Picking Up Their Spirits : Trash Collector’s Ready Smile Cheers His Lake Forest Customers

LAKE FOREST — Every Thursday morning, Ryan and Elliot Freerks wake up excited.

Their small fingers feverishly pull on their clothes and fumble over shoelaces, then the children race outside to greet: The mailman? The ice cream man? No. It’s the garbage man.

All along the Lake Forest route he has driven for eight years, joggers wave and people in robes out to pick up the morning paper smile and exchange greetings with Jesus Santos as his 16-ton garbage truck rolls slowly down the street.

When Waste Management of Orange County was looking for a public relations boost to help renew its service contract with Lake Forest, the company asked its customers to send letters of support to City Hall. Many of the letters spoke glowingly of Santos--known as Jesse to his customers.

And when Waste Management recently outbid its competitors to renew its trash franchise, there was joy along Santos’ route.

“I’m so very happy that Jesse is going to stay,” said John Penn, a 20-year resident of Lake Forest. “Jesse always has a smile, never acts dejected, and he works so damn hard. I wasn’t pleased at the prospect of losing him.”

The neighborhoods appreciate his work.

When the huge truck Santos pilots leaves a street, there are no scraps of paper littering the ground and trash cans are neatly lined up along the curb. Senior citizens struggling to haul an overfilled container to the street get a helping hand from Santos.

But it’s that 24-carat smile of his that people remember. In dozens of momentary contacts throughout the day, his wide grin spreads the warmth of his personality.

“He acts like he’s glad he has a job and that he’s out there doing it,” said Susan Williams, a 10-year resident. “He treats himself and others with respect.

“He’s a great role model for my son because he’s out there doing a job and he does it well and he does it with a kind of grace.”

Santos is like a Pied Piper for young children who love the huge garbage truck, with its hydraulic lift arms that make the vehicle resemble a giant robot.

“My son Jonathon would come out to the curb and Jesse would be kind enough to flip the lift and put on a little show,” Williams said. “When our neighbor’s child got to be 1 1/2, he started coming out to see Jesse too.”

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After a 10-hour shift that ends at 4 p.m., Santos, 36, pulls his truck into the company yard in Irvine. His shirt is slightly smudged, but still carries a sharp crease--the work of his wife of four years, Maria, who presses his shirts and pants every day and sends him off to work with a kiss.

The Santa Ana resident offers his hand and flashes that trademark smile and it’s as friendly and comfortable as advertised. Over the next hour, the former golf course maintenance worker talks about how much he loves the job and the people, at one point getting emotional when describing the stack of Christmas cards given to him every year.

“People are like family, they write things like ‘Jesse, we love you,’ ” he said, pausing for a moment. “So many beautiful things they write. How many people have a job like that?”

His employers wish they had more people like Jesse working as garbage collectors.

“We’d love to clone him,” operations manager Paul Spann said. “All of our drivers are real good, but Jesse has such a good personality. The world could drop on him, and he’d still be smiling.”

In the three years that Steven Freerks and his wife have lived in Lake Forest, their sons have made a weekly ritual of meeting the trash truck driver.

Before 6 a.m., when Santos passes by their house, Elliot, 4, and Ryan, 6, are usually sitting on the front porch waiting for their trash man.

They run out to curb and exchange hugs and high fives. Jesse sometimes runs the lift, whether or not there’s a large container to dump into the truck bed.

“It does seem strange to have some kind of relationship with your trash man,” Steven Freerks said. “It’s not a job that most people would seek out, but he’s always very genuine and he’s always smiling.”

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Santos said he believes in acknowledging every person he meets with a grin and a wave, and he believes in keeping a good attitude about work.

“Kids sometimes point at me and say, ‘Here’s the garbage man,’ ” said Santos, waving off their comments with a toss of his hand.

“Yes, I’m a garbage man, and I’m proud of it,” he said. “Somebody has to do this, and you might as well do it with a smile and have a good relationship with the people.”