Is it Leonel Barragan’s smooth, Spanish-accented baritone that does it? That voice, used in Goodwill of Orange County public service announcements, and for 16 years as the auctioneer at the popular Goodwill Marketplace, does invite the comparison. So do his bearded, movie star good looks. And the way he’s dressed – natty, with a jacket and open collar – for a weekday at a place where he’s worked 45 years.

You look at Barragan, and hear him, and it’s impossible not to think, at least for a second, that he is (cue thunder sound effect) … the guy in the Dos Equis beer commercial.

“We tease him. ‘The Most Interesting Man in The World.’ That’s Leonel: the look, the demeanor,” says Corrine Allen, vice president of retail operations for Goodwill of Orange County and Barragan’s boss.

“He’s so distinguished,” she adds. “We call him ‘The Most Interesting Man at Goodwill.’”

But it’s not just because of his appearance. Barragan, 63, is about to retire from Goodwill and, when he does, he’ll leave the only job he’s ever had.

He’s also created something of a legacy – a category of business that lets “Storage Wars”-style blind bidding create an economic engine for Goodwill and cash-starved merchants around the world.

Barragan arrived in the United States in 1969, barely 18, a young man with a disability and zero work experience. Goodwill hired him and he became a key player in the nonprofit’s growth and development here.

When he retires, on Jan. 2, he will have logged half the 90 years of Goodwill of Orange County’s existence.

There is, says Allen, “his story.”

Kind of a rags to rags story.

TOUGH START

Barragan came to Santa Ana from Mexico with his mother and siblings to reunite with his father. The family had been separated for years while his father picked fruit on farms near Fresno and Santa Rosa.

Through friends, his father had gotten work in Santa Ana as a manual laborer. When he settled, he sent for his family.

Barragan, the oldest of eight children, struggled early. At 1, he stopped walking. It took months for doctors in Michoacan to figure out why: polio.

When he was 5 his mother took him to Mexico City where she heard that specialists were performing operations to help children with polio walk.

Liduvina Barragan carried her son inside the hospital. She had to leave him there for four years.

Barragan thought of himself and the other children at the hospital as “guinea pigs.” But 13 surgeries later, he left on his own feet, walking beside his mother, with his legs locked into braces and his arms cuffed by two metal crutches.

“I never considered myself disabled,” says Barragan. “I never considered myself at a disadvantage.”

By the time he arrived in Santa Ana, Barragan needed only one cane and a single brace on his left leg.

He wanted to attend Santa Ana High with his cousins, but was crushed to learn that, as an adult, he wasn’t allowed.

“I could not believe it. How is it a person who wanted to go to school could not go to school?”

So instead he would work. But where?

“Back in those days, people with disabilities didn’t have the same opportunities we have now.”

And there was the language barrier.

A neighbor told him about Goodwill, drove him there and served as his interpreter.

Barragan smiles and picks up a black-and-white photocopy sitting on the desk in his office: The young man’s hair is short and dark, parted the same way it is now. The look on the clean shaven face is serious, the hazel eyes piercing.

“This is what I looked like then,” he says, grinning.

Goodwill saw something about that look and the drive behind it. They put Barragan to work evaluating merchandise at the now-defunct As Is store.

“I was the only Spanish-speaking employee who didn’t speak English. Goodwill never gave up on me. They were willing to give me a chance, give me a job.”

In turn, Barragan did what he could to broaden his horizons. He attended English as a second language classes for a year straight, weeknights from 5 to 10, while working days at Goodwill.

Then someone said to him, “Why don’t you go to college?”

While he worked his way up to sales clerk, assistant manager and then manager at the As Is store, Barragan took night classes at Santa Ana College.

He never did earn the bachelor’s degree he wanted, but that didn’t hinder his progress at Goodwill.

With his work ethic – long workdays for long periods of time to see a project through – and his knack for innovation, Barragan rose to become director of wholesale and processing operations.

Every day he’d arrive at 7:30 a.m. Still does.

His office is just off the main floor of the Santa Ana processing center. That’s the place where tons of clothes and goods arrive daily from donation centers all over the county. From there, merchandise is sorted and sent out to Goodwill stores or other destinations.

Barragan considers this spot, Goodwill Marketplace, to be his legacy.

It was his brainchild. Goodwill put him in charge of transforming the old As Is store into a multimillion-dollar operation. Today, it’s both a retail business, where customers buy clothing by the pound, and a wholesale business, where goods are sold in bulk at public auction.

The marketplace, on Fifth Street just off Fairview, occupies a 34,000-square-foot space attached to the processing center. It opened in 1978 and, over the decades, Barragan figures it has helped support thousands of men and women served by Goodwill.

He’s leaving behind a blueprint to take the marketplace concept international.

“Goodwill is not just a job to me,” Barragan says. “It’s a mission.”

Barragan’s marketplace turns an 80 percent profit for Goodwill – about $8 million last year. But it’s also a revenue generator for its wholesale customers, who have traveled from the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa to get product that they then re-sell back home.

Eduardo Morillo Velazquez has been a steady customer for 15 years, making the drive from Baja California at least once a week. He hurried over one recent afternoon when he spotted Barragan rolling through the warehouse on his electric scooter.

“Leonel, como esta?” Velazquez asks in Spanish, clapping Barragan on the shoulder and shaking his hand.

Velazquez says that Barragan, who eight years ago handed over the auction mic to protege Israel Bergara, is such a good salesman, (cue the thunder), that “he could sell rocks.”

Then Velazquez adds, “he does it from the heart.”

A BROTHER

Barragan doesn’t want to leave his job. But his polio is bearing down on him.

Once he’s in his scooter, he’s OK, he says. But it’s a draining effort to walk on the two canes he now needs to get from his beloved red Mini Cooper to his office.

He explains it this way: His mind drags his body along, saying, “Come on, let’s go!” But his body doesn’t respond so well anymore, and he ends each day exhausted.

“Polio catches up with you,” he says, “and slows you down.”

Allen, his supervisor the past dozen years, is certain that whatever goodbye party Goodwill throws for Barragan will involve food from El Pollo Loco, where she says he gets his lunch every day.

The thought of his routine makes her laugh. Then, the thought of a retirement party makes her stop mid-sentence and fight back tears.

“I love him,” she says. “He’s like a brother.”

As he was when he first arrived at Goodwill, Barragan is uncertain about his future. He expects he’ll visit his longtime workplace now and then.

But beyond?

“I don’t know what I want to do while I’m retired. I’m going to discover that.”

Contact the writer: 714-796-7793 or twalker@ocregister.com