From Here to Infinity By: Sean Baker
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Acknowledments Now that this book is complete I would like to take the time to thank all of the people that helped me along the way make this book perfection. Firstly, I would like to thank all of my Freestyle teachers: Mr. Greco, Mrs. Parkinson, and Mr. Florendo. Without you guys none of this would ever be possible, and it always amazes me how far students can push themselves with a little help from their teachers. I would also like to thank my two lovely parents Mike and Teresa who each took time from their busy schedules to help me finish my project by letting me interview them. Lastly I would like to thank my community reader Darya Darvish, who helped me peer edit my paper all the way until the end.
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Table of Contents
Preface.................................................7 Introduction.........................................9 Chapter 1:To Infinity to get Destroyed....11 Chapter 2: The Cars on the Inside..16 Chapter 3:Animals at Infinity...........24 Conclusion..........................................28 Works Cited.......................................29 5
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Preface Sometimes the perfect project idea is right under you nose. For this project, I chose to document Infinity Auto Salvage because it is my father’s business and has been a part of his life for 25 years, and part of mine ever since I remember. He has always worked very hard to keep his work running and keep everything up to par for the city and all the customers that come in everyday. Just like any other project I had some things that I had to overcome to make this project the best I could. One thing that was particularly difficult for me was figuring out who
I had to interview. Obviously I could interview my dad being the owner of his business, but other than that I had never really gotten to know anyone that was part of his work. I also ended up interviewing my mother also, because she was a very important part of making his business workout by providing moral support as well as helping him do paper-work and transport it weekly to the DMV for processing. A second thing I overcame was the pressure of time. While writing this documentary research paper everyone in Freestyle was pressured really hard on time. We
had a deadline for everything and had to finish things fast to move onto the next step. All my schooling life this has been a difficult thing for me to grasp, but for this project I made sure to take my time and figure out what I had to do to make a quality paper that would look great inside a professional looking book.
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Introduction Recycling is the most important topic in today’s world, without recycling where would we get the materials used to build buildings and other resource intensive projects? The world is constantly moving forward with new technologies and better equipment. Technologies such as cell phones, tablets, laptops, and even televisions are being created faster and faster leaving the older versions in the dust. Where will the older forgotten technologies go? We can’t just throw them into a landfill and forget about them, it would be such a waste. Infinity Auto Salvage is one of the very few car recycling businesses in the Bay Area. Owned by my father, Mike Baker. It rests at the end of Bay Road in East Palo Alto, right next to the marshes leading out to the bay. It is the only running business on
Bay Road with three acres of property, next to the power plant. Just like any other technology, soon modern cars will be a thing of the past and everyone will be racing to buy the next new form of transportation. When this happens car recycling will increase dramatically to get all scrap metal from the old cars and reuse them in other things that require metal. According to Recyclingtoday.com, steel production facilities have halted production due to not having as large of an audience to sell to. We already have enough steel out in the world today recycling will just bring some of it back to be invested in new technologies. “Metal deposits are nonrenewable resources that will run out if exploited at the present rate” (ben-
efits-of-recycling.com), which means if we keep using our metal resources from the ground they will eventually run out and we won’t have anything to do but recycle.
“Metal deposits are non renewable resources that will run out if exploited at the present rate”
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Chapter 1:
To Infinity to get Destroyed
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Mateo counach car has its own lifety come to time, and depending how recycle their the owner takes care of it, cars at Init can last anywhere from finity Auto Salvage, one a year to twenty years. of only two auto recycling People from all over San plants in the area. A long time customer for Infinity, Rick Cervantes, recalls the first time he came into the yard: “Oh man, the first time I came in
was on a summer day in 1996… I was dropping off my wrecked ‘79 Lincoln town car.” On an average day, Infinity will get up to ten different cars coming to see the end of their driving career. When a car arrives, they will bring it in with a tow truck or a backhoe depending on it’s driving condition. 11
As soon as cars get through the gate they drain all the liquids from them and take out the batteries. The liquids such as oil, wiper fluid, brake fluid, and water are disposed of properly in barrels to be reused if possible. The gas is drained into separate barrels that can be reused and put into running cars. After the liquids are drained the Infinity Auto Salvage employees go through the inside of the car to see if there is anything of value that the previous owner left behind. They have found many different things that owners unknowingly left behind such as: phones, laptops, hard-drives, money, headphones, and sports equipment. They even found 12
some strange things such as a large four foot pencil and live animals, to name a few. After all the things worth keeping are taken out of the car the crew goes looking for different parts on the car worth scavenging such as good lights, tires, radios, and any other part
that looks to be in a good condition. Baker says he learned this technique when “[He] bought the auto recycling facility Infinity Auto Salvage in 1974. That was probably two years out of college. [He] became aware of working with auto dismantlers.� They take these scavenged parts and put them for sale online on sites like Ebay or Craigslist. What is left of the car gets put on a huge semi-truck along with six other cars and is hauled to the scrap yard where they are scrapped and paid for per car.
