A Helper Indeed : Firefighter Gives Away Food, Clothes, Love in Mexico

When the children of Zorrillo, Mexico, see John Neill pull up in his pickup truck, he says, they pour from their cardboard homes to greet him.

With their arms outstretched, they surround the truck and look with wonder at this blond, blue-eyed man who has brought food and clothing to the poverty-plagued village of 750 that sits forlornly against barren mountains just south of Ensenada.

“I enjoy helping, it’s a good feeling,” said Neill, 34, a Long Beach firefighter and paramedic whose kindheartedness appears to be matched only by his modesty. “But I’m not the one who deserves the credit.”

Since last September, Neill has made periodic trips to Zorrillo with his wife, Cleo, sister-in-law Cathy Pena and her husband, Greg. The Neills and Penas sponsor families under a program instituted by Corazon Inc., a nonprofit organization in Orange that aids poor people in Tijuana and rural Mexico areas.

“You get attached to your family and the other people you see down there,” Neill said.

Once, on the spur of the moment, he drove 3 1/2 hours to the Zorrillo area, about 80 miles south of the border, where, despite his broken Spanish, he found and treated a shoeless girl who had a badly infected toe. He had learned of the girl’s plight from his sister-in-law.

“Now, whenever we go down, she has a great big smile and is quick to show us her toe,” Neill said of 12-year-old Maria Dolores Felix.

When Neill returns from visiting the villagers, his wallet is usually as empty as his truck.

“He takes anything out of his pocket and gives it to them, but he doesn’t talk about it,” Cleo Neill said.

About 26 U.S. families sponsor Mexican families by contributing to Corazon. The Neills’ adopted family in Zorrillo is composed of about 20 people, mostly women and children, who live on rice and beans in three windowless, dirt-floor shacks that have been strung together.

Outside sits a washing machine that the family was able to buy with money donated by the Neills.

“Where I work (in Long Beach) there’s a lot of poverty.” Neill said. “But the kids have a lot more than the kids down there.”

His Mexican family, captured in color snapshots, includes Maria Isabella Rubio, 24, who has three children and is expecting a fourth, and who lives with her mother, her grandfather and her sisters and their children.

Rubio, who speaks some English, was able to help Neill find the girl with the bad toe. “I’ve designated her as the village nurse,” the paramedic said.

Most of the family members pick crops for $5 a day, with most of their earnings going to their landlord. Their water is delivered by truck, their electricity limited to what can be tapped from two tape-coverd wires that sit on sticks.

“I asked a 13-year-old girl what she wanted most,” said Neill, “and she said, ‘Carne (meat).’ She must have been tired of eating beans.”

The Neills, who live with their three children in Huntington Beach, became involved in the project because of their longtime love for Mexico. They continually collect clothes and food for their trips, as well as lumber, soccer balls and blue plastic tarps, which the villagers use as ceilings and wind shelters.

Neill has given old firemen’s boots to men, who accept them with childlike giddiness. And he brought fishing equipment to an older man, Faustino Gonzalez, who was so grateful that he promised the Neills a feast the next time they come down.

“The people are very humble, quiet and generous,” Neill said. “They’re real proud to invite you in so they can show you their place.”

A surfing enthusiast, Neill grew up in Seal Beach wanting to be a fireman for one main reason: “I always liked the idea of being able to help somebody.”

Shivers of pride still go through him, he said, when little children wave to him as he rides on a firetruck in the section of Long Beach where he is stationed, near Anaheim Street and Walnut Avenue.

But older youngsters, whom he often has to patch up in the aftermath of gang violence, sadden him. “They don’t come from happy families,” he said. “A happy family means a lot. In Mexico there’s a family atmosphere you don’t find in the city.”

Kathy Summers of Anaheim, who has been involved with Corazon (which means heart in Spanish) for 10 years, is grateful for the help that the Neills and Penas give.

“He’s such a warm person, to go down there and find that child with the infected toe,” she said of the firefighter. “They can’t afford doctors so you wonder how they endure that pain.”

Things are looking up for Maria Felix, who is a member of the family sponsored by the Penas. Her toe is fine and she is going to school. That was her wish, she had told Neill as he was treating her.

It costs $2 a month to send a child to school in Zorrillo, and a birth certificate is required. Felix did not have one, but a lawyer, who is a friend of Summers, paved the way for the child to be admitted without one.

While at work the other day, Neill showed his pictures from Mexico. In one, he is distributing clothing to the happy youngsters.

“There’s a lot of warmth from what we do,” he said. “You’re overwhelmed, but what we do is so temporary. I’m sure it means a lot to them but I wish I could do something that was more lasting, like digging wells.”

Another photo showed Neill standing in his truck with upturned palms, trying to explain to the children, whose arms reach out pleadingly, that what he brought is all gone.

“It’s sad you can’t give everybody what they need or want,” he said, looking at the picture that always reminds him that soon he must load his truck and return.