Riding the System for Better Bus Service

For the most part, bus riders aren’t rabble-rousers. They don’t have a union to call a strike when service is bad. They don’t have a newsletter, a mailing list or a place for mass meetings.

So anybody who tries to organize them as consumers must do it the hard way--one by one. Talking to fellow passengers at bus stops. Passing around petitions on crowded coaches full of sleepy and sullen workers. Getting up an hour earlier than usual to gather complaints from riders reluctant to complain for themselves.

That’s the way it was done by one determined nanny from El Salvador. Working on her own, she gathered 900 signatures earlier this year to protest proposed bus route changes that would have created hardships for carless laborers trying to get from North County neighborhoods to South County jobs. She even rallied riders to attend public hearings, a civic first for many immigrant passengers.

Word about this woman’s solo campaign spread to others trying to organize a passengers’ advocacy group. They couldn’t believe what they were hearing. It’s hard enough to find joiners. Now, this new leader emerges with no organizing experience and no outside assistance, and manages to rouse fellow riders to speak out for a better bus system.

“My God, where did she come from? Who is she? Where is she?” wondered Jane Reifer of Orange County Citizens Bus Restructuring Task Force, a grass-roots group with about 80 participants. “A lot of people, particularly bus riders, are kind of docile. And she just jumped right in there. . . . She’s an unusually strong person.”

The bus riders’ firebrand is named Nohemy Gutierrez, a short, sturdy woman who will turn 40 in November. She lives alone in a room she rents in a Costa Mesa apartment. She makes her living by baby-sitting a 1-year-old boy who lives in Newport Beach, commuting on bus route 180, which was created as a result of her earlier rider protests.

Nohemy has two adult children, a daughter and son. When she left her war-torn homeland for the United States 15 years ago, her children were still small. They stayed behind and were raised by their grandparents while she sent money home for their schooling.

Sacrificing for a Better Future

She sacrificed being close during their formative years so they could have a future, says Nohemy, who had “made the mistake” of being a single mom. Today, that experience helps fuel her drive to make life easier for strangers on the bus. She does it, she says, for parents who are still raising their children and who are forced by long bus rides to leave home early and get home late.

“I was afraid to bring my children here when they were young,” said Nohemy, her normally forceful voice cracking with emotion.

“But I see that there are many mothers who have had more courage than I did. They brought their children, and I admire them very much. . . . Every moment that a woman can spend time with her children, she must take advantage of it. She shouldn’t be stuck on a bus.”

This month, Nohemy started another round of one-on-one encounters with fellow passengers to measure their reactions to the newly implemented bus lines. If her street-corner surveys are any indication, the new grid-like network has disrupted the routines of many passengers who now are forced to transfer more often to get to their destinations.

As a result, she said, people are missing connections, making dangerous dashes across wide intersections and running after buses to avoid being late. It’s not just the passengers who are complaining, but their employers too, since a tardy nanny can derail a whole household’s routine. In the last two weeks, I’ve received complaints about the new bus routes from sympathetic residents of Tustin and Laguna Beach worried about the transit troubles faced by workers in their areas.

The grass-roots task force is holding a bus riders forum Tuesday night in Santa Ana to discuss the new routes. Bus users are invited to share their commuter woes and learn how they can get involved to build a better bus system. (The forum begins at 6 p.m. at the Fullerton Community Bank Building, 825 N. Broadway, which is also the home of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional. For information, call [714] 525-3678.)

OCTA officials say they welcome input from passengers who have not been vocal as a group in the past. They especially appreciate Nohemy for opening a line of communication to Latinos who make up 60% of OCTA bus customers. Many don’t speak English and lack the time or the gumption to make the system listen to their needs.

“Our hope here at OCTA is that we continue to find more Nohemy Gutierrezes to help us reach out and give us ideas and suggestions as to how to improve,” said Jose Solorio, OCTA’s marketing administrator. “She was able to bring in more riders than ever before--Latinos in particular--into the comment process.”

I had never seen Nohemy before we agreed to meet Wednesday morning at the bus stop on Bristol in front of South Coast Plaza. Even from a distance you can spot her in the bunch, talking intently to a fellow passenger, papers in her hand. She had the confident stance of an organizer, exuding energy among the normally sedate early morning crowd.

A Woman With No Time to Waste

We barely said hello when her bus rolled up shortly after 7 a.m. and we hopped aboard. Looking somehow comfortable in the hard, cramped seats, she started to explain the scheduling problems in her quick Spanish, still laced with a melodic Central American accent. As the bus bounced, she flipped easily through tiny timetables in a thick book of new routes, like a reporter flies through a notebook on deadline.

The maze of maps and minutes made my head spin.

“We must let OCTA know where the errors are and where the routes create a waste of time,” she said. “I see an injustice in making things harder for people who already work hard enough. . . . Tiempo perdido, dinero perdido (Time lost is money lost).”

Some fellow riders are resigned and apathetic. They tell her there’s nothing they can do about the bus service. Or they’re afraid that if they ask for improvements they’ll get another fare hike. Some say they need an organization to make changes.

“But it should be our own initiative,” said Nohemy. “If I wait for help from Manny, Moe or Jack, I’m never going to do anything.”

She has the same philosophy about poverty.

“I get to thinking, maybe poverty is a state that one wants to perpetuate,” said Nohemy, one of six children raised in a poor, rural family. “I see people who don’t try to improve themselves, who have poor work habits, who don’t bother to study English.”

She concedes that she needed a push to get ahead. She remembers one of her first employers getting angry when he caught her watching Spanish television. “You are in America, Nohemy!” her boss yelled. “You have to learn English!”

What a mean man, she thought. He had made her cry. But his scolding also prompted her to go to the library, get a dictionary, and take him up on his offer to answer her endless questions about what words mean. Now she reads The Times and can approach English-speaking passengers with her consumer survey about the new routes.

“The humiliation he put me through served me well, and now I bless that gentleman,” she said.

Nohemy says it would be impossible for her to return to El Salvador now. She studied to be a secretary before she immigrated, but landing a job at her age would be impossible. Especially when employers back home are free to advertise for young workers who “must be pretty (que sea bonita).”

We got off the bus near Newport Bay in a neighborhood of neatly trimmed trees and new SUVs in almost every other driveway. From the bus stop, it’s still a 20-minute walk--at a fast clip--to work. Along the way, she tells me she loves taking care of infants, “putting my little grain of sand” to help them grow.

Back in El Salvador, her daughter, 20, works in a bottling company. Her son, 18, is an advertising model, a career choice she plainly dislikes.

“It bothers me a lot because I like people who use their brains, not their appearance,” she says, tapping her forehead. “I may be a little ugly (feita), but I like for people to say that I’m also a little smart.”

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com