Queens Colombian Fights Drug Trade and Saves Lives
 Don Orlando Tobón at his travel agency in Jackson Heights, Queens. Photo by Jordan Cooper |
He slips a stack of papers between the metal jaws of a stapler and swiftly strokes the device with the heel of his clenched fist.
“This is what you put in the mail.” He shakes a manila envelope in his left hand, glaring out over a pair of spectacles resting decidedly lopsided at the end of his nose.
His lower lip juts out and he licks his thumb. His tongue flicks the side of his mouth.
Again he strikes the stapler like a judge who bangs his gavel at the end of a hearing.
His fingers are stubby and wide but they work with the kind of certainty and conviction inherited only through thousands of repetitions. “And this…”—he adroitly stuffs a second package—“…is what you bring with you to the office.”
He passes the materials across the desk to a Colombian couple grinning with satisfaction.
They have just done their taxes.
But to meet the sixty-year-old Tobón under such ordinary circumstances reveals very little of his remarkable life outside of work.
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