PALM BEACH POST
August 1, 2004
How one man snagged $3 million to help Fellsmere's
migrant workers
By Christine Evans
FELLSMERE -- One night here in this little farming town, a middle-aged fellow with a chunk of black hair and
arms that waved like a flagman's got up totell his story at a property owners meeting.
He was dynamic.
He was compelling.
He was a carpet cleaner.
"And thank God for it," he says.
That's how he wound up driving a lemon-yellow carpet-cleaning truck all around town, delivering food
and clothing to poor farmworkers like a one-man soup kitchen.
"On Saturdays, my wife and my three children and I would load up the truck, drive 35 miles from our
house in Melbourne and unload all the stuff right on the street. People would come running out of the
little homes and trailers behind the bushes, and they would surround us.
"For six months, I did this every week, sometimes several times a week. Then the newspaper did a story.
The phone started ringing. People asked, 'Jesse, do you think people need peanut butter? Do they need
milk? What about clothes for school? What about books? What else, Jesse? What else?'
"This thing I was doing, it was blooming, like a big, flowering bush. But that's when I realized it wasn't enough."
That's when he got his big idea.
The one that could improve, over time, the lives of thousands of people.
The one some folks thought was nice -- but crazy.
The one that would cost $3 million.
"Have you met Jesse?" the Ohio snowbird says. "He's magnetic.
"And everything he said he was going to do, he's done."
The snowbird (who, for the record, has remained largely anonymous -- though that is about to change)
is talking about Jesse Zermeno, the kid from Mexico City who married a gringa, moved to Florida and
bought a carpet-cleaning business cheap from a buddy who wanted to play pro football.
And did.
Funny how life works, one dream leading to another.
Zermeno is 56 but looks 26. If you ran into him on the street, you might think he was an office guy on his
way to the dry cleaner to pick up a bunch of starched shirts. But this is not Zermeno at all. His calling, he
has discovered -- perched as he is on the precipice of middle age, the place where dreams often end
instead of begin -- is in the fields, banging on farmers' doors to beg for the vegetables weary migrants
have picked.
The farmers almost always give him what he asks for, box after box of cucumbers and green beans and
whatever else is good that day, and then he distributes it all -- often to the same workers who picked them.
This is one of the ironies in American farmwork today.
Another one: Mostof the people doing the picking are from Mexico, just like Zermeno.
"Eight years ago," the carpet cleaner says, explaining things, "I'm in Satellite Beach and one of my clients says,
'Hey, Jesse, you ever been to Fellsmere?' I say, 'Fellsmere? What's that?'
"Well, this guy has a son-in-law who's working in the fields seven days a week and living with his wife and
four kids in a little trailer.
"The guy desperately wants me to help his son-in-law, and he won't stop talking about it. So finally, I call for
directions and I go down to Fellsmere and the son-in-law gave me a tour to all these places you normally
would never see.
"People living behind the bushes, packed like sardines into the trailers. Every time you turn a corner, you see
another little trailer with all the people jammed in and the children spilling out. Some of these places didn't have
bathrooms. Some had holes in the floor and falling-in roofs.
"I was like, 'Wow.' I could not believe it. I came home and explained to my wife, 'Honey, you would not believe
how some people live in America.'
"Then I just got it in my heart I wanted to do something."
"It tormented him," says Jann Zermeno, the gringa he married 29 years ago.
"He came home, repeated it all. He was just heartbroken at seeing all these children living in trailers with
the windows busted out, no electric, no plumbing, places you wouldn't even put a pet in.
"You try to explain this to people and they don't get it. It's too surreal."
"I began to do a test," Jesse says.
"On my carpet-cleaning jobs, I'd clean the carpet, and I'd do a very, very good job.
"Then I would ask the client, 'Sir, Madam, would you mind sitting down with me for a minute?'
"I would try to make it very personal: 'How would you like to buy a little girl a pair of shoes?' 'Perhaps you
have a golf shirt that no longer fits?'
"I think it got to people. Because you know what?
"They gave."
A few years ago, Zermeno started a nonprofit, the aptly named Operation Hope. It now feeds 1,000 people
a week at several locations, and last Christmas he was in a bit of a panic when 5,000 children showed up
at the yearly toy giveaway.
"I said, 'God, this is your show now.' We had gotten so big."
But not, apparently, big enough.
Now, about the $3 million.
Wait, first a little history.
Fellsmere is a fruit and vegetable town, a flat little speck of a place shimmering in the dust just off
the highway in Indian River County.
