From when I first met Marcos Olivarez on Milpas in 2011 — and he vexed me sorely until I got him indoors — to his helping others out of homelessness on the pioneering Milpas Outreach Project that landed us all on the cover of the Independent, to adopting him as our crazy uncle and getting my mom to drive him to appointments, Marcos was a main character in our lives.
Retired Santa Barbara Police Department officer Keld Hove helped me get Marcos off the street back in 2012, and Marcos quickly became the Sally Army’s favorite client, starting a garden on their property. I wrote a grant to the Fund for Santa Barbara for Marcos to start Pushy Shovels in the city’s community gardens on the Eastside, where he helped others suffering from addiction to reconnect with soil, plants, and the joy of growing food and sharing it with others. He could make plants literally jump up out of the ground. I used to think of him as an agronomist, someone so gifted with soil and plants, but with no land.
Marcos would drop off multiple five-pound cabbages for my daughter and me from his garden, and we often wondered where he thought we were hiding the Russian army that would eat it? He helped an Eastside team cultivate a garden at Franklin Elementary, and the kale was tree-sized.
He was appointed by then-supervisor Gregg Hart to the county’s Behavioral Wellness Commission, and reappointed by Supervisor Laura Capps.
He was always super high-maintenance, earning him the beloved nickname “Princess Marcos” from my daughter and me. But he never missed a chance to extend outreach to those experiencing homelessness.
Marcos had a secret weapon — he cooked like an old Southern woman. He’d make up a batch of fried chicken, cornbread, and greens, and we’d hit Milpas, East Beach, or bushes along the Montecito railroad tracks to encourage people to accept outreach. He knew the delicious scent of his cooking would get them to open up, like mussels in steam, and make a connection that could possibly save their lives.
We’d serve at Adam McCaig’s holiday dinners at the Veteran’s building, at the Sally, wherever he could help. He’d call me and say, with authority, “Miss Byrne” (I hated that he always called me that), “you need to come up here and get some of my cornbread and collard greens with oxtails. You need to eat some healthy food.”
I grew up in the South, and his soul food will put serious weight on you and clog your veins, like the backup on the 101 in Montecito. It was meant for people burning thousands of calories working very long, hard hours in blazing hot fields. I am not remotely underweight or malnourished, nor do I toil in fields all day, but he insisted that my daughter and I, and later my mom, needed to be fed, and by him, darn it. He’d get angry if I took too long coming to get it.
He’d call me when he was in trouble, or coming out of the hospital. Sometimes, the hospital would call me and update me, because Marcos always listed me as next of kin. I questioned why he did that for years, but I realized it’s the adopted-family relationship we had. He trusted I would always be there for him, and I was. He was always there for me. It was an honor bond between us.
We went to Bob Hansen’s funeral together on April 1, and he called me every 10 minutes to remind me that we needed to be on time and bring something. When I dropped him off back home, he joked that he needed to find ways to keep me in town and asked when we’d go back out to do some outreach.
Three days later, Marcos, too, was gone.
I still haven’t accepted it. I keep thinking I’ll call him and tell him something funny that happened, or ask him to help me re-pot my living Christmas tree … and then it hits me.
A memorial for Marcos was held on July 14 at the Veteran’s Memorial. Nancy McCradie and angels from the Milpas Outreach Project and Hands Across Montecito provided the funds. We hosted more than 50 people, and shared a meal of fried chicken, collard greens, and black-eyed peas in his honor. Assemblymember Gregg Hart presented us with a certificate of recognition of his passage. Marcos’s seat on the Behavioral Wellness Commission will be filled with someone like him — lived experience of mental health struggles, who has experienced homelessness. We honored Blessed, and all those who experienced homelessness and left us too soon, just the way Marcos would have wanted.