Pedro unfolds a piece of paper he pulled out of his wallet. It’s delicate, and has a hole in the middle, but the key piece of information is still intact. It lists his former salaries. That was back when he worked in a steel mill in Texas, after he cleaned up the 2010 flood damage in Opry Mills, but before his leg was severely injured in an accident. After working for seven years in pain, he couldn’t take it anymore. When he came back to Nashville in 2019, he went straight to the Nashville Rescue Mission.
“I was at $57,000 for the year. And to go to nothing was devastating,” he says. “I came to Nashville with nothing.”
As an army cook, a garbage collector, a construction worker and a factory worker, Pedro had always worked long hours — often 12-hour days. He once went two and a half months without taking a day off.
“Finally they said, ‘Pedro, you have to take a day off,’” he laughs.
What drove him to work so incessantly were his two daughters, whom he raised as a single dad since they were 10 and 8 years old.
“Eventually, [their mother] signed custody over to me, and I raised them by myself. I had to work every day to support my kids,” Pedro says. “It was very hard. I wasn’t there. I always had to go to work to provide for them.”
Pedro is keen to share about his experiences. He wants people to understand where he’s coming from. When asked what he would say to other single dads he says, “Don’t lose faith. It’s really hard. Just do the best you can. That’s all I could do. It’s a struggle, but don’t give up.”
Pedro has a lot of stories to share, usually starting with “Oh, I didn’t tell you this!” He grew up in Chicago with three brothers — one of them is his twin. He was sent home from kindergarten because he couldn’t speak English, and went back the following year, having learned it. His family used to host kids in the foster care system. They used to have big birthday parties in his yard in Chicago, complete with a live rock band. He just happened to be at the infamous Disco Demolition Night in Chicago, where a White Sox gimmick blowing up a crate of disco records descended into chaos. As a teen, he got mad at his dad and hitch-hiked across the country. He didn’t know what to do next so he called the police on himself. He waited outside the Chicago Bears stadium for three days, so he could be the third person to get tickets to watch them in the playoffs. He helped build the Brentwood Target, Velocity in the Gulch and a fire station in Hermitage. He loves watching Chopped.
Things are looking up for Pedro. He recently got into the Salvation Army men’s shelter, a move that he says gives him peace of mind. He had surgery on his injured leg, which relieved some of the pain. And he’s found a spot to sell where customers care about him.
“A couple people tell me thank you for being there, and when I’m gone, they wonder where I’m at,” he says. “I had to leave for three weeks, and they were worried about me.”
Pedro doesn’t hesitate to say that he’s “had a hard life.” Coming back to The Contributor has been an adjustment for him, but he’s come to believe that he’s still doing good work.
“In the future I want to get my own place, and I’m working on my disability,” Pedro says. “I’d love for Nashville to be happy. Sometimes people think it’s a sad city. I want to change Nashville, I do. I want to change how people think about the vendors. A lot of people don’t know your situation. If they knew your situation they’d have a better perspective of a vendor.”