How did this homeless man become a ‘rock’ star? By building formations on the jetty at Dana Point Harbor

DANA POINT — Where other people see rocks along the harbor jetty — or don’t even bother noticing them at all as they sail, bike or walk by — a homeless man named Tommy Clifford sees possibilities.

A few days ago, the 61-year-old stared at the rocks by the shore near his favorite spot just east of the Richard Henry Dana statue. Then he got up and started stacking them.

“Something told me to do it — I don’t know what,” Clifford said. A scruffy-looking but personable man, he spends his days in the shade of a public restroom at the harbor.

By the end of the week, Clifford had created more than 100 cairns — the Scottish Gaelic word for piles of stones stacked by humans. They line the shore, many of them resembling animal and human figures.

Look closely at just the right angle and you can spot a horse’s head, an owl, a sea lion, a duck and even a bald eagle, along with lots of other animal and human figures. Clifford has shaped what appears to be a wolf howling at the moon, and a woman gazing out at the water.

Some are at least 3 feet tall, others no bigger than a baby’s toy.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Clifford said.

As of midday Friday, July 27, nobody has touched them.

Instead, passersby stop to snap photos and shoot video up and down the line of formations.  Some chat with Clifford.

Now and then someone offers him a few dollars, although he says he isn’t doing it to get money and doesn’t ask for any.

“I’m just trying to bring happiness to people. Show them my art.”

Unhappy residents

Not everyone is happy with Clifford’s presence at the harbor. There’s a woman in a Lexus, he says, who has come by just about every day to tell him he shouldn’t be loitering there. She’s called authorities on him, he believes.

Clifford says Orange County sheriff’s deputies who patrol the area have stopped to question him and even searched one of his friends.

The woman is insistent on making him leave:

“She just says, ‘You can’t be camping here.’ But I’m not camping. She calls the cops. The cops come down here and hassle us.”

Clifford has his possessions neatly packed on a short train of three bicycle trailers that he leaves in one of the harbor’s free parking spots, on a far end of the lot. He sleeps somewhere else in town, a spot he does not want to disclose.

Originally from Maine, Clifford says he’s lived in Big Sur and Cambria, recycling and doing odd jobs that included landscaping.  He landed in Dana Point about 18 months ago after spending some time in Sherman Oaks and North Hollywood. He has no family — his parents are dead and he left an ex-wife and two small children in Maine dozens of years ago.

Clifford has a checkered past that includes petty run-ins with the law when he was younger for what he calls “stupid stuff.” More seriously, he says he had a stint behind bars in Colorado when he was busted with acid.

These days, Clifford says, he doesn’t do drugs, doesn’t drink and minds his own business.

Dana Point and other coastal cities in south Orange County have had their issues with transients whose growing numbers have sparked outcry over those who urinate and defecate in public, litter, break into cars and homes, use drugs and have sex in the open, and other unacceptable behavior.

Residents complain about homeless people camping around town and hanging out at the shore.

But Clifford and those who enjoy his spontaneous artwork point out that he is in a public space and, rather than being a bother to people, he is making them smile.

‘Doing something worthwhile’

Cliff Whitesell and Robert Pasqua ride their mountain bikes from their homes in San Clemente several times a week on long loop that takes them by the harbor. They stop briefly Friday morning to marvel at Clifford’s cairns, recalling that a few years back someone else had done something similar further east on the shoreline, but not on this scale. And that only lasted a couple of days before disappearing.

“This is way, way out,” Pasqua, 83, said.

The two neighbors have noticed the growing homeless population in their own town. To them, Clifford stands out for his initiative.  Pasqua, a retired Los Angeles County firefighter who likes to shoot underwater photographs, said: “At least he’s doing something worthwhile.”

“Even though he’s homeless, he’s being creative, trying to make a better world.”

And perhaps something else can come of it, Pasqua added.

“Maybe somebody will say, I’m going to give that guy a job.”

Clifford says if somebody wanted to hire him to create cairns in their yards, he’d be open to it. He’s given curious passersby tips on how to situate the rocks and find the balance that keeps them upright.

A couple made a formation that resembled the outline of the state of Wisconsin. One woman and her five kids have come back repeatedly, with some of the children learning to make little birds from the rocks.

For other people, what Clifford has done is more of a contemplative exercise.

Melody Burbank of Laguna Niguel holds out her cellphone, shooting a video as she walks along the length of the shore where the cairns stand like soldiers guarding the coast.

Burbank has routinely visited the harbor for the past 25 years and sees nothing wrong with what Clifford is doing. She doesn’t try to pick out distinct figures he’s created; it’s more about his process.

“He’s like in a zone when he’s doing it,” Burbank said. “I think it’s a gift to us.”