WORTHINGTON, Minn. – Worthington is a small town with a big secret.

The farm county seat has comparably low crime and enviously low unemployment. Instead of tumbleweeds, its downtown strip has plenty of traffic and only two vacant storefronts. The biggest dance club and sole bakery have new owners.

What’s not a secret is that more than a third of the town’s residents – 35 percent, by the last census count – are Hispanic. City officials still think that’s an undercount. Even so, it’s by far the highest percentage of any city in Minnesota – a state that’s seen a 75 percent growth in Hispanics over the past decade, more than any other ethnic group.

The trend didn’t happen in an instant: 30 years ago, many feared the southwest Minnesota town would become a ghost town. Instead immigrants flooded in – and stayed. One weekend last month, the local St. Mary’s Catholic Church hosted 14 baptisms in one standing. All Hispanic.

“How many rural markets are having an increase in babies being born? Like, none. And our baby count is going up every year. Our deliveries are going up every year,” said Lynn Olson, chief executive of Sanford Worthington Medical Center, the town’s largest hospital. He’s bringing in six new doctors to capitalize on the growth.

After decades of growing pains, families have steadily replaced transients. They’ve bought homes and started businesses.

Yet amid its rural neighbors, Worthington is still eyed askance. Many imagine it as a town of high crime and gangs on an otherwise placid prairie – an impression that leaves local law enforcement officials scratching their heads.

“We had people in Sibley, Iowa, 18 miles away, that used to shop here, saying: ‘I would never go to Worthington; I sure would never go there at night,’ ” said Worthington Mayor Alan Oberloh, a local mechanic who gets plenty of business from the town’s now not-so-new arrivals.

“We’re just playing defense all the time.”

ONCE A DYING TOWN

In 1980, Worthington was a town of just more than 10,000 – including about 100 Hispanics, according to census numbers.

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“I think if you had taken a (population) count in 1985, it would have been around 8,000,” city attorney Mark Shepherd said.

In 1990, the population came in just below the 10,000 mark, according to census numbers. Farmers who joked that they had only two good harvests – 20 years ago, and next year – fretted that Worthington’s future looked barren.

In the midst of that decade, Oberloh started a car mechanic business. And the city’s largest employer, a pork plant, changed ownership. The plant had added a shift in 1989, and over the next few years hundreds of minorities flooded in to take wages that had been dramatically cut.

The next census, in 2000, showed the town had grown to more than 11,000.

About that same time, Oberloh saw his clientele shift – and grow. Hispanics needed their cars fixed, too. He bought a new building. The town’s population now sits at 12,764, according to 2010 census numbers. About 4,500 are Hispanic.

THE NEW MAIN STREET

Walk down 10th Street – Worthington’s main downtown drag – and you’ll notice mostly minority-owned businesses. Panaderia Mi Tierra, the town’s only bakery, is bustling in the mornings. The old bakery went out of business a dozen years ago.

“We get a few people who say, ‘All you got is Spanish stuff?’ Well, yeah,” said co-owner Kerry Cuate, who arrived in Worthington with her husband, Juan, in 2006. Still, at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday, mostly non-Hispanics sit at the tables.

The town’s longtime nightclub, the Long Branch Saloon, is now owned by Raul Godinez, who moved to Worthington five years ago.

“A lot of people thought, ‘How did he end up with that?’ ” said frequent patron Eddie Gonzalez.

Maria “Lupita” Parga arrived in Worthington 20 years ago. She worked at the local pork plant for several months, selling Mexican CDs on the side, in the basement of the downtown Thompson Hotel.

Besides music, people wanted something else from home. “They asked, ‘You don’t have tortillas?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I want tortillas, too.’ ”

What started as $14 to $20 worth of sales a week grew by 1994 to the first Hispanic-owned market – and first Hispanic-owned business, for that matter – in town.

Now, at 46, Parga has owned a market and a clothing store in Worthington and another market in nearby Marshall. Her current business, Lupita Mini Market, is a combined market, restaurant and bar.

