Lindsey Brooks has no problem rattling off the episodes of kindness she's witnessed from a Super Duper gas station employee in Conway.
She's seen Juan Gerardo Alatorre Martinez check on octogenarian regulars and loan gas money to strangers. Brooks even saw him talk a man in the middle of a mental-health episode out of driving his car off the lot.
Those acts and his long presence in the Skagit County community earned Alatorre Martinez the moniker unofficial mayor of Conway."
"Juan is old school, he knows your name, he knows your pet's names, he’s funny, he messes around with people," Brooks said. "He sort of holds court in there."
Alatorre Martinez, a Mexican immigrant, has lived in the United States for about 25 years. He's now in the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma after federal immigration agents arrested him early one morning as he opened the store in late July.
Martinez's attorney said the situation could have been sparked by a case of mistaken identity — and thinks the man has legal grounds to remain in the country.
"He is the beneficiary of a petition that was filed in 2001, by his brother," attorney Lisa Seifert said. "And because that happened, he has the ability to ask for residence based on that petition."
Seifert said Alatorre Martinez is now applying for his green card while in detention, under a part of federal immigration law known as Section 245. To stay, Siefert said he must undergo a medical exam, submit his fingerprints and complete the application process by his next scheduled immigration hearing date on Oct. 8.
As for the mistaken identity, Seifert said ICE agents may have been looking for the previous owner of a vehicle that Alatorre Martinez had just bought.
"My understanding is they were looking for somebody else who had a certain car, and that car was the one this guy, Juan, was driving," Seifert said.
With the Trump administration ramping up deportations, Alatorre Martinez's removal to Mexico remains a possibility, Seifert said: "He was detained so that ICE can try to deport him."
A spokesperson for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement did not respond to questions this week about Alatorre Martinez and whether he was the person ICE agents were, in fact, seeking.
Efforts to save Alatorre Martinez began almost as soon as his arrest. Brooks said her son stopped by the gas station on Fir Island Road to find Alatorre Martinez gone.
Brooks, who works in the legal field, said she went straight to Alatorre Martinez's residence and asked to come inside.
"I went on this big trek, went into his house, demanded to see his room," Brooks said, to determine what kind of immigration paperwork he had.
She got on FaceTime and showed his documents to an attorney, Brooks said, including the documents related to his brother's petition.
Brooks described the reaction to the paperwork: "This is great, this should be OK, we can probably get him out."
The attorney on the phone recommended Seifert.
When it came to worrying about the legal costs, another fan of Alatorre Martinez stepped in. In an interview, Tim Ferrell, 82, said he met Alatorre Martinez nearly a decade ago, when Ferrell moved from California to Washington.
"He worked at the Shell station in downtown Mount Vernon when I met him," Ferrell said. They met after Alatorre Martinez responded to a Craigslist ad to do landscaping work — and Alatorre Martinez has done work for him ever since.
"Gathering thousands of ferns, cutting trees, he’s got a green thumb," Ferrell said.
After the arrest, Ferrell put $5,000 toward Alatorre Martinez's legal costs, and he has started a GoFundMe to help. So far, more than $10,000 has been raised.
Ferrell described Alatorre Martinez as a talker, with lots of interesting facts.
"He’ll tell you the capital of every country around the world," he said. "He’s just a conversationalist that you wouldn’t expect as a gardener guy."
Ferrell said Alatorre Martinez had described in conversations some infractions on his record. In one instance, “he got caught without a driver’s license.” In another instance, Alatorre Martinez said he had mistakenly sold alcohol at the gas station to someone underage and who may have had a false ID. Court records show various traffic infractions over the years for driving with a suspended license, without a valid ID or without insurance.
On Wednesday, Alatorre Martinez called Ferrell from the Northwest Detention Center, where Alatorre Martinez is reportedly working in the cafeteria. He wound up spending some of his own money to buy cleaning supplies for detained Ukrainians and then helped them clean their space.
"He’s met some people in the facility who are treating him reasonably," Ferrell said. But "the food is bad, the water is bad, the sanitation is bad."
Alatorre Martinez left the prison Wednesday, "to get fingerprinted or something," Ferrell said, and a detainee who had been in longer asked what was going on in the world outside.
"There’s flying cars," Alatorre Martinez quipped, according to Ferrell. "That’s just how he is — charming.
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