An irritating vibration shot up my left arm. My eyes groggily opened and I glanced to the side of my bed. I saw my phone screen blinking and looked at the caller ID.
It was Andre Oliver. And it was 6:16 a.m. on a Monday.
So much for getting a full eight hours of sleep before my midterm.
I eventually made my way out of bed three hours later and called him back. The receiver buzzed its high-pitched ring for what felt like an eternity before I heard a familiar voice on the other end.
“Hey, what’s up?”
I smiled.
I first got to know Oliver almost two years ago, ahead of Bruin Day 2017. The sun beat down on the brick walkway. The light brown walls of the John Wooden Center shone brightly against the plain, blue sky. Truck engines rumbled and metal clanged as employees prepared stalls. Visitors munched on kettle corn and students’ flip-flops slapped the concrete as they walked.
Oliver stood in the sun, his eyes squinting and his right hand clutching a white binder. His white collar held tightly to his neck. A black beard cupped his chin from ear to ear, and his forest-green sleeves were crumpled at the elbows.
I had seen the Bruin Walk regular plenty of times before. He can often be spotted from the end of the Intramural Field, when students start veering to the edges of Bruin Plaza to avoid his characteristic question:
“Excuse me, sir, question please?”
I had seen his various attires, ranging from a casual ensemble of a loose, gray T-shirt and saggy pants to a tucked-in, iron-pressed dress shirt with a navy-blue tie. His beard fluctuated with the season, changing from a precise spring trim to a balanced winter puff.
“Excuse me, sir, question please?”
I had seen the memes about him. I saw him approach students eagerly, offering to shake their hands and tell them about the cause detailed in his binder. I watched many roll their eyes or avert his gaze as they tried to walk away from him. I noticed how after several hours on campus, he would, as if on impulse, turn south and walk into Westwood to continue his day elsewhere.
“Excuse me, sir, question please?”
Like Oliver, I too had many questions. What was his life outside of Westwood like? How many rejections from Bruins does it take for him to call a day? What did he think about UCLA?
Perhaps most importantly: Why did he come to campus?
But Oliver isn’t the only regular on Bruin Walk. Missionaries offer free meditation books to students almost every other week. An elderly man brings two huskies with him to campus nearly every day without fail. Some even try selling candy to students outside Powell Library. Surely there are better things to do than court the attention of a campus of over 45,000 busy, stressed and often pocket change-lacking students.
One day, I shook Oliver’s hand. I approached the man who sells meditation books in Royce Quad. And I stopped to hear from the various personalities who regularly make their way to campus.
While UCLA’s campus artery is graced by the occasional rowdy sermon in Meyerhoff Park from passionate, all-seeing preachers, Bruin Walk’s many residents come to campus because it shaped their identities.
This is the story of their journey here – and why they informally consider Bruin Walk part of their home.
“I’m blessed.”
That’s Oliver’s go-to line whenever we meet. Most recently, it followed an emphatic note about his sister’s upcoming marriage.
“Everything happens for a reason,” he said. “You got to wait till it fall in place.”
A lot of things fell into place in Oliver’s life. A lot more didn’t.
The middle-aged father comes to campus to fundraise for Stay Free Ministry Outreach, a Christian ministry with locations in Los Angeles and Rialto, California. The nonprofit aims to keep Californians who are homeless from falling into drug and alcohol addiction.
Oliver carries a binder to collect dollar bills from students and passersby in Bruin Plaza, sporting an orange, three-holed pencil pouch to store money and several grainy printouts to educate students about Stay Free Ministry Outreach’s cause.
The Bruin Walk regular has been fundraising at UCLA for nearly 12 years. And from how he talks about it, he’s been counting the days on each one.
Oliver describes himself as a “crack baby“ – someone born to a regular cocaine user. He grew up in Compton, California, under the care of his grandmother, Naomi Thompson. The eldest of four siblings, Oliver doesn’t know his father and did not – and still doesn’t – often interact with his mother, who he said continues to consume cocaine.
He attributes his daily values to his grandmother’s upbringing. He remarked how she took him to church every Sunday and continued to teach him, despite him occasionally going to juvenile hall.
“My grandmother was my mom and dad,” he said. “She was my everything.”
