Every Sunday from Jan. 1 through Easter for the last five years, Sam Torres and a few volunteers have manned a pop-up café to feed the homeless at Miles Avenue Park in Indio. It’s one of several ways in which Torres gives back to his community.
But let’s start at the beginning.
He was born in Los Angeles, and Torres’ family later moved to Perris, which is where he finished high school. He began his political career in 1991, when he was elected to the Perris City Council. Local citizens urged him to run after he gave an impassioned speech at a council meeting, accusing the council of exerting too much control over a local Latino businessmen’s association.
“Once I got on the council, I realized how much of the job I really didn’t know,” Torres said. “Luckily, I have a good brain and good common sense, which got me through. I had a strong construction background, but had to learn about how to handle funding, from the city. I became known for insisting on honesty when it came to new development fees, etcetera.”
Torres and his wife, Susan, were not blessed with biological children of their own, so they chose to adopt. Their first child, Jessica, was adopted through a private counseling center affiliated with a local church.
“We had to get certified through the county for them to place the child in our home,” Torres said. “They saw that we met the criteria, and were good parents—so that’s how we came to adopt the next four kids. With the second, our son Sam, the county came knocking on our door, saying they had a 4-day-old. They wanted to basically give us ‘first right of refusal.’ We saw the baby the next day, and said, “Yes!”
Their third child, Noah, was born to a drug-addicted mother, but is now doing fine. Daughters Nia and Kaylee completed the family. Torres said they all get along well—fighting just like biological brothers and sisters, but defending each other as well.
Torres is a second-generation plumber. His father went from working as a laborer in the fields of Bakersfield into the plumbing business.
“He got his license in the early ’70s, and my brothers and I ended up working for him,” Torres said “We built a very successful plumbing company.”
Torres, who moved to the Coachella Valley in 2008, is mostly retired now, but he helped his sons launch their own company. “We do a lot of service work, remodeling and reconstruction,” he said.
Torres has been battling prostate cancer for a while.
“The first time we did radiation therapy, and everything was good for about four years,” he said. “Then cancer cells re-appeared, and we went to hormone therapy, which brought the numbers back down for about three years. In hindsight, I wish I’d just had the prostate removed instead of doing radiation.”
Treatment continues; Torres said things are stable for the moment.
Sam Torres has served on the Indio City Council and on the Indio Planning Commission. While on the City Council in 2012, he made headlines when he proposed a tax on Coachella tickets—prompting Goldenvoice to move the festival out of city. Torres later rescinded the proposal.
While on the Planning Commission in 2019, Torres became involved in a big controversy. An ugly dispute arose between him and one of Indio’s largest developers, the Chandi Group. Nachhattar Chandi and his wife accused Torres of harassment and of making disparaging remarks about them. They claimed Torres was biased and could not be fair when voting on decisions involving their projects.
“The stories of the gospels made an impression on me. But then the politicization and corruption of religion—the Jerry Falwells of the world—turned me away from it.”
Sam Torres
Torres had raised questions about a conditional-use permit sought by the Chandi Group for a place of worship. Torres claimed there had been instances in the past when conditions the city placed on Chandi projects had not been met.
“I said, ‘No, you can’t do that, because in the past, you’ve shown yourself not to be responsible,’” Torres said. “Man, he was pissed off, and I really don’t blame him. The City Council said, ‘We can’t treat this guy this way,’ and he was going to sue me. But I knew I was not wrong. I just wanted to go on record.”
Ultimately, the matter was dropped.
Torres and his team of volunteers began their weekly pop-up café in Indio in 2021.
“We call it the Sunday Service, because it’s on a Sunday, and we provide service,” he said. “All the people in the park and the families who wander in, we treat them as our guests. For the homeless, there’s nothing so luxurious as to actually sit at a table to eat a meal.”
The Sunday Service is a way for Torres to channel his grief over losing his father—who passed away due to COVID—and other loved ones in recent years.
“Every time life punches you in the heart with that kind of pain, you just respond to it with love,” he said.
Torres can trace his Native American heritage back to the Yaqui tribe on his grandmother’s side. He does not recall the name of the tribe on his grandfather’s side, though he said he knows it was from a mountainous region of Mexico.
“My spirituality was born in the Catholic church, because that’s what we all were,” he said. “You take from it what you can. The stories of the gospels made an impression on me. But then the politicization and corruption of religion—the Jerry Falwells of the world—turned me away from it.”
His early exposure to scripture gave Torres what he calls “a naïve sense of responsibility, like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” It motivated him to push for things like additional funding for schools, in both Perris and Indio.
When asked if he has a code he lives by, Torres told me what he tells his kids: “Love thy neighbor as thyself. It’s impossible to love God, who you cannot see, and hate your neighbor, who you can see.”
Bonnie Gilgallon has written theater reviews for the Independent since 2013. She hosts a digital interview show, The Desert Scene, which can be heard on www.thedesertscene.com and viewed on Mutual Broadcasting’s YouTube channel. Learn more at bonnie-g.com.
