Coronado Bridge Jobs Take Toll : From Cheats to Drivers in the Buff, Collectors See It All

It’s just after daybreak and across the harbor shafts of light are punching holes through the canopy of fog and touching the tall buildings of downtown San Diego.

While the city is yawning, its residents preparing for another day, George Berardi is already wide awake.

Since 5 a.m., when he stepped into his closet-sized metal and glass booth at the end of the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge, Berardi has been performing like a maestro in front of an impatient audience.

Quickly his hands move in smooth two-part harmony, one taking money, the other dispensing change.

His movements are at the center of a hectic routine that includes giving directions to bewildered tourists, picking up wayward hubcaps, ignoring rude motorists, inhaling exhaust fumes, and listening to the steady din of squeaky brakes, noisy engines, loud stereos and boisterous trucks.

Life in the toll booth, though, is not always routine.

There are the late-night drunk drivers who play a dangerous game of turning off their lights and speeding through the narrow lanes without paying. Or the occasional prank pulled by naked men and women who nonchalantly glide in to a stop.

And, on a more grim note, there is the sobering reminder that the graceful and beguiling span is a magnet for suicides; 127 since it opened 17 years

ago this month.

But mostly, day in and day out, it’s a thankless job.

To the majority of drivers hurrying to reach their destination, Berardi and his 21 co-workers who man the bridge’s six toll booths are faceless, $10.95-an-hour sentries.

At the height of the morning rush hour, when civilians and military people who work at North Island Naval Air Station converge on the bridge like ants on an overripe peach, the cars arrive by the thousands, backing up nearly the full length of the 11,179-foot bridge.

It’s a time of 600 human encounters an hour, when the toll providers and the toll takers exchange brief smiles, fleeting eye contact and perhaps a quick thank-you.

Over the years, some faces are recognized. Most are not.

The onslaught is numbing, which is why each toll booth worker is required to take a half-hour break every two hours. Any longer than that and “the proficiency really drops off,” said toll captain Dennis Poirier, a 23-year veteran of four California bridges.

After years of constant and reverberating noise, Poirier says he can “still hear the ringing in my ears” and has lost his hearing for high-pitched sounds.

For all of the coordination between collector and driver, inevitably someone comes along who fouls things up.

Like some motorcycle riders, for example, who try to save time by using their mouths as a pocket.

“They take the money out (of their mouths) and put it in your hand,” said an exasperated Berardi, 31, a talkative, transplanted Argentine with two children who has worked at the bridge for four years and harbors a dream of someday opening an Argentine restaurant.

“But what are you going to do?” Berardi said, more in amazement than anger.

In the old days, before computers and electronic axle counters, work at the bridge could be outright demeaning.

The state built two “spy shacks,” one on each side of the toll plaza. From there, supervisors would peer through telescopes at the toll takers, making sure no one was stealing from the till. The shacks, vacant since the late ‘70s, are still there, more obscured now with overgrown trees and bushes.

Today, someone like Poirier can step over to a computer and get an hour-by-hour tabulation of the number of cars driving by each toll booth. The incentive to steal, if there ever was one, has been significantly curtailed.

Besides, says Berardi, why risk your $23,000-a-year job over a few bucks?

“I think it would be hard to get a better job,” Berardi said last week in quick snatches of conversation while working “bear lane”--No. 3, the bridge’s busiest.

“When I get out the door, that’s it. I do my eight hours and I don’t have to worry when I get home or take my work home with me.”

There is, however, a measure of danger to the job. Two years ago, a loaded roofing truck struck a toll booth, injuring the toll collector.

There are the rear-end accidents and the side mirrors and doors that can come perilously close to smashing hands and arms.

One night, when Berardi was working the graveyard shift, a couple of sailors paid the toll and left a calling card: an exploding smoke grenade.

The noise was deafening and the smoke caused the collectors to choke.

“I guess they thought it was cute or something. They were never caught,” Berardi said.

But perhaps the most dangerous of all are the toll evaders.

They seem to appear most often after the bars close, when two to three collectors are on duty. The evaders risk their lives and those of the collectors for the sake of avoiding a $1.20 toll.

One of the worst, Berardi recalled, was a pickup driver who made a regular game of it. He would come off the bridge and turn off his lights.

Traveling at about 70 m.p.h., the pickup would streak through the narrow lanes between the booths.

He pulled the stunt 25 times before he was caught as the result of an alert motorist copying his license number.

“When we take our break, we walk across the lanes to the office. When these guys turn off their lights, it’s hard to see them coming,” Berardi said.

The irony is that people who don’t have money to pay the toll aren’t penalized. Instead, they are given five days to send in their money.

Part of the collectors’ job is seeing people in emotional pain who come to the bridge to jump off. While police are responsible for dealing with these people, sometimes circumstances intervene.

Like the time a woman in a car approached Berardi and said she wanted to kill herself. She pulled over by the toll plaza and, for the next three hours, she and Berardi talked.

“She told me she had a gun and that if I called the police, she’d kill me,” Berardi said.

As anxious co-workers looked on, the woman gradually talked herself out of suicide.

“When the police came they searched the car,” he said, “and there on the seat was a loaded gun.”

Toll evaders and people attempting to kill themselves are a grim part of the job but there are light-hearted moments, including when naked motorists pull up and pay their toll, acting as if nothing is amiss.

The topper goes to a young man who, on a summer night in 1984, ran across the bridge.

“He stopped in front of my booth, panting real hard. ‘I beat him,’ he told me. I said, ‘Beat who?’

“ ‘My friend in the car. I’m trying out for the Olympics and I just beat the car,’ ” said Berardi, laughing at the memory.