Scrap collectors

Ted Williams digs through a trash bin at a Toluca Lake construction site. He says any metal material he recovers would otherwise end up in a landfill.
See full story  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Mike Sroufe, 52, hustles across a street in North Hollywood with car parts he was given at an auto repair shop. He scours the streets every day in search of recyclable junk that he can sell.
See full story  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Marc Handler stares at a pickup piled with scrap metal in his neighborhood. “I feel that I am now living in a blighted area full of smashed-up vehicles and piles of scrap metal and junk -- an industrial area of workmen and industrial materials, not a neighborhood,” he says. “This is in my face every day.”
See full story  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Scrap collector Sean Finnegan holds a Picasso print that he says might be worth $795. He found it on his rounds collecting recyclable junk from streets and construction sites. “There are a lot of people who are out of work who need some sort of finances coming in,” said Finnegan, who has been collecting junk since 2005 and operates a truck he calls the Mean Green Econo Machine. “We do a lot of good. And most of the time, there are no complaints about it.”
See full story  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Mike Sroufe, right, and his partner, Ted Williams, pick up a TV left on the curb of a residential neighborhood in North Hollywood. “I feel terrible if my truck’s a mess, but when I have a mountain of mess on my truck, that’s a mountain of money for me,” said Sroufe, owner of Scrap Happy. “I don’t want to be an eyesore, but I have to make a living. I’m an honest person, doing an honest job.”
See full story  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Trucks piled high with old fans, computers, toys, desk chairs, exercise equipment and other metal materials line up at a recycling business in North Hollywood.
See full story  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)