“[He] bought the auto recycling facility Infinity Auto Salvage in 1974. That was probably two years out of college.” 13
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Chapter 2: The Cars on the Inside
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up in a tow truck because they aren’t
in drivable condition, totaled,crashed and e- are at the end of the road. On occasion ing one of he will get some really cool cars. The the only auto recycling plants in his area coolest car that I saw at his yard was a Baker gets a lot of different cars. Rang- 1969 Mustang. Despite it being wrecked ing from junkers to pristine looking cars I could tell it was once the body of one he takes them all in to be recycled. Half of the most famous muscle cars of it’s the cars that come in need to be picked time period. Someone ended up buying
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the mangled body of the mustang to be restored to new. Before Mike owned Infinity Auto Salvage it was called Sam’s Auto Wreckers and did the same thing it does today, recycling cars. Sam’s Auto Wreckers held a lot of very old cars from when cars were just starting to get mass produced from Ford’s assembly lines. Mike explains, “because the price of
scrap metal was so high and he basically bought this old time yard and scrapped every car in it, and there was a lot of historical cars in there Model A’s, Model T’s.” Although the price of scrap metal was so high the public was very angry with the owner because he scrapped all those historic cars. All the cars in the yard have a story to 17
tell, there even resides a white jeep from the 90’s that my family used to own in the middle of some crushed car stacks. This jeep ended up sitting in the recycling yard when I backed it into a lake at the age of three. My parents and I always take a yearly family trip with a few of my relatives to Blue Lake. One year my parents were just outside the car talking to one of their friends while I sat in my booster seat in the jeep parked in front of the lake. My three year old self somehow managed to get out of my booster seat climb into the front and put the manual car into neutral, causing it to roll backwards 18
towards the water. It hits the water and starts floating out into the open water. My dad quickly realizes what’s happening and runs after me into the water he swims alongside the car and grabs me through an open window. He then swims me back to shore leaving the jeep to sink about one hundred feet out from shore. My mother Teresa Baker recalls what happened in this moment: “I saw our car start rolling down towards the water. I yelled at Mike to run and stop it, and...luckily he got Sean out of there safe.” The next day we had to pay someone to dive down and hook a towing cable to the front of the
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car so it could be towed out of the lake. From being towed out of the lake it went directly to Infinity Auto Salvage to wait it’s turn on getting recycled.
“I saw our car start rolling down towards the water. I yelled at Mike to run and stop it, and...luckily he got Sean out of there safe.”
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Chapter 3:
Animals at Infinity 24
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wning a scrapyard with metal everywhere twisted in different shapes and sizes comes with many places for animals to reside. Cats are one example of great animals to be found at scrapyards. They weave in and out of the junked cars, lounge everywhere they please, and chase the smaller vermins that hang out in the scrapyard such as rats, mice, snakes, and small birds. Mike Baker explains the extent of feral cats at his business, “At one point about five years ago we had twenty-two wild feral cats, and you know, since I love animals we were trying to take care of them by feeding them. Stanford university there is a group of ladies that are cat rescue people and they helped us trap the cats and get them all fixed. And all the cats they didn’t find homes for they brought back to me and they provide some food and I provide some food and now there are only 10 cats that we feed.” Besides cats there are other stories of scrapyard animals such as dogs. Two of the three dogs that we own at our house are originally from Infinity, left behind by their other owners. Teresa Baker has had dogs her entire life and is really grateful that Mike brings home an occasional dog: “If someone is stupid enough to drop an animal off in the middle of no where I’m glad there are people like my husband who gives them a home.” One of the dogs, Rosie, we’ve had ever since I was in first grade. Mike 26
Baker also recalls another time animals had invaded his work. He drove up to a customer’s house on Skyline Boulevard to fix his damaged Volkswagen Bus when he went to open the car a huge lion jumped out of the back seats on my dad knocking him on the floor, but instead of attacking the lion just licked him and went away. It turns out this customer kept a bunch of exotic animals such as cats in his large forested backyard to bring them out at school showing children the importance of wildlife.
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Conclusion
Recycling businesses continue to be needed throughout each community as a way for people
to get rid of their unwanted things in an environmentally friendly way. Infinity Auto Salvage is more than just a recycling plant. It is a family run business which helped support our family for more than forty years.We are not the only family this business supports, it also supports the countless number of stray animals which have all passed through for a place to stay for while.Today, Infinity is still ran the way it has always been, taking care of anything that comes through it’s doors. Cars will continue to advance and the world will continue to be filled with millions of different cars, but the one thing that will always stay is Infinity Auto Salvage, sitting at the end of Bay Road peacefully.
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Works Cited Aaron Metals. “About Aaron Metals.” Aaron Metals. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015. Baker, Mike, Personal Interview, 3/3/15 Baker, Teresa, Personal Interview, 4/15/15 “California Vehicle Retirement Program.” California Vehicle Retirement Program. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015. Cervantes, Rick, Personal Interview, 4/16/15 Gee, George E. Recovering Precious Metals. S.l.: S.n., 2002. Print. Grabianowski, Ed. “Car Recycling - HowStuffWorks.” HowStuffWorks. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015. “How to Recycle Metal - Earth911.com.” Earth911com. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015. “Recology South Bay Unincorporated Los Altos Hills Recycling, Compost and Garbage Collection.” Recology South Bay Unincorporated Los Altos Hills Recycling, Compost and Garbage Collection. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015. “Recycling Metals.” Benefits of Recycling. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015. Recycling Today Staff. “US Steel to Cut Production.” Recycling Today. N.p., 29 Jan. 2015. Web. 15 Mar. 2015. “SA Recycling.” Automobile Recycling. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015. “Scrap Metal Prices - Rockaway Recycling.” Scrap Metal Prices - Rockaway Recycling. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015. 29
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Sean Baker is a Junior attending Los Altos High School and Freestyle Academy. He lives in Los Altos Hills, California with his three dogs, two parakeets, and parents. Sean loves to play video games on his computer and Xbox One. He also enjoys making artwork and taking pictures at Freestyle. He spends a good amount of his time after school playing for LAHS baseball.
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