Recycling computers to re-energize lives

David Hinton, a man of few words, is a man of many keystrokes.

Hinton's 5-year-old charity, the Purple Elephant Computer Factory for Kids in Raleigh, has salvaged trashed computers and fixed them up for hundreds of needy children.

From the first five computers Hinton repaired in his garage a decade ago, his reputation spread by word of mouth until he needed a warehouse to store the mountains of computers dumped by local companies that replace models every few years.

From the get-go, Hinton said he intuitively understood that dirt-cheap computers for kids represented a great social leap and technological advance.

"The entire world is working to develop the $100 laptop for the needy," Hinton said . "Yet we have a $100 desktop sitting here."

At the Purple Elephant, $100 will get everything a kid will need: hard drive, monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers. Hinton will mark down the price for hardship cases. Newer, faster, more powerful models top out at $200.

The mission of Hinton's thrift shop is to provide an essential tool for success in school.

Hinton knows from experience how education can change lives: The retired Navy flight officer and electrical engineer grew up in post-World War II rural North Carolina in a four-room house with a tin roof and no indoor plumbing; his father was a textile mill worker with a third-grade education.

Since Hinton refurbished his first computers as a volunteer for the Durham Literacy Council, he and his assistants at the Purple Elephant have rebuilt nearly 2,000 machines that were donated by area businesses and local residents. The computers have gone to special-needs children, foster children, Vietnamese immigrants, and to children as far away as Africa and South America. Poor children can also go to college as he did, he believes, if given an opportunity.

$100 computers

A walk through the Purple Elephant reveals stacks and bins of monitors, keyboards, mice, cables, discs and tools. A pair of volunteers poke around in the guts of a recently delivered model, turned on its side for a bit of techno-surgery. Another volunteer checks for signs of life on a screen as he boots up a machine. Off in a corner rise piles of computers too old to fix. Stripped for usable parts, the junked machines will be hauled off for recycling.

The elves busying themselves around Hinton's magic workshop are low-wage helpers Hinton calls volunteers because he knows he can't pay them what they're worth. They include a Navy SEAL with a doctorate in divinity, a single mother with two teenagers at home in Wendell, an unemployed computer consultant and a homeless electrician who sometimes sleeps under the stars in nearby woods.

"He's one of a kind," Wayne Johnson, 58, the electrician, said of Hinton. "Dave found me something to do and put me on a regular 20-hour-a-week basis."

A refurbished computer will work as well as a new model, but costs a fraction of the price. The models at the Purple Elephant are typically 2 to 3 years old, state-of-the-art until recently, but now rejected by local businesses that need to upgrade their computers to keep up with new technology.

Brought back to life, the used computers are equipped with licensed software and a processor, then set on shelves with their tech specs and one of three price tags: $100, $150, $200.

He used to give out computers for free, but now charges a modest price to foster the pride of ownership.

"You've go to have some skin in the game," he said.

James Limehouse, a delivery truck driver in Raleigh, bought a $200 model in December for his 12-year-old son after the family computer died.

"It was urgent to get one," Limehouse said. "He had a lot of school projects. We just didn't want him to get behind."

A growing market

Recently, Hinton is seeing a new phenomenon: middle-class customers who, in better economic times, might have splurged $1,000 or more with a credit card for a new computer, but today fear for their jobs and spend cautiously.

Jim Berry, a friend from Trinity Baptist Church in Raleigh, describes Hinton as shy, humble and modest. The two men, both retired military and engineers, see each other several times a week at church and fellowship gatherings. Berry describes Hinton's work as a divine miracle and helps him out at the warehouse.

"He's not the kind to slap you on the back and give you a sales pitch," Berry said of his friend.

Hinton is reluctant to talk about himself, is not sure why anyone would care about his biographical details, as if such trivia had anything to do with the stuff that really matters: neighborhood gangs, school dropout rates and poor kids who fall behind.

His last job, after retiring from the Navy and the Environmental Protection Agency, was with the state Employment Security Commission, where he aided the jobless and heard stories he's unlikely to forget for a long time. That's when he saw grown men and women, unable to find work, break down and sob on his state-issued desk.

He has not escaped his own hardships: He lost two wives in quick succession to stroke and cancer, then survived a bout with prostate cancer.

His mother's sister, a 76-year-old retired schoolteacher in Gibsonville, was killed nearly three decades ago. The death never went to trial, but a wayward youth was suspected.

Changing lives

Hinton said of the young man who was charged with his aunt's murder, "Here is a life wasted, but he affected so many other people: those he murdered, and the victim's families. If we can change just one life, it is worth a thousand computers."

Now his Purple Elephant may be on on shaky legs. Hinton and his crew operate comfortably out of a warehouse the size of a basketball arena, provided free by Goodwill Industries. Goodwill pays more than $100,000 a year for rent, utilities, insurance and associated expenses, said Steve Snyderman, executive director of Goodwill Industries in Raleigh. But Goodwill is not renewing the lease when it runs out in about two years, forcing the Purple Elephant to move.

This year, the Purple Elephant will refurbish and sell 750 computers and break even financially. Hinton says the Purple Elephant could pay its own freight, including rent, by selling more than 10,000 computers a year. That would require a huge infusion of donations, but he says there is a need for cheap computers.

"This is a calling for him -- his life is invested in this," Snyderman says. "He's really doing something on a bigger scale than most individuals could pull off."