‘King for a Day’ : County Workers Bid Farewell to 80-Year-Old Concessionaire

Aleck Rafalovich has made a living selling snacks and coffee to employees ever since the Ventura County Government Center opened 14 years ago.

Wednesday afternoon was the 80-year-old concessionaire’s retirement party, and he celebrated the end of his 54-year working career just as his loyal customers expected him to.

Rafalovich served 10 free cakes and coffee to hundreds of well-wishing customers--some of whom have been frequenting the basement Snack Shoppe since it opened--and conceded that it was the least he could do.

“I’ve been here all these years and I can’t remember having a single argument with any of the county employees,” said Rafalovich, a short, stocky man with a full mustache and a high-pitched laugh.

“They are just such wonderful people. I wanted to give something back,” Rafalovich, who is legally blind, said as a continuous flow of customers stopped by his shop to congratulate him on his retirement.

Rafalovich wore a gold, paper crown for the occasion. And his wife of 13 years, Rosamond, proclaimed him “king for the day.”

But both said they have some worries about how he would face retirement after having been a self-employed businessman for the past 41 years.

“What I’m really worried about is losing my job. I’ve been working for 54 years, and even though I’m leaving of my own will, I don’t know what I’ll do,” Rafalovich said, adding that he and his wife do have plans for a Caribbean cruise and a trip to England.

“It’s going to be up to me to keep him out of the doldrums,” Rosamond Rafalovich said as she served cake to the crowd. “I think I’ll try to get him to write his memoirs.”

Times have changed for blind people, Rafalovich said. Although he lost 90% of his vision during an accident in 1958, he never feared ending up like the blind men with tin cups he remembers watching beg for change on street corners when he was a child.

The state Department of Rehabilitation retrained him to work despite his disability, and then the Business Enterprise Program in 1970 placed him in the first of his concessionaire jobs, running a similar snack shop at the Federal Aviation Building in Los Angeles.

In 1978 Rafalovich landed the rights to the government center shop, and today he is one of more than 200 blind concessionaires in California, said Iraj Pezhman, his supervisor in the Business Enterprise Program.

Pezhman, who has been Rafalovich’s boss for eight years, came from Los Angeles for the party.

“Aleck is not only helping himself in this business,” Pezhman said. “He’s actually providing jobs for other people. Not to even mention the training other blind people have gotten from him to become themselves productive members of society.”

Many of the people who attended the party said coffee breaks will probably never be the same when Rafalovich leaves Nov. 29.

“He’s always been so giving,” Jessica Harrison, county counsel legal secretary, said.

“Every time I was short on change he always helped me out,” added utility worker J. J. Vaivao.