Thompson’s funeral was held on Oliver’s 17th birthday. He was sent to Orange County to live in a group home, while his three other siblings went to live with their father. He was later sent back to a LA group home. Before long, he was in a homeless shelter, sleeping on a cot.
He stayed in the shelter for four years with little to no help from family. Those close to him continued to die: Some of his cousins fell victim to Compton’s notorious shootings. An acquaintance of his attended a party without him and was killed. A college student he went out with for dinner was shot dead in front of his eyes.
“It was painful,” he said. “When you down, you find out who really there for you – who really have your back.”
One person had his back. A member of Stay Free Ministry Outreach took him to UCLA one day to show him what fundraising was like.
Things finally began to fall into place.
“It was different,” Oliver said. “What I mean by ‘different’: It was like ... something good gonna happen.”
He was immediately hooked. He said the campus’ ambiance, the people he met and the cause of helping youth who were homeless gave him a newfound purpose. And more than a decade, a conference center and several fallen trees later, he has continued to make his way to Westwood, greeting and speaking with campus employees and the generations of students he has forged bonds with.
In effect, he had found himself on Bruin Walk.
“To come from Compton, the ghetto, to go to UCLA and fundraise – yeah, man, that’s a blessing,” he said.
Oliver has been counting those blessings. Students used to call the police on him when he first came to campus, but the community grew accustomed to him. He was given a two-bedroom apartment in Section 8, LA because of his homeless status, and attends classes offered by the residence, including one about coping with losses. He treasures the relationships he has in Westwood. He is excited his sister has found a partner.
He said he attributes a lot of what he has – a home, a purpose and community – to the fundraising he does on Bruin Walk.
“I (come to UCLA) because I know God has a plan for my future,” he said. “Something good (is going to) happen.”
But the life Oliver leads is starkly different from many students’.
“I’m gonna be real, bro: Y’all are blessed.” he said. “Westwood, that’s Michael Jordan. ... You come to Compton, and they wear Reebok – you get what I’m saying?”
It’s not hard to discern: Westwood affords students a relatively safe, eventless neighborhood. Compton is a different story altogether.
That night-and-day distinction eventually became a big reason Oliver comes to campus. Fundraising might be his job, but his nature has been to converse with the community, reminding students to slow down, not be in a rush and cherish their time at the university. Those soothing words have catapulted him to fame in students’ eyes – especially on social media.
But Oliver’s carefree disposition belies his penchant for pensiveness. He often wakes up thinking about his childhood and relishes his exchanges in Westwood – a luxury, he notes, that he and others don’t have in Compton.
That daily analysis is perhaps the reason his visits to campus seem erratic and based on how he feels the morning of, something he describes as “going with your spirit.” His impulses also dictate when he leaves campus, how many people he approaches on Bruin Walk and when he hits the sack.
Still, the campus’ constancy is a core part of his life. Talking to students about their classes, families and ambitions has been a mainstay for him since Gene Block first became chancellor of the university, and that trend remains, despite the changing campus composition and climate.
“You just got to stay humble,” he said. “Stay in your own lane. Find your heart.”
Saul Marquez’s daily life and emotions are regimented by routine.
He wakes up around 3 a.m. every morning, takes a cold shower, prays in a temple, reads scriptures before a 7 a.m. congregation and Hindu textual analysis, eats breakfast at 8:30 a.m., heads out to a university around 9:30 a.m., leaves the campus about four hours later, eats dinner, reads scriptures and sleeps around 8:30 p.m.
Perhaps that’s why he continues to maintain a calm smile as students walk past him. Coming to UCLA and sharing the temple’s ideas and truisms, as Marquez sees it, is his job.
Marquez often stands in the shade, near the steps leading to Kerckhoff Hall or Powell Library. His posture is slightly hunched, his face pleasant. Wrinkles tuck his cheek, and he moves with a tenderness that often comes with age. Beside him stands a small table with a bare, orange tinge.
“Free meditation books,” it reads.
Marquez is one of several missionaries from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, which describes itself as a nonsectarian community that engages in spiritual education and promotes unity and peace. He serves and lives in the Palms ISKCON temple and is specifically tasked to provide free books from the organization and solicit donations.
