From the Roadshow archives: How the Serra rest stop went from wasteland to wonderful
Editor’s note: Mr. Roadshow wanted to share some of his favorite columns and stories from more than 30 years of informing, entertaining and getting things changed for Bay Area (and beyond) drivers. He’ll be back on the road with new material soon. In the meantime, please keep sending Mr. Roadshow your comments or questions to mrroadshow@bayareanewsgroup.com.
This story originally was published on Oct. 8, 1993.
The Father Serra rest stop had been a place at which travelers on Interstate 280 wanted neither to rest nor to stop.
It was disgusting.
Broken bottles, used needles, condoms and graffiti littered the restrooms and hillside next to the statue that points to the freeway. The California Highway Patrol and San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department frequently stopped by, in futile attempts to clamp down on a known cruising area.
Now bathroom floors sparkle, restrooms are cleaned five, six, seven times a day, and 150 varieties of colorful flowers cover a plot of land fit for the backyard of posh Hillsborough. North of Crystal Springs Road, motorists stretch their legs, relax and slurp free cups of decaf.
All because of Jerry Morissette and his boys.
A former monk, Disneyland worker, Vietnam medic and recovering alcoholic, Morissette has appointed himself caretaker of the Junipero Serra rest stop.
A self-proclaimed “’60s kind of guy,” Morissette lives in the parking lot in his pink 25-year-old ambulance. That’s against state regulations, but Caltrans looks the other way because of the job Morissette’s doing.
“We’ve gotten a stack of letters from people who stop there and say what a wonderful place it is,” said Caltrans’ Greg Bayol. “The hill is covered with flowers, it’s safe to go to the restroom. . . . He’s turned it into really a neat little place.”
Morissette, 50, is a supervisor with Social Vocational Services, which was hired to clean up the seedy rest stop in 1991. He jokes he got the job few colleagues wanted because “I can be a pain in the neck for my bosses.”
A dedicated workforce
His workforce is Eric, Scott and Darryl (Morissette declined to give their last names for privacy reasons), all of whom have mental disabilities, and they’re armed with mops, garden tools, pooper-scoopers and window cleaner. Their touch has given visitors to this once-forbidden place a feeling that the guys in the orange work vests care.
But these guys have taken it to extremes.
Flowers sit on each of the six picnic tables in back. Heck, even the women’s bathroom has beautiful nasturtiums in a vase at each sink. And your bathroom should be this spotless.
“Absolutely amazing,” said Joanne Aubineau of San Jose, after a pit stop Thursday on her way into San Francisco.
A smile spreads over Morissette’s bearded face when he hears the compliment. He has overcome his share of knocks, and it’s nice to hear his current job is worthwhile.
Morissette grew up in Southern California and worked at Disneyland, where he fell in love with the amusement park’s flower arrangements. Then he witnessed the fears and horrors of war as a Navy medic at the Bay of Pigs and with the Marines in Vietnam.
He turned inward, joining a monastery and tending its flowers in Oceanside. But he left for reasons he won’t disclose. After that, he struggled with alcoholism.
This rest stop has become his unlikely path to redemption.
Shoe polish and flowers
“Pretty bad,” he said, recalling the way the rest area looked when he took over in 1991. “But I found that shoe polish could remove the graffiti, and everyone likes pretty flowers, right?”
Getting rid of the cruisers was another matter, but Morissette had an idea. Since the cops were here so often, why not mark off parking spaces with paint saying “Reserved for CHP” or “Reserved for Sheriff”?
Why would the troublemakers come around when it was obvious the law would be pulling up?
That trick worked. At Christmas, the thankful officers brought a Christmas tree they adorned in the back storage area.
But it is the everyday visitor Morissette most wanted to welcome. “Just to give them a neutral zone away from the freeway, a kind of Switzerland before they’re off again,” he said.
Included are personal tours of Jerry’s Garden. One guy returned to plant a flower in tribute to his mother after she died. A Caltrans worker planted a flower for his deceased father. A young couple planted a tree in celebration of the birth of their child.
Sometimes the famous stop by, like director John Singleton of “Boyz N the Hood” fame. Singleton and Morissette chatted about the scenic rest stop, and the director said it might be a great place for a film.
Sure enough, “Poetic Justice,” Singleton’s recent feature starring singer Janet Jackson, has a scene with the statue of Serra pointing over I-280.
Sometimes there are unexpected guests, like the one Morissette heard whining last year in a trash can. It was a puppy someone had left to die. Now Spike the mutt bounces around the rest stop, receiving countless pats on the head.
Around here, everyday travelers turn friendly.
Jerry and his boys see to that.