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Mr. Orta was born in San Antonio, Texas, one of 12 children. He spent more than twelve years in the air force, loading planes during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, before being sent to Germany, Korea and Saudi Arabia. Upon his return to the United States, his wife had left him and he was fighting alcoholism and homelessness. He moved to San Francisco and, five years ago, qualified for a chronically homeless veterans assistance program.
At dusk, he leaves his building, between the place of brunch highly appreciated technicians and a cannabis store located in the heart of Mission. The smell of marijuana fills the vestibule. Climbing a steep hill lined with mature trees, it passes in front of houses that could be considered works of art: Victorians, some with stained glass windows and cornices and elaborate moldings, painted in a soft palette of pastels, ocher, celadon and teal. A virtual tour of the neighborhood on the Zillow site shows that homes worth over $ 3 million are the norm.
But Mr. Orta does not look at architecture. He walks the streets, slightly arched, his eyes fixed on the ground and a flashlight in his back pocket. His friends call him the Finder.
The six times Mr. Orta went out with a reporter, he followed various tours, but he usually ended up exploring his favorite alleys and a dumpster that was plentiful. (The first rule about cleaning garbage cans, he said, is to make sure there is no raccoon or possum.) In March , the trash has delivered a box of goblets, plates and silver plates, as if someone had pulled a tablecloth underneath party in a European castle.
"How do you say that?", Remarked William Washington, one of his colleagues garbage collectors of Mr. Orta, one evening. "The misfortune of some makes the happiness of others."
Other recent discoveries of Mr. Orta: phones, iPad, three wristwatches and marijuana bags. ("I smoked it," he said to the question of how much he had brought back for the pot.) By the end of August or September, as the participants return of the annual Burning Man Festival in the Nevada Desert, Mr. Orta explains that he often finds abandoned bicycles at the shelter. in the fine sand.
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