It was also, however, income that prevented him from refurbishing his place of business, an eight-by-ten-foot stall held up with two-by-fours and in some cases, duct tape and wooden chips, with a single, ancient-looking chair for his customers. He secured it all at night with an old plastic tarp, rope, and wire - to the extent that those items actually offered protection. Not surprisingly, his stall was a sitting duck for kids from both sides of the border who vandalized him regularly, wrecking the frame, breaking cabinets, stealing leather-working tools and shoe brushes.

But Graham's wasn't just any old shoe-shine stand; his was a historic landmark. He'd been a fixture around downtown Calexico for more than 10 years. His stand was located a block from the port of entry, just outside Sam Ellis's department store, so pretty much anyone who had business downtown knew him. Graham, himself more than 70, said the stand was 100 years old, which must have been why the city designated it a historic landmark. And historic landmarks get special treatment in certain areas; for example, building permits or strict conformity with local building-code standards don't necessarily apply to a historic landmark that might be in search of a facelift ....

Enter Major Graham's guardian angel.

Passenger Service Representative Luis Cota probably doesn't see himself as a guardian angel. Nonetheless, one morning after leaving his work shoes with Graham - shoes his children had found perfect for performing muddy weekend gardening tasks - Cota just happened to stand back and look at the stall in its entirety, seeing in a single frame all those details we refer to as hiding in plain sight. Says Cota, "Till then, I had never noticed that the stall was in such bad shape." It was also the Christmas season. "I love Christmas ... the season brings out the best in me. I wanted to do something nice for someone. It just so happened that so did a lot of other people," recalls Cota.

And Cota also had a guardian angel. He had Martin Sather.

Sather is an inspector at Calexico, and he's also quite a skilled do-it-yourselfer. In a month's time, he put in more than 40 hours - on top of his job - to build the new, modern, more customer-friendly shoe-shine booth that would mark Graham's Y2K Christmas. The booth Sather built has two new chairs instead of one old one, a large stall where cabinets and equipment can be stored and locked, and other improvements. It's so much nicer, in fact, that it may not qualify as a historic landmark anymore!

"Everybody jumped into supporting this guy," says Cota. "We wanted to do this as a gesture to the business community and for this man."

The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new stand was held four days before Christmas. Calexico's mayor, all the members of the city's Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, and of course, local Customs employees, attended. Major Graham is a very modest, now very grateful, man and had little to say other than repeated, heartfelt thanks.