For half a century, Ignacio Lujano has worked the orange groves of San Juan Capistrano, laboring from sunrise to past sunset six days a week to coax the largest and sweetest harvest possible from his Valencia and navel trees.
Unwilling to leave the groves, he's never taken a vacation. In his younger years, he often took a blanket and slept under the stars, a gun by his side, to protect the fruit from thieves.
Today, many of Lujano's 13 children, 25 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren will gather -- probably for the last time -- at the family home that sits amid the remnants of the city's once-sprawling orange groves to celebrate Father's Day.
They plan to barbecue carne asada, drink a Corona or two, play ranchero music from a boom box and listen to Lujano's stories of 50 years as a citrus farmer in San Juan Capistrano. But the usually joyous Father's Day honoring the family patriarch will be, at best, tinged with sadness.
After 38 years at the Swanner Ranch, Lujano, 84, is being evicted by San Juan Capistrano city officials. They plan to build a maintenance yard there for their open-space operations and have given him until Aug. 14 to leave -- or face legal action.
The move has left Lujano bewildered -- he thought he had a deal to work the ranch until he died -- and San Juan Capistrano with a public relations challenge as word of his pending eviction has leaked out.
"Why do they want to do this now?" asks Lujano, leaning on a shovel that also serves as his cane. He's a stout man with a barrel chest, muscled arms, leathery skin and two bad knees. "I'm too old now to find other work."
Some say Lujano should have seen this coming. In 1992, as part of an open-space initiative, the city bought the 42-acre property abutting the 5 Freeway in the northern part of town. Documents show that Lujano, the ranch's foreman, was put on a month-to-month contract that allowed him to live on the site in exchange for tending five of the 42 acres of orange groves and maintaining the site. The city also paid him a $500 monthly stipend.
But Lujano swears that at about the same time, he signed a second city contract, also bearing the signature of his son Roy, that permitted him to live out his years on the Swanner Ranch, a promise originally made by his old landlord, attorney Charles Swanner. It's a document no one can find and the city doesn't believe exists.
