Holding Fort: Blind Vendor a Popular Success in Oakland Courthouse

OAKLAND —Steve Fort has been busier than usual the past few weeks. With two high-profile trials underway in the courtrooms above his ground floor snack shop at the Renee C. Davidson courthouse in Oakland, the 56-year-old’s customer flow has increased substantially.

But Fort isn’t ruffled by the tapping feet of anxious attorneys clutching cans of Red Bull or a would-be juror who snaps up his last bag of in-demand peanut M&Ms. Very little, in fact, seems to ruffle him.

Fort has been blind since birth—or shortly thereafter, anyway. He was placed into an incubator pumped with pure oxygen after being born three months prematurely at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, Calif. The massive dose of oxygen destroyed his retinas, a condition known today as Retinopathy of Prematurity, or ROP. According to the World Health Organization, ROP is the leading cause of blindness among babies in developed and rapidly developing countries.

“I’m astounded at him,” said cheery volunteer information officer Louisa Bryant, describing him as one of the most interesting people in the bustling building. “How he gets through the building, how he works at the counter…he’s taken on a lot.”

Indeed he has—just 30 percent of the 160,000 legally blind Americans ages 18-69 are employed, according to a 1995 survey by the U.S. Department of Health’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Many customers who breeze into Steve’s Place, tucked along a corridor just off the main lobby of the courthouse, are regulars. They plunk down their purchases and tell him what they’re buying without missing a beat. When that’s not the case, Fort gets right to the point.

When one young man, for instance, simply pushes a bill in Fort’s hand and said “it’s a five” without detailing the purchase, Fort hastily replies “and what did you want to buy with that $5?”

Fort punches in prices—it seems he’s memorized them all—on a talking register that adds tax. As customers hand over money they tell Fort how much they’re giving him, though he subtly slides the larger bills through a small gray scanner by the register that identifies and announces the amount. The scanner, introduced two decades ago, was a lifesaver for blind retailers.

Fort, a large, gentle man with tufts of light brown hair on either side of his shiny head, cites an incident that occurred 20 years ago when he was working at Oakland’s City Hall. Two women came in with a four-year-old boy and said they were giving him a $20 bill. He gave them change and later discovered they’d really given him just one dollar.

Fort was more dismayed that the pair would set such a bad example for a child than over the loss of money, but from that point on -- until he started using a scanner -- he enlisted a mailroom worker across the hall to help read bills.
The city of Alameda resident, who roosts behind the register on an old wooden stool, wears black Velcro shoes, gray pants, a black polo shirt, a well-worn gold wristwatch and large, shaded, gold-rimmed glasses he was once encouraged to give up.

“Back in the 60s people were saying to me, ‘you might want to get something like prescription glasses so people don’t think you’re on drugs,” he says with a laugh.

But as in other facets of his life, he stuck with his guns and the glasses stayed.

“He’s a hard worker,” says friend Deryal Wilkerson of San Pablo, who met Fort through the California Council of the Blind. “If there’s a job that has to be done he does it, and he does it well. He works very well with the public.”

Fort is a 20-year veteran of the food service industry, having attended community college and a year at California State University, Los Angeles before enrolling in the Business Enterprise Program sponsored by the California Department of Rehabilitation. The six-month program, implemented in 1936 for visually impaired people who aim to work in the food industry, has produced about 200 vendors in California, 35 of them in the Bay Area. Upon completion, workers are placed in government buildings, where on average they pull in $3,000 a month, according to the program’s fact sheet. The program provides for health care benefits and often buys and services vendors’ equipment.
Fort says he enjoys running his own business. He likes chatting with the wide variety of people who pass through and making enough money to support himself.

“Two hundred dollars is a good day,” he says, then pauses, thinking of the murder trial upstairs. “It’s too bad that good business is a result of something horrible happening.”