With 24 other Hispanic business owners in town – including two other markets – she feels squeezed. “It’s crazy because the town is too little. It’s too hard,” she said. “For me, when I was the only one I feel so happy. Now I don’t know.”

Darlene Macklin, executive director of the Worthington Chamber of Commerce, sees a strong downtown. “Only two vacancies on 10th, which to me is fabulous,” she said. “… And the difference between minority-owned and others are they’re open seven days a week….The biggest barrier is the language, but (with the second generation), that will all work its way through.”

Still, Macklin added, aside from restaurants, “I think one of the challenges (Hispanic owners) have is getting Caucasians in their stores.”

RUMORS PERSIST

Worthington officials often battle the perception – in neighboring towns and even among some residents – that the town has a significant criminal element. Statistics don’t back up the perception.

One recent example: A rumor started several years ago that thugs were hiding under cars in the parking lot of the local mall, slashing the ankles of anybody who walked past. A previous city administrator got hold of hospital records to show that nobody had come in with cuts under such circumstances.

“That was all fictitious. None of our guys have ever responded to a call where somebody laid under a car and cut somebody’s leg,” said Sgt. Kevin Flynn, one of the Worthington Police Department’s two general investigators.

“That story went forever,” Oberloh said.

“Even locally, I still hear ‘I don’t want to go downtown at night,’ ” said Sharon Johnson, coordinator of the Nobles County Integration Collaborative, a state-funded organization the city turns to for help on integration issues.

But compare Worthington’s crime rates over the past decade with the similarly-sized southwest Minnesota towns of Marshall and Fairmont, and Worthington has done just fine.

According to FBI statistics, the total number of reported serious crimes such as murders, thefts and felonious assaults has been lower than both other cities for eight of the past 10 years – primarily because of far fewer instances of reported thefts and comparable statistics in other categories.

For other, less-serious crimes, such as misdemeanor assaults, public drunkenness, vandalism, prostitution and fraud, Worthington had fewer reports than those cities for all 10 years.

As for gangs, “I defy anybody to come to town and show me our gang members,” Flynn said. “The last significant gang activity I dealt with was 1996.” The city has had three homicides in its history.

“Three homicides! You got 2,400 people at the pig plant, half of ’em were at war with each other 10,000 miles away, and they work together, and as time goes on every year they’re probably closer-knit than they were the year before,” Flynn said. “It’s just like when the Swedes and the Norwegians hit the shore here….You have to have some generational growth before people were actually on the same page. And you’re actually seeing that now.”

That said, when again asked whether Worthington’s image has improved to outside eyes, Flynn is quick to answer: “Absolutely not.”

PAST DIVISIONS

Marley Buhr has been managing Worthington’s only remaining mobile-home park since 1975. He plans to retire next year.

“In the future here, I know the city of Worthington’s going to have a lot of problems. I don’t want to be here for it. We’re fooling ourselves if we think we’re going to be OK,” Buhr said.

“I just got a feeling. It’s coming. I’d stake my life on it; it’s coming.”

Most of his residents used to be non-Hispanic. But they left.

“We used to be 100 percent white. People that said they were never prejudiced said, ‘Oh, I’d never live next to them,’ ” said Buhr’s wife, Sandi Buhr.

Many officials and residents still mention a 1993 Worthington Globe article, which asked: “Has Worthington been enhanced by the recent influx of various minority groups?” Anonymous responses, printed in the paper, included references to garbage, cockroaches, crime and violence. One suggested giving the town’s minorities “a shower like Adolf Hitler showered the Jews.”

“That did more to divide the community than anything. It was just a nightmare,” Detective Flynn said. The article resulted in a grievance upheld by the Minnesota News Council, to which the Globe responded that “it had performed a public service by bringing racism in the community to light.”

FEELING ‘WELCOMED’

But the dozen Hispanic Worthington residents interviewed by the Pioneer Press – all immigrants – all said they felt “welcomed” in Worthington.

“I never felt friction. No, never. I always felt welcome,” Parga said.