The missionary is assigned to visit UCLA and other LA universities every week. He often brings a stack of about 10 books and sometimes even a small table with him. Some of the titles in his collection include “Srimad Bhagavatam,” “The Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking” and “The Science of Self-Realization.”
The most meaningful one to Marquez, though, is the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu text about self-control and leading a just life.
It’s what made him an Angeleno, after all.
The Mexico native never intended to set up shop in the City of Angels. More than 40 years ago, he worked with Club Med, a French company that bundles luxury vacations. He had traveled the world – various parts of North America and Europe, for example – and made what he considered good money.
“(I wanted to), just like any young man, go over the world, make money ... experience different cultures,” Marquez said. “It was good.”
Nearly four decades ago, he arrived at Los Angeles International Airport, where a Hindu missionary offered him a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and invited him to the LA ISKCON temple.
His interest was piqued.
“When I read the Bhagavad Gita, I thought, ‘This is opposite – totally opposite of what I’m doing.’ ... No regulation, no discipline ... what kind of life is that?” Marquez said. “I started reflecting more about not being too selfish and being more helpful for society.”
He visited the Palms ISKCON temple and enrolled in a three-month course in which practitioners discussed texts like the Bhagavad Gita and their implications for leading an immaterial life. He almost immediately signed up afterward to spread the teachings he had learned.
“When you feel like you have something good, you want to offer, to share it with people,” he said. “You become like a counselor: People come and reveal their minds to you about their struggles and suffering, and I just say, ‘I have the right medicine and a book that can help.’”
That eagerness brought him to Westwood 27 years ago, one of the nearby missionary stops he is assigned to. Small groups of up to eight missionaries would sit on the ground in permissible spaces and publicly chant mantras from Hindu scriptures, speaking with those who had questions and inviting those who were interested in joining.
“We just go because it’s a joyful thing to do,” he said. “If someone wanted to stop and hear or listen – great. Otherwise, we were happy just doing our duty.”
But the 1990s is a generation ago, and decades of graduating classes have since left this campus. UCLA’s student population has exploded and engaging people in public spaces has been radically transformed with the advent of smart technology. ISKCON missionaries have spread out to other reaches of LA, and Marquez is often alone when visiting the university.
Most importantly, Bruin Walk has become all the busier. That’s apparent to students, but all the more obvious for the thruway’s residents.
“Before you could talk to people more because there were not ... iPhones. ... Before, we could be more personal. ... But nowadays, ... people are very busy,” he said. “Everyone is into their own business.”
Marquez frequents other universities, such as UC Irvine and Cal Poly Pomona, more often because he said he finds those students more receptive to his work and willing to talk to him. Bruin Walk, on the other hand, to him is characterized by more stress and hubbub, likely because of UCLA’s enormous student population.
That changing nature is perhaps the reason he sees coming to campus as a job: Regardless of student receptiveness, he sets up shop for the sake of disseminating information, collecting donations and holding philosophical discussions with the occasional inquisitive students.
“This knowledge is for everyone. It can be a teacher, they can (be) poor, they can be rich, they can be a woman, man or whichever sex applies to anyone ... just anyone who is willing to be open,” he said. “These books are about knowing yourself.”
Marquez seems to already. His job is to make sure others – like those on Bruin Walk – do, too.
Unlike Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue, which attracts expressive and often antagonistic political displays, Bruin Walk offers a different motto: “Find yourself here.”
UCLA certainly is occasioned by its own share of microphone-wielding, instigatory members of the public. Yet those who have truly grown roots on the busy walkway share a common trait: their identities have been forged here. And these residents have imbibed the campus narrative much more than most students would.
For Oliver, it’s about spending time with friends and enjoying the campus atmosphere. For Marquez, it’s about performing a duty.
To some, that may seem problematic. After all, UCLA seemingly can’t allow just anybody to call it home.
But the symbiosis between nonuniversity members and the university is precisely what makes Bruin Walk the experiential space it is. Oliver and Marquez aren’t bystanders to the campus narrative; they’re part of it. And by engaging with them, students are scripting the story these residents will tell for generations to come.
Or at least the ones they bring up the next time someone asks why they come to campus.
