Laguna to Study Hazards at Hiring Lot

LAGUNA BEACH —  A blue pickup truck pulls off the road. The driver motions to a group of 30 young men standing across the street.

Cars whiz past. The men wait anxiously to cross the road and bargain for a day’s wage, when suddenly two men bolt across the road--into the path of a moving truck, which narrowly misses them.

It is a scene, officials say, that is being repeated over and over as dayworkers gather on busy Laguna Canyon Road--a knot of mostly young Latino men eager to do a day’s work for meager wages.

City officials say the scene along the winding road has become increasingly dangerous as crowds of job-hungry men compete for scarce work by darting across traffic to crowd around the employers in trucks and vans who pass by the lot looking for hired help.

Already, two dayworkers have been struck by cars while trying to cross Laguna Canyon Road. More recently, a dayworker broke his leg when he was hit by a car near the hiring area.

The car was heading south toward Laguna Beach when the man ran out in front of a crowd of dayworkers.

“It was horrible. He was hit right in front of me,” says Ben Willits, a Laguna Beach resident who was standing at a nearby bus stop. “The car just hit him and sent him flying like a rag doll.”

While none of the accidents has resulted in serious injuries, residents fear that someone will be killed if the city does not monitor the situation more closely. Spurred by complaints from residents and business owners on Laguna Canyon Road, city officials on Tuesday will discuss ways to reduce the dangers.

Measures being considered include restricting pickups to one side of the road, posting a police officer or other city employee in the area and restricting workers and employers to one pickup spot.

Council members say they have no plans to bar the workers from public streets and note that they have gone out of their way to find a suitable place for the workers to gather--unlike other cities that have called in Immigration and Naturalization Service officials to round up those who may be in the country illegally.

“Complex social issues can never be solved easily by ordinance,” Mayor Robert F. Gentry says. “As long as I’m on the City Council, I will never go for that.”

Meanwhile, some local businessmen have criticized officials for relocating the dayworkers to the heavily traveled road that connects Laguna Beach to the San Diego Freeway.

“It makes logical sense that you don’t put them on one of the busiest streets in the county,” says Joe Jaharaus, who owns Laguna Beach Lumber Co., across the street from the pickup site. “One of these days, there is going to be a major accident.”

Jaharaus says he has seen two dayworkers struck by cars and a collision between a van and a truck that was pulling into traffic after picking up a worker.

“I can’t tell you how many accidents we have had involving dayworkers,” Jaharaus says. “People slamming into our gate. It’s a very dangerous spot here.”

The dayworkers, mostly young Mexican men in their late teens and 20s, used to gather on Coast Highway in North Laguna. But when residents there complained, the city told the workers to move the pickup spot to a parking lot on Laguna Canyon Road.

Nearly eight months ago, they asked the workers to move another 100 yards up the road because the lot was being used for Festival of the Arts parking in the summer. The workers now gather at two spots just south of El Toro Road.

Laguna Canyon Road was picked “because we wanted them to be able to get off their bus and go to their place of work,” Councilwoman Martha Collison says. “Also, this did not impact on a residential neighborhood because there were already some commercial businesses there.”

Gentry says he sympathizes with the dayworkers’ plight and added that he sees them as a vital part of the local economy.

“If I ever had to leave my country and risk a number of things, in some cases my life, to seek work to support my family, to me that is pretty impressive,” he says. “It’s not a negative thing. It’s American capitalism at its finest.”

Leslie Herzog contributed to this report.