Spend any time in Downtown Santa Cruz, particularly Pacific Avenue, and it’s impossible to miss Curtis Reliford.
With his brown hat, red shirt and bandana and his blue overalls—or, if you catch him on a particular day he’s feeling good, in his pinstripe suit and spats—he’s hard to miss in a crowd.
And then there’s his truck. It can be found anywhere downtown, blasting music and covered in signs that say things like “Promoting Joy, Kindness, Love, Compassion, Peace, Empathy,” and “On My Way to the Hopi Reservation to Give Away Food, Clothes, Building Materials,” with pictures of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Harriet Tubman on the sides.
To put it plainly, Reliford has become not just a Santa Cruz character, but a staple of the community.
But who is Curtis Reliford?
That’s the question he answers in his new autobiography, Madness to Surrender. Published by River Sanctuary Publishing in Felton, the book is currently available at Bookshop Santa Cruz, where Reliford will be signing copies and discussing it on Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 7 p.m.
“Y’all gonna think I’m crazy but I don’t give a damn,” laughs Reliford. “I’m gonna stay crazy with love, peace, compassion, sharing and caring for the rest of my life.”
With the help of several people in the community, it took a total of 13 years for Madness to be written, with three years alone to “buy into” the idea to even write a book in the first place.
But Reliford’s story of hardship, anger and violence transformed into caring, stewardship and love is one that needs to be told in this day and age.
Without giving away too many of the details, he was born on Elm Grove Plantation in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. He was one of 25—yes, 25!—children, including full, half and step siblings, and didn’t know his father until he was an adult.
He lived a life of crime, selling drugs, getting into fights, being stabbed and even being thrown out of a seven-story window.
In 1985 Reliford got clean and sober, started working on himself and his trauma, and the transformation slowly began to take hold.
However, his current mission didn’t start until 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. At the time Reliford was attending regular Toastmasters meetings, listening to people talk about the power of action.
“So I started looking at what I could do to make a difference in this world,” he says. “And that was promote peace, love and kindness.”
After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, killing more than 1,000 people and causing an estimated $125 billion in U.S. damage, he knew he had to go back home in 2005 to help people living in New Orleans’ 9th Ward.
“I knew those racists was gonna do nothing for them folks in the 9th Ward,” he says. “The rich people have been complaining year after year about that 9th Ward. So I thought, ‘What can little old me do?’”
The answer was to gather supplies that he would drive directly to the people of New Orleans. For that first trip he was able to raise $12,000 and did four trips that year.
However, it wasn’t until around his sixth trip that he discovered another place in need, the Hopi Reservation in Arizona. In 2007, he founded the Follow Your Heart Action Network nonprofit and continues to bring donations to Hopi communities and New Orleans yearly.
Since then he has gone through six trucks and has been recognized by organizations such as the American Red Cross and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 2006, Rep. Sam Farr honored his work in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 2020, he was awarded the Key to the City of Santa Cruz and has regularly been voted “Best Local Hero” by the community in the yearly Good Times “Best Of” issue—which he won again this year.
There’s so much more to Reliford’s story that can be found in Madness to Surrender. But through it all he has never forgotten who he was, where he came from and the long road that’s still ahead of him.
“My spiritual journey is action,” he says. “I’ve got a hundred flaws, but I focus on what’s going to help me reach my goal.”
Curtis Reliford will appear at Bookshop Santa Cruz, signing copies and discussing his book Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 7 p.m.
