This is a story about bygones.
It involves Ernie Ruiz, a 79-year-old man who has lived in backyards and alleys off Denver’s Williams Street for 30 years.
He has been lost to his family that entire time.
Until last month, when Pat Herrera of Thornton read about Ruiz in this column and phoned to say he’s her uncle.
“That’s our Ernie,” she told me. “We thought he was dead.”
Then came a call from nephew Ernie Cabral of Broomfield.
“Please,” he said on voice mail. “Please help us find our uncle.”
Ruiz — who grew up with nine brothers in Denver — used to work in baking and construction to support his wife, mom and three daughters. He would hand out Tootsie Rolls to his many nieces and nephews.
He is sketchy about what prompted him to walk out and live off the grid for so long.
“Some sort of evil,” is his only explanation. “The demons, they’ve been looking for me.”
His family, too, looked for him after he left home in the late 1970s. His brothers would drive around searching on Sundays. His nephews combed the city’s parks and shelters. A few nieces spotted him at a Safe way. Once, one saw him walking in a heavy trench coat in the summer heat along Sixth Avenue.
Always, they say, he would dart away. So in time, they gave up their search.
“He was lost to us,” Herrera shrugged.
“I figured he just wanted to be by himself,” added Cabral.
Ruiz and his extended family lost touch with his daughters over the decades he slept on a Styrofoam mat under the tall trees of Denver’s Country Club neighborhood. He fed himself with handouts from Williams Street residents like Shirley Barr and Linda Campbell, whose porches he sweeps and bunny cages he cleans.
As his health has waned, the women have enrolled him for benefits and set him up in an apartment near the Cherry Creek mall.
Reconnecting with relatives made Ruiz nervous when Barr first mentioned the prospect.
“The drinking,” he told her, referring to the six-packs he enjoys most afternoons.
“They’re your family, Ernie. They’ll understand,” she assured him.
Fearing Ruiz might disappear — as he has for short spells over the years — or that he might feel he has overstayed his welcome on their patios each morning, the two women, who coordinate vacations to look after him, planned the reunion with care.
Barr started by connecting Ruiz with niece Herrera by telephone — technology he apparently forgot how to use during his years on the streets.
“He just listened to her, saying not one word,” Barr says. “Later it occurred to me, ‘Does he know he must respond?’ ”
After missing three decades of birthdays and weddings and funerals for seven of his brothers, Ruiz finally reunited with eight of his relatives.
Over muffins and lemonade at Barr’s place, his family honored her and Campbell for their kindness.
“Most people would have just shooed him away,” Cabral said.
The family posed for pictures with Ruiz, who dressed for the occasion in his best button-down shirt and khakis. They reminded him of the Tootsie Rolls. And they talked about having him over for homemade tortillas.
“I looked all over for you,” Ruiz’s brother Frank Bacca of Northglenn told him.
“You look like my brother Frank,” Ruiz said.
“I am your brother Frank,” Bacca answered.
“Frank looks different, younger,” Ruiz insisted.
“That was 30 years ago,” Bacca said. “Now we’re all old.”
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
