‘Mayor’ is looking for a job

As he sat in his wheelchair outside the Mother’s Market in Costa Mesa on Wednesday morning, Willie Boyd’s calloused hands twisted long, skinny party balloons into the shapes of dogs, butterflies and flowers.

“You’re a ray of sunshine,” said Irvine resident June McGucken as she slipped Boyd $5 for making her a red balloon dog.

Like many people who see Boyd on the street, McGucken pulled her car over on 17th Street to chat with the toothless, homeless man without legs and a bag of balloons.

Homeless for the past 10 years in America’s richest city, Boyd is known around town as the mayor of Newport Beach.

He sits outside the health food store from 6 to 10 most evenings, acting as what he calls the store’s “unofficial greeter,” doling out balloon animals and “God-bless-yous” to customers in exchange for tips.

“Everyone who goes in the store when I’m there has a smile on their face,” he says.

Mother’s is getting ready to move later this year to the site of an empty Border’s bookstore on Newport Boulevard and 19th Street in Costa Mesa.

Boyd said he is campaigning the store’s management to make his greeter job official after the move.

A representative from Mother’s Market’s corporate office in Costa Mesa said Wednesday that the store does not hire greeters and that Boyd is not an employee.

The woman declined to give her name or be quoted, other than to say that Boyd is welcome to apply for a job.

Boyd said he put in an application about six months ago, but said he had no phone number at the time to put down on the form. He’s since procured a cell phone.

A security guard at Mother’s Market asked Boyd to leave the entrance of the store Wednesday morning. Boyd wheeled his way toward the public sidewalk after the guard slammed the palm of his hand down on the lid of a metal garbage can in front of the store, creating a clatter.

“They don’t usually give me problems like this,” Boyd said.

Newport Beach psychotherapist Shelby Castile, a regular customer at Mother’s, said she first met Boyd as he sat outside the store greeting shoppers. She’s become what Boyd calls his “pro-bono psychotherapist.”

A job would help boost Boyd’s self esteem, Castile said. Boyd’s positive attitudes make customers at the health food store smile, she said.

“I admire his courage and attitude. You see rich people get out of their nice cars and shop and they look miserable,” Castile said. “Here Willie is, he has no legs and no teeth, and yet he’s probably one of the happiest people in Costa Mesa.”

A middle-aged construction worker from Chicago, Boyd says he moved to Southern California after he lost his legs in a 1991 car accident.

He has an 18-year-old son in Lake Elsinore, but the relationship with the boy’s mother went bad, and Boyd ended up on the streets, he said.

After sleeping underneath a patio umbrella latched to a concrete column on top of the Lido Marina Village garage for a few years, Boyd moved to a spot he calls his “condo” — a wooden bench overlooking Newport Harbor.

He then saved up enough money for an old Cadillac in which he slept for a few months in the parking lot of a waterfront Newport Beach restaurant. Boyd had to get rid of the vehicle recently after the restaurant’s owner told him the dented old car had to go.

Now he’s back at his sidewalk bench condo. Boyd said he saves up money from his modest Social Security checks and donations he gets from customers at Mother’s Market to rent hotel rooms when it rains.

“My mission is to encourage and inspire people on a spiritual level,” Boyd said, twisting pink and blue balloons into the shape of a flower.

Boyd started making balloon swords and hats for children who visit the market a few years ago after a store employee handed him a bag of balloon one day, he said.

He hopes to get off the streets and find an apartment so his son can visit him more, he said.

“A job is going to be the key thing for me,” he said. “I want to give back to the community.”