Chance encounter leads to recurring work

Darren Franz, 58, also has helped fill the job gap, although he initially didn’t set out to.

The Arvada man pulled up to a Home Depot on a winter day, intent on buying supplies to tackle a growing list of tasks. When he walked back outside with his purchases, a young man was leaning on his parked truck.

“Of course, I just wasn’t very polite,” Franz recalled in a recent interview.

But when he lowered the tailgate, the stranger, who didn’t speak English, began loading the materials for him. Once he was finished, Franz sat in the truck’s cab for a few moments before tipping the man $50 and driving away.

On the 15-minute route home, he said, “Here I am thinking: ‘You know what? I could really use a lot of help.’ ” So, he returned to the parking lot and picked up the 26-year-old man, Guillermo Jesus Yanez Velázquez.

In the nine weeks since that meeting, Yanez Velázquez has helped Franz paint his wood picket fence, put up drywall and trim in his basement, shape the bushes and stain his outdoor deck.

“I can’t pay him a wage, but I can tip him or I can give him donations,” Franz said. “In hindsight, it was a blessing for me, because I got the help and support that I needed.”

Franz, who now considers him a friend, said he supports maintaining stronger U.S. borders. But he doesn’t think this situation is about politics.

“It’s about treating the next human being as a human being,” he said.

Amid the uncertainty, migrants such as Borges, the former police officer, say they’re still trying to plan for their futures. She said she hopes to stay in the U.S. and wants to provide for herself and her young daughter on her own.

But the barrier to that is work — a problem she says she’s determined to overcome.

“I will continue to go forward however I can,” Borges said. “If I can’t put my 10 years of experience to work, I will find a way to put my daughter ahead.”