Lawbreakers serve their sentences by doing weekend community service on campus

“Dang it,” croaks a middle-aged man during break time, reacting to an unsuccessful attempt to hit a crushed water bottle with his makeshift baseball bat. He’s wearing a neon-orange construction vest, but he’s no campus renovator.

For him, community service was strike one.

On Sunday mornings, people passing by the school may catch an unexpected sight: citizens convicted of minor offenses wearing neon orange vests blowing leaves and pulling weeds.

“Every weekend, they come here, and when you come back on Monday everything is clean,” said Bob Delfino, a maintenance worker who supervises the program on weekends.

No murderers or kidnappers are conscripted. Common offenses include driving under the influence, spousal abuse or assault.

“It could be anyone down here. I’d sure hate to see this program go away. We’ve never had any conflict here,” Delfino said.

The offenders have the option of either serving jail time, which would mean losing their weekday jobs and damaging their family, or serving community service after five days of working a day job.

“It’s an easy option for someone who made a mistake to get it off his record,” Delfino said. “They all work pretty hard.”

On a recent weekend, 15 men and women spent their weekend clearing out the soccer and football fields. One man, who identified himself only by his first name Mark, said he received community service for driving on a suspended license and under the influence.

“[I was in] downtown San Jose coming home from a nightclub,” he said. “I dropped off my friends, and I totaled my car. The cops came and arrested me, put me in jail. Driving home drunk: it was a bad idea.”

Many of the workers graduated from Bay Area high schools, and some are taking classes at West Valley and De Anza College.

One woman, Cindee, was sentenced to 30 days of community service after receiving a DUI when driving back from eating dinner.

“You have to think about everyone else on the road; you could be endangering other people’s lives. It’s just not worth it to drink and then have to do this,” she said.

Mark said being caught drinking and driving was a wakeup call.

“Don’t drink and drive— call your parents, call someone,” he said. “It’s not smart to risk it all in one night. Alcohol has this tendency that makes you feel invincible and make you feel like you can do whatever you want.”

It’s definitely made a difference on me as a person, ‘cause I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to clean trash anymore.”

And the trash, Delfino said, would be unmanageable if it weren’t for the program.

“They do a good job,” he said. “Without them, all 40 acres of the school would be under water, under leaves, under dirt…”

[A clean campus] doesn’t happen magically.”