DATE: Monday, July 28, 1997                 TAG: 9707280051

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Focus 

SOURCE: BY LIZ SZABO, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  133 lines

FOCUS: SILENT SUFFERING RECENT RAIDS IN NEW YORK AND NORTH CAROLINA HAVE UNCOVERED THE PLIGHT OF DEAF MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS BEING HELD IN VIRTUAL SLAVERY, FORCED TO SELL TRINKETS ON THE STREET. BUT TO HAMPTON ROADS' DEAF COMMUNITY, SUCH HORROR STORIES ARE NOTHING NEW.

Dressed in shabby clothes, they stake out the exits of busy supermarkets in Hampton, hawking key chains to customers on their way home.

Approaching fast-food customers at take-out windows on Little Creek Road, they pass out alphabet cards, illustrated with drawings of letters in sign language and the words ``I Am Deaf.''

Sometimes they appear outside bowling alleys. Other times, bustling shopping malls in Virginia Beach.

They're deaf peddlers.

Many hearing people never noticed them before the recent raids in New York and Sanford, N.C., which uncovered dozens of deaf Mexican immigrants being held in virtual slavery, forced to sell trinkets on the street.

But Norfolk resident Benny Lacks has known about the notorious Sanford peddling ringleader for years. Lacks, who is deaf, is a member of the Virginia Association for the Deaf and the publisher of the newsletter Around the Deaf Community.

For Lacks and other members of the deaf community, the details of the New York and North Carolina investigations - while horrific - also sound familiar:

Desperate Mexican immigrants willing to work but shunned by better-educated, more well-off deaf Americans. Deaf ringleaders who preyed on uneducated or ``low-functioning'' deaf people, who recruited workers at state schools for the deaf, who offered room and board in exchange for labor, who sexually exploited their female employees.

``It's not new, and it's not just happening in New York,'' Lacks said, communicating in American Sign Language. ``I've known deaf peddlers my whole life.''

Lacks, who was interviewed several days before the Sanford arrests, described the ringleader as ``famous'' within the deaf community.

Peddlers are a continuing source of embarrassment to the deaf, Lacks said. At best, peddlers are panhandlers or loafers. At worst, their work groups resemble gangs whose ringleaders exploit their workers - as well as exploiting stereotypes of the deaf as pitiable victims.

The deaf have worked hard to overcome such stereotypes, Virginia Beach resident Jay Shopshire said. He teaches at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind in Hampton. Many in the deaf community, like Shopshire, today shun the label ``handicapped.'' They prefer to think of themselves not as disabled people but as part of a deaf culture and a deaf community with its own language.

``I've had hearing people come up to me and say, `Oh, I saw this poor deaf peddler and I felt so sorry for him,' '' Shopshire said. ``I tell them, `No, don't do that! You're just perpetuating their habit. It makes me so mad that hearing people are pitying deaf people. It's just not necessary. To say, `Those poor deaf people, they can't hear,' is like a deaf person saying, `Those poor hearing people, they can't sign.' ''

The number of deaf peddlers in Hampton Roads has actually declined in recent years, Shopshire said, mostly because of improved educational and job opportunities. Deaf students have learned trades such as printing, and more deaf students are attending college and earning advanced degrees.

Shopshire and other deaf teachers try to educate their students about deaf peddlers.

Shopshire himself was once approached by the ringleader of a group of deaf peddlers looking for new recruits. Back then, Shopshire was a new teacher at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind in Staunton, and the ringleader asked Shopshire for the names of ``low-functioning, low-IQ'' deaf students.

``He thought he could take advantage of me, because I was new,'' Shopshire said. ``I knew what he wanted.''

Deaf peddling ringleaders have had to look elsewhere for an exploitable work force. Especially in Shopshire's home state of California, that labor force has come from Mexico, he said.

Impoverished conditions and lack of education make many deaf people in Mexico - especially those without exposure to language - vulnerable to exploitation. Ninety percent of deaf people are born to hearing parents. Those whose parents do not learn to sign, or who are not sent to school, often invent ``home signs'' to communicate with family members. Mexicans who do learn to sign may still remain at a disadvantage in finding work.

``I don't blame them,'' Shopshire said. ``If I lived in Mexico, I would be very happy to come here and do this. . . . How else would they get to America? I went to Tijuana once, and that was a much worse situation. The people there send their children out begging until 1 or 2 a.m.''

As in the New York and Sanford smuggling rings, violence is not uncommon among deaf peddling groups, said Elrice Daniels, a local resident who worked as a printer for the Washington Post for many years. Some deaf people try to confront deaf peddlers, upbraiding them for laziness and for degrading the image of the deaf. But that can be dangerous, as Daniels learned.

``I knew two people who sold ABC cards in Washington, D.C.,'' Daniels said. ``I went up to one guy one day and said, `Please, please don't do this. Please don't sell these cards.' He got very mad at me. He said, `Don't you tell me what to do; I'll slit your throat.' ''

Lacks knows as many as 25 deaf peddlers who work in Hampton Roads and North Carolina.

Of the New York case, he said: ``The reason they were arrested is because they had so many. If it was just a few of them, you probably never would have found out.''

While most peddlers in Hampton Roads are U.S. citizens, he said there are peddling rings on the Eastern Shore that recruit Mexican migrant workers.

``I see them sometimes, and I know I should report them, because they're illegal aliens, but I feel like - well, we're all deaf, you know,'' Lacks said. ``As for police, panhandling isn't really a serious crime. Besides, think of how much work they'd have to do to communicate, for such a small offense.''

Norfolk police spokesman Larry Hill said the police department does not differentiate between deaf and hearing panhandlers.

Lacks frequently spots peddlers working fast-food restaurants and retail stores on East Little Creek Road, near his home.

A fast-food restaurant manager in that area who asked not to be identified said he frequently chases deaf peddlers away from his pick-up window. The men often arrive on bicycles and try to sell small American flag stickers.

``Customers come in and tell us, `There's a bum begging for money,' '' the manager said. ``We tell them (peddlers) they can't do that. They leave. We may not see them for three or four days, and then they come back. They try other stores. They have a pattern.''

Deaf outreach workers often have little success trying to help peddlers.

``I've run into several people who've tried to peddle things to me because they're deaf - at Military Circle Mall, in New York, in Chicago, in California,'' said Jean Drudge, a hearing mother of two deaf children who also works as a deaf outreach coordinator at the Endependence Center in Virginia Beach. ``Instead of buying something, I give them information about where they can get help and job training. They're never interested.'' MEMO: For more information on the deaf and hard-of-hearing, call the

Endependence Center at 461-8007 voice or 461-7527 TDD. ILLUSTRATION: AP Photos

File photo by Ian Martin/The Virginian-Pilot

[Benny Lacks, in backround of photo and Jay Shropshire, in

foreground.] KEYWORDS: DEAF HEARING IMPAIRED

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