OK, Lord, Give This Swenson Guy a Break

When James Swenson fell 70 feet down an abandoned mine shaft last week, no one who knows him was surprised. He’s stumbled in fate’s way before.

A sweet-natured guy who makes a living doing odd jobs around the small, High Desert community of Acton, he sometimes feels like he’s walking around with a dark cloud hanging over his head.

He manages somehow to survive serious scrapes, like the helicopter crash in Vietnam, and almost works up a smile when he talks about the oddball moments of bad luck, like when a dog ran off with his glasses.

But he’d still prefer not to have any more misadventures, if you don’t mind. He’s having enough trouble just feeding himself and his son, Jason, and doesn’t have the time to spend in hospitals.

When I saw him the other day, he was holding one hand over his right eye. It was injured when he fell down the mine shaft while looking for gold, and it hurts like hell. His rescuers said he was lucky to be alive.

One of them called me in an effort to get some kind of help for Swenson. He and Jason live in an old miner’s shack that until recently didn’t have hot water.

“I get by OK,” Swenson said the other day, lisping slightly and looking at me out of his uncovered good eye. The lisp is because he’s lost his false teeth. More on that later.

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Swenson is a tall, lanky man with a kind of slow, deliberate manner and an instinct for misfortune that began when he was still a kid. At age 9 he climbed 100 feet up a tree and had to be rescued by firemen then, too. Fate, it seems, found him early in life.

“Jim never could just sit still,” a relative says. “I have a group photo with him in it. His face is the only one that’s blurred.”

I met Swenson at the home of Cherie Klimer, who runs an organization called Feed the People, an outreach ministry of the Acton Faith Bible Church. Her car got stuck near the Swenson shack and both men hurried out to help. Jason is 22 and considered “slow.” He can’t read or write and is totally dependent on his father.

“They were a gentle and kindly pair,” Klimer says. “I could see right away they needed help by the way they lived, but they don’t seem to qualify for any kind of government assistance. Their problems have been nonstop. They deserve a break.”

Between the two of them, James and Jason have managed to survive a series of misfortunes that would have probably sent less resilient people screaming over the sand dunes and into the sunset.

Drafted during the Vietnam War, James was a relay radioman hitching a ride in a helicopter when it was shot down. Then in two separate incidents thereafter, trucks he was driving got blown up by land mines. He survived all of it but couldn’t help wondering what was going on.

After the war, he worked as a bank messenger in Van Nuys but was fired when he got in an automobile accident. His marriage fell apart and four years ago he and Jason moved to Acton to start again. Fate followed them. Jason was injured in a car crash and then suffered a burst appendix.

James, meanwhile, got a job with a scaffolding company. Things looked pretty good. Then the company went broke.

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Acton’s population is about 1,500 and there’s not much handyman work available for the Swensons.

“They’re not lazy,” Cherie Klimer said. “They don’t drink or gamble or use drugs. When there’s work, they’re there.”

Both the Faith Bible Church and Feed the People help out by making certain the Swensons have enough to eat. Church money bought them a water heater for the miner’s shack and volunteer labor hooked it up.

One act of generosity went awry. James was having trouble with his false teeth and met a dentist somewhere who offered to work on them. He gave the teeth to the man but lost the dentist’s business card. He has no idea how to find him. If someone has James’ teeth, he’d like them back.

Klimer is right. The Swensons need a break. Some of what they’ve endured has been of their own making, I suppose. James didn’t have to climb into that mine shaft. There’s no gold down there, only fate waiting at the bottom.

But other misfortunes weren’t his fault. I mentioned his glasses. A few weeks after they were donated by the local Lion’s Club, their dog Fred got ahold of the specs and buried them somewhere in the desert.

Fred, by the way, stumbled into fate’s way, too. He developed rabies just after that and had to be put to sleep. They never did find the glasses.

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Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com