After 12 years, homeless couple being evicted from oak

BRISBANE, Calif. -- The couple's driveway is a steep, narrow trail that winds through a sun-drenched landscape of hardy California scrub. Their front steps are rocky footholds in the earth. Their living room is nestled within the shady embrace of a sprawling oak tree.

For a dozen years, Besh Serdahely and Thelma Caballero have lived in a pair of elaborate huts in a park on San Bruno Mountain, in a canyon flush with ferns. San Francisco Bay glimmers in the distance through leaves that buffer a breeze scented with hummingbird sage. The stillness is punctuated by birdsongs and the faraway hum of Silicon Valley's commuters.

But the couple may soon lose their roost. San Mateo County officials recently stapled a 30-day eviction notice to the tree, and the case will go to a judge if they're not gone by Sept. 26.

"Here it is peaceful," said Caballero, shielded from the sun by a straw hat, a cream-colored man's shirt, surplus Army pants and worn work gloves. "There are too many people in the city."

The hideout is just 10 miles south of San Francisco.

Was no secret

Serdahely and Caballero lived in the city until another hermit offered them the home he had begun to craft with discarded lumber and corrugated plastic amid the roots and branches of the 300-year-old oak.

Authorities have known of the couple's tree-squatting for years. They moved to evict them after a recent review of property lines revealed that the hideaway is on land owned by the county rather than the state, Deputy County Manager Mary McMillan said.

Because of health and safety concerns, county law prohibits anyone from living in a park -- especially one teeming with rare and endangered plants and insects such as the San Francisco Wallflower and the Mission Blue Butterfly.

Until the county comes for them, the couple is staying put, content to compost their waste in their open-air outhouse and use water from a nearby spring.

Caballero, a former housekeeper from Honduras who thinks she's in her 40s, and Serdahely, 58, a former laborer, said they met at a San Francisco soup kitchen in the late 1980s and got married at City Hall.

Caballero, who has schizophrenia, and Serdahely, who struggles with alcoholism, lucked into the mountain hideaway through a circle of friends they met along the railroad tracks just south of town. The original owner was moving in with a schoolteacher, and was looking for the right people to inherit the spot.

Over the years, they've added a small, barnlike sleeping shelter up the hill, where bedding is piled neatly on the floor. Books line the earthen shelves of their well-kept main hut, which smells of wood smoke and dried leaves. Low-slung branches and overturned buckets serve as chairs, cushioned by pillows.

Pulling invasive plants

David Schooley, founder of San Bruno Mountain Watch, an anti-development group that is fighting the eviction, said the pair pluck invasive plants from the soil, allowing native species to flourish. They've also welcomed hundreds of schoolchildren who have trekked up the hills over the years to see a different way of living.

"I would hope that it could be so clear, the good things that Besh and Thelma are doing for those canyons and protecting the endangered species," said Schooley. "Nobody else is doing it that well, or as carefully."

Nationwide, about 3 million people are homeless each year, but most eventually find long-term shelter, said Nan Roman, president of the nonprofit National Alliance to End Homelessness. Only 10 percent are chronically homeless, Roman said.

Social workers in San Mateo County, where an estimated 5,000 people are homeless, are looking into housing for the couple. But "it's really up to them to decide what's best for their future," said Judy Davila, the county's manager of housing for the homeless.

Caballero is quick to remind visitors that her life on the mountain takes work: gathering wood for their fire, and preparing meals of boiled beans, bread and the occasional treat such as orange juice or tomatoes.

It takes a two-hour hike to and from downtown Brisbane once a week to get food, medicine and clean clothes with the $700 a month Caballero says she gets from Social Security for seizures she used to suffer.

Rejoining civilization would mean regular showers and other possibilities -- even a chance to get job training. But Caballero would rather stay.

"Who knows what life brings?" she said, gazing out across scrub-covered ridges to condominiums. "My mind is very open, but it's better to settle down."