He Loves His Work So Much He Keeps Collecting More of It

You’ve just got to love Gilbert Chavez, 59, because he loves you.

Matter of fact, he loves everyone. He even loves the junk in his La Habra store called Pink Elephant Antiques. His wife named the store after the color of the walls.

“Well, it’s not really junk,” he admits. “Most are collectibles and some are real antiques and I love it all.” Besides, he makes a living there.

When you come right down to it, though, Chavez would rather talk than sell. Or for that matter, eat.

“I just love for people to come in here,” he said. “I love them all. I love people, and I love to talk to them. I don’t care whether they have 10 cents, a dollar or a million.”

He’s most likely more tuned in to the dollar crowd.

“I don’t make a lot of money now, but I pay my bills, I don’t owe anybody anything and I don’t have to punch a clock,” said the one-time manhole digger and truck driver who makes thrice-yearly trips to Mexico with clothes and food. “The people there are real poor.”

Chavez has been in business 15 years, but he’s been collecting all his life. He started out cleaning neighborhood garages and selling usable items. His mother used to warn him about bringing more junk home. “But you know mothers,” he said. “Don’t you love them?’

From household items, Chavez now has a mixed inventory of thousands of items that include jukeboxes--one that sells for $10,000--outdoor signs, dolls, posters, old clothing and furniture, much of it bought with his wife, Bertha, on trips to the Midwest, Las Vegas, Mexico and South America. “Sometimes people walk in the store and try to sell me things. I just love it.”

He has a Braille copy of Playboy Magazine for $40, “but it doesn’t have pictures,” he said, smiling.

Chavez has customers from here to the East Coast. One client, a black doctor from Baltimore, seeks black memorabilia--now a highly sought-after collectible, especially vintage advertising signs that cast ethnic groups in a derogatory manner. “The more derogatory, the more he wants it,” said Chavez.

Popular collectible items these days, said Chavez, who has two children and two grandchildren--”God, I love them all”--are old toys, dolls and vintage clothes.

“Kids today know more about things than I do. They’re smart and collect one thing only and study up on that item,” Chavez said. “I know a lot about a lot of things,” much of it learned from a good library in his La Habra home, which he says he loves.

“You know,” said Chavez, “you got to have a little love and have to give a little love to be in this business. I love it.”

Joe Reda of Anaheim, a crowd control worker at Anaheim Convention Center, submitted this to the employee newsletter:

If you wish to grow thinner,

Diminish your dinner.

And order light beer

Instead of pale ale.

Look down with an utter

contempt upon butter.

And never touch bread

Till it’s toasted--

Or stale.

Prominent individuals from law, medicine, education, science and other fields have been among the speakers at Rancho Santiago College’s free public forum, so it seemed right that Jo Lindberg of Tustin, a therapist of sorts, give her thoughts.

She’s a professional hugger and at noon Wednesday will tell the college audience the good things that hugs offer. For instance, her prescription calls for four hugs for survival, eight hugs for maintenance and 12 hugs for growth.

For the last four years she has made a living delivering “hug grams” and talking about hug/touch therapy.

Most likely she’ll give a free hug to everyone who attends.

Last year Dorothy Flanagan of Anaheim won the gospel category in the International Musical Saw Competition in Portland, so this year she went back for deeper competition.

She repeated her win in the gospel competition and also won the classical division. For her overall performance, she was named Grand Champion.

Not bad for a 72-year-old lady who plays a saw named Sandy.

Acknowledgments--Paul Portner, fourth grade teacher at Riverdale Elementary School in Garden Grove, received a special citation from the United Nations for promoting world peace through a balloon project he started in 1983. Helium-filled balloons were released carrying declarations of peace written by his students.