Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Anna Gorman delivers the vivid day-to-day foraging habits of Juana Rivas, a 48-year-old illegal immigrant and mother of four, detailing her struggle to make ends meat.

It's filed under Life in the Shadows, one in a series of occasional articles from The Times. And rightly so: She starts her routine near 3 a.m. to ravage trash cans and recycling bins to reap redemptions to feed her family.

Rivas is identified as illegal and a drainer of municipal resource, which is true. She snuck over the Mexican border in 1982 with her husband and two oldest children. Plus, she costs the city between $20,000 and $25,000 in recycling revenues each year (she's been doing it for 13 years).

That's the newspeg. But the angle is that she's a hard worker and embodies that celebrated American spirit of grittiness.

With her shopping cart, pink hat and gloves that she bought from the 99-cent store she searches and seizes aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic containers, and anything she can exchange for money. "She reaches inside and shakes the contents, listening for the telltale clink of a beer bottle or the hollow tap of a milk carton. Nothing."

The article really humanizes this immigrant family. We get a view as to what home is like, where Rivas recuperates and fixes pico de gallo for her family. What really made me sympathize with their situation is when one of her sons, Jose, recalled an instance in which he was embarrassed by her when driving by with friends.

I like that Gorman repeats words, but repeats words naturally. Look out for that.

Since last summer, I've been trying to do a similar article with these hovering Chinese folks that hoard beer cans from Northeastern University's neighboring communities. They subsist off of our excess.

Does anyone know Cantonese?