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Dirty Work: Estate Mover
Cleaning Up a Life's Worth of Stuff
 Listen to Scott Horsley's report on estate movers.
 Back to the Dirty Work series
James Samson stands on a pile of trash in the hallway of the Utah Street home. "I'm 5-foot-9 and I have to bend over because we're that high up off the floor," he says.
Photo: Melissa Gray, NPR News
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The kitchen sink and counter are obscured by piles of dirty dishes.
Photo: Melissa Gray, NPR News
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Danny Cabrerra cleans the living room, sifting through the mess for important papers.
Photo: Melissa Gray, NPR News
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Violins and china from San Diego estates go on the auction block. The proceeds go back to the estates.
Photo: Melissa Gray, NPR News
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Aug. 8, 2002 -- It usually takes a strong back to work for a moving company. The movers who work for San Diego County need strong stomachs as well, NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
The county's "estate movers" have to empty houses that sometimes haven't been cleaned in decades. Horsley followed along with these movers, as Part Two of Morning Edition's series on "dirty work."
Horsley sets the scene: "From the outside, the blue-shingled house on Utah Street in San Diego looks much like the houses on either side. But step through the front door and it's immediately clear: this is not so much a home as a four-walled landfill. With his long gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, James Samson wades through knee-deep garbage to reach what was once a bedroom."
Coat hangers, clothing, purses and pieces of furniture are piled so high that the 5-foot-9 Samson has to bend over so his head doesn't hit the ceiling.
"You can walk on it, it's solid," Samson says. "You don't sink in. It's not like it's hollow. It's trash."
Samson's job is to remove this trash. He works for San Diego County as a senior estate mover. As Horsley reports, a better title might be "extreme house-cleaner." Each year the county becomes responsible for about 120 houses, typically because the owner has died and has no family to take care of the property.
In the case of the house on Utah Street, the 85-year-old owner is still alive but no longer competent to be on her own.
"They become very reclusive," explains Kent Schirmer, Samson's boss. "You become very possessive as you grow older... They don't dispose of debris properly, they don't use the bathroom facilities the way they should, they don't pay their bills, water is cut off, electricity is cut off, and then everything just begins to snowball."
Samson's co-worker, Danny Cabrerra, wears plastic gloves as he tosses old magazines and other junk into big cardboard boxes, using a dustpan to clear a path. The men sift through the mess looking for bank books, personal photographs, or possibly a will.
Any valuables that are found are auctioned off to benefit the owner's estate. Samson once found $18,000 tucked away in a filthy freezer.
Sometimes the estate movers are involved in even more unpleasant tasks -- like dealing with the grisly aftermath of a murder. In one case, "there was blood all over the front carpet," Cabrerra recalls. "That's probably to me the worst thing."
But the job has its rewards. In the case of the Utah Street home, the owner probably will return with a live-in aide once the house is fixed up. Samson says that "bigger picture" is part of what keeps him going. He and Cabrerra aren't just guys who clean up rat-infested living rooms. They're part of a social safety net.
"This is pretty sad," Samson says. "But I think Danny and I are happy here. We enjoy doing this. We actually feel that we're giving something back by doing this... I may never meet them. But at least I know what I've done. It's helped out somewhere down the line. This is where I want to be. It works for me."
And Sampson says his job has affected him in other ways. He has a will and he no longer collects things. "I throw a lot of stuff away because I see what happens if you don't."
Other Resources
• San Diego County Aging and Independent Services Department
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