dog Daisy into a tent she concealed behind thick foliage in a City Heights park. Her adult sons had to fend for themselves. Outreach workers with the Alpha Project discovered her and visited regularly until one cold day in the winter, during the usual set of wellness questions, she replied yes when they asked if she’d like to take a bed in the bridge shelter downtown.

She walked away form everything in the tent and jumped in the van with the outreach workers. Now she has more possessions than she knows what to do with, thanks to donations, she said.

“What I want now is patience,” she said with conviction. “When you’re like this, one day blends into another. People have to get out of that victim mentality. The more you play into it, the more you become it. I shed a tear now and then, for my situation, but I’m strong. I’m also very spiritual.”

Sylvia’s been consulting with doctors on getting the right medications to deal with the voices in her head. “They think you’re crazy when you talk about seeing fairies and hearing voices,” she said. So she’s pleased to have found the Friend to Friend organization where the art therapy classes and other group sessions have revived her spirit. Panic attacks and claustrophobia plague her on the bus, the trolley and sometimes in supermarkets. “I get mixed up. I need to calm myself down. I get vertigo. I got lost at the trolley station: I’d get off the trolley, spin around and get back on the same trolley I just got off of. A nice woman helped me find my way home (to the shelter),” she said, wiping away tears.

She has her name on a list for housing, and has asked God to get her into something before the end of September. “I don’t need much. I just need a little square where I fit,” she said. “And where the cops won’t bother me. That and patience,” she emphasized. “I need to feel it, you know, when you feel the patience you are serene, thinking clearly and making right decision. That’s what I want in my life now.”