To those of us still with a tenuous grasp on our jobs, the so-called "ongoing economic crisis" can be a rather nebulous concept.

We see some guy standing outside, say, Circuit City, who waves and dances on the sidewalk with a "Going out of business" sign. We read or hear of the 7,000 laid off from this company on Monday, the 1,200 from some outfit way over there on Wednesday.

We shiver. We gather ourselves and briskly whistle past yet another employment graveyard.

There is no such turning away at 12th Avenue and Grant Street downtown. Every single bit of this "downturn" is much too real here.

It is where I found Anthony LaBate.

He is 52. He has four children, ages 11 to 17. And he has not been within a dozen area codes of finding a job since the middle of November.

The businesses where he has begged for work have names like Arby's, McDonald's and the Olive Garden, places where a year ago he would have never thought to drop off an application.

The answer at each of them is the same: No.

"I will do anything, anything at all," Anthony LaBate says, as we chat just outside the front door of the unemployment office. "I am not picky."

He had for years been a driver, supervisor and mentor of developmentally disabled workers for a Denver company that hired the workers out to corporations and various nonprofit agencies.

"I would pick up my crew at 6 to get them there . . . I loved that time of the morning, watching the sunrise and all."

He would jump into the work with them, scanning food products destined for food pantries, shelters and the like.

On Nov. 10 the word came. He and his crew were being let go. Money and donations had dried up.

A week later he found work driving the developmentally disabled to the museum and the parks. That $12.50-an-hour job lasted two weeks.

He received two unemployment checks in December, each for $284. Then his last employer contested his eligibility. At a hearing, Anthony Labate lost.

He had no choice: Just before Christmas he sold the little he still had, got rid of his Adams County apartment and moved in with his 76-year-old mother, LaDelle Ellis, in her south Denver home.

He is a large bear of a man who, despite his circumstances, wears a seemingly perpetual smile. On this day, he has come to the unemployment office to follow up on a letter that he received stating that he could be eligible for federal emergency unemployment benefits.

As we stand in the seemingly endless line, he recounts his life story.

His children live now with their mother in Indiana. His ability to pay his ex-wife child support has been limited. His family helps him make those payments.

"My 17-year-old son called me on Friday and suggested I relinquish my parental rights; it would get me out from under paying child support," Anthony LaBate says softly. "That killed me. I love my children too much to ever even consider that."

Upon returning to Denver from Indiana in 2000 after his divorce, he worked for a year as a transporter at a hospital, mostly taking patients from the ER to X-ray and other offices.

That led to a job working with the developmentally disabled in group homes and in private residences, feeding them, giving them their medicine, taking them where they needed to go. He did this for four years.

"I never thought I could do that," Anthony LaBate says. "But I quickly realized that they were people who just wanted to be like the rest of us. I learned a lot from them."

He goes to at least one county unemployment office each day, he says.

"You get a (job) listing, rush over to drop off your application and find 10 people waiting to do the same thing ahead of you."

He'd eaten lunch just hours before at Arby's. There, he did what he always does: ask if any jobs are available. When he gets the answer, he asks for a business card, and if it's OK to call back in a week.

"I've decided you just have to keep going. You can't get depressed about it. I watch the news every night. I know I'm not the only guy in this situation. All I know is it's getting worse.

"I know there is going to be something out there . . . it keeps me putting one foot in front of the other."

Finally, his name is called. He is led to a table at the back of the office where a phone sits. He is put on hold for what seems like forever.

A dozen or so other people, of all ages, races and gender, sit around him. Some are in nice dresses or in a suit and tie. They wait. No one smiles.

Anthony LaBate finally hangs up the phone. He rises with a huge smile plastered across his face. Yes, he has been told, the federal money has come through. He may receive it by Monday.

"I'm going to get something for my mom, you know, a little present or something," he says. Some of it he will send to his ex-wife for the children.

"I never thought my life would come to this," Anthony LaBate says, as we exit the office. "I keep thinking God is with me, that he is going to take care of me. This is a start."

Inside the office, the line where we had long stood is filled with people whose stories are likely not that different than the one I just jotted down.

I can only hope God is with them, too.

johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2763

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