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| Donald Baca, Vendor of the Week. Photo by J.P. Gritton |
When Donald Baca left his native San Jose (“or, Saint Josie, como quieres …”), he was 25 and ready for a change. And though he wasn’t short on youth and optimism, he was a little short on luck: the first driver to pick him up was just kind of… creepy.
“ He showed absolutely no emotion, just a blank look,” remembers Baca with a leery shake of the head. “He was just bizarre. Very cold. At the first stop I practically jumped out of the car!”
Then at the Oregon border, after a relatively normal ride with a truck driver, Baca was picked up by a mortician — it seemed his strange trip wasn’t going to end anytime soon.
“He turned out to be a nice guy, though. He took me home and fed me. Then as we were watching the nightly news, the news lady walked through the front door.” As it turned out, the mortician was married to an anchorwoman who happened to come home while one of her taped newscasts was being aired.
The next morning, Baca got a ride to the freeway and from there caught a ride to Olympia, where he had a two-dollar breakfast he remembers to this day. Finally, Baca made it to Seattle, where he’s been for the past twenty or so years.
“I’m not worldly rich, but I’m spiritually rich,” says Baca, who became homeless five years ago. He’s been selling Real Change for about four and a half of those years, and these days he sells at Fourth and Olive.
“Thank you so much for being so kind to me,” he says to his customers. |
