Santillan is no stranger to campaigning throughout the town. When Waste Management’s contract with Manhattan Beach was up last March, he asked residents to write to the City Council asking them to renew the contract.
At the council meeting, resident Shirley Stearns said her spirits were lifted when she learned, after her husband passed away, that her trash man had been taking out her trash. She’d assumed it was a neighbor.
“We supported your company by spending hours of our time fighting to renew your contract,” wrote Stephanie McKeever, in her letter to Waste Management. “Now please, return the favor to us, by supporting Gilberto’s return as the dedicated Waste Management employee he deserves to be.”
McKeever said her son Carson considers Santillan his “hero.” Carson once dressed up as Santillan for Halloween.
Marianne Fraher, who said her neighborhood has more than 90 children, wrote to Waste Management that Santillan is a cautious driver who skillfully navigates through narrow alleys and demanding conditions. “He should be praised for his outstanding safety record, not penalized for a trivial accident where no one was seriously hurt or injured,” she wrote.
On another lined piece of notebook paper, rife with spelling errors and hearts around the letter G, one little girl wrote, “Trash cans are sad because they miss Gilberto.”
“We understand that some of these residents built a relationship with the driver,” said Waste Management spokesperson Lily Quiroa. “Our hope is that the new driver serving their area can build that same great relationship with the residents.”
For DuRoss, it’s not about continuing to get her trash hauled. “It’s not about us getting our service, it’s about recognizing someone who’s worked his ass off for us,” DuRoss said. “At the very least, letting him know how important he was to us, he wasn’t just a faceless, nameless person.”
Emily Ashby, who lives at the property where the damage took place, thinks the termination was a drastic response. “The streets are so narrow, I could’ve cracked my own driveway with my car,” she said, while in the process of writing her letter to Waste Management. “I’ve driven over my neighbors’ curb so many times, their curb is black from our tires. It’s not like they’ve come and sued me for it. Stuff happens.”
In a letter, one woman recalled struggling to take her trash down her steep driveway while she was eight months pregnant. “Gilberto rushed from his truck to help me,” she wrote. Another man, Kevin Campbell, wrote that Santillan was helpful to him and his family after Campbell’s back surgery.
“He just paid attention to what might be going on in people’s lives and helped them,” DuRoss said, adding that he was especially attentive to kids and the elderly.
Many residents testified that Santillan would take their trash out for them if they were on vacation or just simply forgot. “Last month, that suddenly changed and our trash can has been left behind every week, and now we know why – Gilberto is no longer here,” wrote residents Patrick and Nancy Lemm.