It has a tortilla shop, a Frog Leg Festival and an Irish priest who speaks fluent Spanish.
On the rare occasion the Rev. Noel McGrath of Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission in the heart of town
finds himself at a loss for words, he calls upon the faithful for help -- Αayudame! -- and help they do,
whispering the answers into the cool church air until they land, as if by magic, on Father Noel's tongue.
Now it would be fair to say, although there certainly are some exceptions, that not too many seasonal
residents from the high-hedged developments across the bridge -- retirees who live in luxurious
oceanside homes -- have made their way over the railroad tracks to this part of the county.
What would be the point? As a seasonal, you're in, you're out.
If charity begins at home, it usually isn't your winter one.
The exception would be David Welles.
There, we said it.
He's the (formerly anonymous) snowbird, a retired door manufacturer who started his own business in
1962 and sold it late last year.
"Yep, that's me," he says, from Ohio. "Just keep me in the postscript. This is Jesse's deal.
"Here's what happened.
"We had a Mexican yardman working for us. We hired him eight or nine years ago. He used to spend
his Saturday afternoons helping this fellow named Zermeno.
"So I got kind of interested.
"I asked around.
"I read about Jesse in the paper.
"Then I called him up and asked him to come out here to my community and give a presentation.
"You could have heard a pin drop."
The carpet cleaner remembers this.
"I had to talk to some very big people. I mean, deep-pockets people! And me, a little Mexican boy!
I studied my speech a dozen times.
"I was a wreck."
"He was a hit," says the snowbird.
Lots of people have been wondering: How did he do it?
How did the carpet cleaner make his dream come true?
He is happy to tell you.
Just now, he is eating a catfish lunch at a popular restaurant here. His hands fly as he tells the story,
a twinkle in his eye, and when he bangs his fists on the wooden table, a lemon wedge jumps
off his plate.
For years, he kept up his ritual of delivering food and furniture and whatever else people donated in
his lemon-yellow business truck.
The situation got a little out of hand.
He and Jann had so much stuff in their living room -- donations waiting for the next food drop -- that Jann
could not get in the front door. "I tried one day, and it wouldn't budge."
Finally, an engineer from Melbourne loaned them a warehouse.
"Then," says Jesse, "the mayor of Fellsmere calls and says, 'I notice you are delivering groceries in the
streets. I want to give you the fire station.'
"So now I have the fire station.
"Then the principal calls and says, 'Jesse, how about I give you the school? You get a big auditorium
and air conditioning.'
"So now I have the school.
"But" -- still -- "it isn't enough.
"At this point," says Zermeno, who worked his way through college in Mexico City, "I believe education
is the key to everything. Some of these kids repeat third grade again and again and again.
"Somebody had to do something."
Him.
At the meeting that night, back in December, when he gave his impassioned speech to the property
owners association, a fellow named Jerry Smith happened to be in the audience, and he was deeply moved.
He also was the owner, with his wife, Laura, of the Green Acres Flea and Farmers Market, one of the
first landmarks you hit when you come off the highway into town.
When Smith heard Zermeno's speech, he could not believe his ears -- or his own intentions.
He went right home to talk to his wife. Eventually, she said yes.
It made perfect sense.
He would sell the flea market.
To Zermeno.
For his big dream.
The property was nothing to sniff at: 17 sweet, green acres and six serviceable buildings. The flea
market wasn't doing too well, anyway. This would be a public service and a bailout, all at once.
"Mr. Jerry Smith proposed this to me," the carpet cleaner says. "And I could not believe it! I had
been looking for something like this for two years. It was my dream!"
The only problem was, the flea market cost $3 million, and who has that kind of money?
Ahem.
"Really," the Ohio snowbird says. "Keep me in deep background."
"God bless him," says Zermeno.
The grand opening of the new Operation Hope Community Center for farmworkers and their families
is set for Aug. 17 at the former Green Acres Flea and Farmers Market.
The center, just as Zermeno dreamed it, will have classrooms and computers, teachers and tutors,
space for arts and dance, fieldsfor sportsand a gleaming kitchen with walk-in freezers (for all the
vegetables Zermeno acquires from the farmers).
Most of all, it will have hope.
"I can see," says Zermeno, waving his arms again, "the kids improving in school. I can see ball teams
and competitions. I can see regional and cultural dance classes.
"I can see adults learning to be electricians and grandmothers learning business skills."
Zermeno has invited the presidents of the United States and Mexico to the grand opening, but he will
be happy if the first people in the door are the beautiful children of Fellsmere, clutching their parents' hands.