SHARE Oscar Almeida and his son, Allyn Almeida, patrol Libbey Bowl during the Ojai Music Festival as part of an all-night security detail. JUAN CARLO/THE STAR Gilbert Cabrera takes a snack break at Libbey Bowl during the Ojai Music Festival. Cabrera is part of an all-night security detail. JUAN CARLO/THE STAR Veteran Gilbert Cabrera checks a gate during at all-night security watch at the Ojai Music Festival. JUAN CARLO/THE STAR Oscar Almeida and other veterans start their security duty at 10 p.m. and work until 8 a.m.

By Tom Kisken of the Ventura County Star

Of the 973 seats at Ojai's Libbey Bowl, one was occupied at 1 a.m. Friday.

In it sat Gilbert Cabrera, an 83-year-old veteran with bad knees who parachuted out of Army planes in the early 1950s and helped test atomic bombs in the Marshall Islands after that.

Hours after the final note of the opening night of the 70-year-old Ojai Music Festival, he clutched a long flashlight and wore a jacket that said "Condor." Two-way radios poked out of coat pockets.

The south Oxnard man was here as part of an all-night detail of aging Army Airborne vets that helps guard the globally known festival from vandals and trespassers.

And he was waiting for a raccoon.

The critter, always the same one, usually shows up at 2 a.m., sometimes later, venturing near a stage that, on this night, held a kettle drum and a cymbal with massive pianos tucked out of sight.

The raccoon stands more than 2 feet tall. All the vets who rotate on security shifts throughout the festival know him. Once, Cabrera watched him liberate tacos from their paper wrappers.

"He walks around real quiet like," Cabrera said with a soft chuckle. "If he doesn't like what he hears, he takes off. But if you leave a little food for him, he'll turn around and come back and take it."

CAROUSERS, SPIRITS

The music festival wraps up Sunday after four days of national premieres and eclectic performances — one featuring toy pianos — that will have brought some 2,500 music aficionados to ticketed events. Other attractions, including a street party concert Sunday evening in Santa Paula, are free.

The vets, all former paratroopers, some in their 70s and 80s, have been coming here every night of the festival and several nights before for more than a decade.

In warm jackets and Army Airborne caps, they watch over the stage from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. Sounding gaptoothed whistles at the sight of a stranger, they patrol empty sidewalks marked with paper lanterns and vendor booths dressed in green linens.

They're a storytelling, opossum-scouting security blanket. If something happens, they alert Ventura County sheriff's deputies, who also patrol here.

It's almost always quiet duty. Once, a man tried to break into a festival building but he was too drunk to pose any kind of threat.

"He barfed all over the place. Then he staggered off," said Oscar Almeida, remembering another time when millennials caroused in a gazebo.

"I said, 'You got 10 minutes. If I come back and you're here, I'm calling the black-and-whites," he said.

He didn't have to call.

FINDING KITTENS

Almeida speaks with authority. The Ventura resident was a military police officer in the 1960s. He's also leader of the Condors, a chapter of the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat team. His group provides the security guards.

The money paid to the vets goes to help fund the Condor chapter, allowing them to send out burial details, help out vets in need and hold a Christmas banquet.

They are an aging, dwindling group. Before his security shift, Almeida attended a wake for his cousin and fellow Condor Willie Duarte. An Airborne veteran like the rest, he died on Memorial Day.

Duarte was 85, a legendary and edgy practical joker whose antics involved prosthetic limbs and twisting another car's side view mirrors.

"He always left you laughing," said Almeida, "or he left you mad at him."

Almeida drove trucks for 35 years as a Teamster. He brings his 48-year-old son, Allyn, with him to Libbey Bowl. Allyn was diagnosed with Down syndrome. His father doesn't like the stigma of labels.

"He's my son," he said, noting Allyn often spots outsiders on the festival grounds before anyone else.

"We've never treated him as 'Down syndrome,'" he said. "He goes everywhere. He does whatever he wants."

Together, they watch the sun rise during their shifts. Once, they found a litter of kittens in the huge sycamore that sprawls alongside the bowl's seats.

They can take turns napping on brown sofas in a lounge decorated with festival pictures. Almeida usually stays on patrol. It's been harder to sleep since his wife, Gloria, died of ovarian cancer in 2011.

They were married 44 years. She's the one who convinced him to get a tiny diamond earring. He keeps a picture of her in the bedroom and at the bottom of the stairs so he sees her every morning and every night.

"She was quite a woman," he said.

WORRYING SPOUSES

They pass the time with stories — about seeing the Dodgers in Brooklyn's Ebbets Field, about Almeida's father who served in World War II and is still kicking at 93 and about jumping out of planes.

Almeida said he wasn't scared because he knew what was coming. Cabrera said everyone is scared.

"All you know is that the door is out there and everyone is going out the door," Cabrera said. "The guy that's really scared, his knees will buckle. He'll fall down."

Cabrera served stateside, at Fort Bragg from 1950 to 1953, during the Korean War. Afterward, he was a laborer on a team that tested atomic weaponry in places like the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

He came home, got married and spent 35 years building levies and driving bulldozers for the Ventura County Flood District. He has an opinion on everything including the presidential race.

He's a Democrat. He will vote for Donald Trump.

"He's going to bring jobs," he said. "He told foreign countries that if they're going to bring goods here, they're going to pay duties."

Cabrera lives in south Oxnard with his wife, Rosie, in the home they've owned for 46 years. She worries about his security shift.

"All wives worry," he said.

After being relieved at 8 a.m. Friday, the vets slept for an hour or two. Then they formed as a color guard at Willie Duarte's funeral.

A rotating shift meant they were set to return to Libbey Bowl for another 10 hours on Saturday night.

Cabrera said he does it because the money helps the Condor chapter, giving him and other paratroopers a way to stay together.

If he stopped, he would miss his friends. He would miss the stories. He would miss the raccoons.