“In Mexico, every morning right after you wake up, you go outside and sweep the street outside of your house,” said Luz Cazares, who arrived in Worthington from Mexico 13 years ago.

“So when I came here, I do the same. The problem is we live in apartments, so there is the whole parking lot. I say: ‘Where is my place? I have to sweep everything?’ So I start sweeping the whole parking lot. A white woman saw me from a house nearby, said, ‘What are you doing?’ She brought out a plate of cookies.”

A couple of years ago, new city administrator Craig Clark got input from 750 local residents to help create the city’s 2009 strategic plan.

Their comments led to a part of the plan titled “Impediments to vision and success,” with “integration ‘Elephant’ blocks sense of community” being the top listed item. It includes such subheads as “Cultural/language barriers,” and “Get immigrant community to find a sense of home in Worthington.”

Clark noted that the “elephant” referred to the fact that many residents simply never talk about immigration. At the same time, he admitted that only 5 percent of his 750 respondents were Hispanic; reaching the community had proved a problem.

Law enforcement has had difficulty finding Spanish-speaking recruits and even offered free Spanish-language classes. “When you try to hire a Spanish officer, well, Minneapolis and St. Paul would love to have many more Spanish officers. We can’t keep people,” Flynn said. “There isn’t anybody here (at the police department) who’s fluent.”

And as for elected positions, there hasn’t been a Hispanic city council or school board member in memory, city officials said. Thus far, only a couple of Hispanics have run.

QUICK WORK FINDING A JOB

Finding work in Worthington is easier than most places in the state – though pay is a problem.

The city’s 5.4 percent unemployment rate is well below the 6.9 percent state average. On the other hand, Worthington’s average weekly wage of $619 is far lower than surrounding communities ($712 in Marshall and $748 in Fairmont), and much less than the state average of $899.

Mention work in Worthington and you’ll hear of the pork plant. Formerly owned by Swift Co., the giant complex next to Interstate 90 that processes 20,000 hogs a day was taken over by Sao Paulo, Brazil-based JBS in 2007. About 30 percent of its 2,400 employees are Hispanic, company officials said.

In 2006, immigration officials conducted a high-profile raid of the plant, arresting 230 workers.

But illegal workers remain a part of Worthington.

“It has been easy to find a job,” said one illegal worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But the only jobs are hard jobs.”

“I don’t go to factories where I know they ask for papers. Farms, you don’t need papers; just a card from the Mexican Consulate” or a fake Social Security number, which you “just make up.”

“If they ask for your card, that means that they don’t want you. If they need people, they just say it’s OK.”

If you ever need to provide documentation, it’s easy enough to forge something passable for roughly $180, the worker added.

“I don’t think those things (the raids) had one bit of an impact,” Flynn said.

PUTTING DOWN ROOTS

Regardless of legality, many of Worthington’s Hispanics are putting down permanent roots, rather than earning money and moving on – which city officials say has kept the town economically strong.

In 2003, the pork plant had annual turnover rates of 31.3 percent. JBS didn’t provide turnover rates before that, though city attorney Shepherd remembers it as “ridiculously high.”

It has now dipped to 20.6 percent, according to JBS officials.

On weekends, you’ll see members of a 22-team adult soccer league – most of them Hispanic – covering local fields.

As for assimilation, in 1991, 170 people attended adult English classes through the school district. That number increased to 334 in 2001, and 615 in the 2010-11 school year ending in the summer 2011.

Steve Johnson, owner of Johnson Builders & Realtors – one of the city’s primary developers – said that last year about a quarter of the 130 or so homes he sold were to minorities – “about 90 percent of those being Hispanic.”

Part of the reason, however, has to do with how hard it is to rent. Rental vacancy rates are almost zero – and with prospective renters earning such low wages, developers are shying away from new construction, city officials say.

Mayor Oberloh nods to a home across from his mother’s house. A home he used to want to tear down, until it was bought by a Hispanic family. “New windows, new siding – interestingly enough, there is a pretty good chunk of rehabilitation going on, and they’re being done on Hispanic-owned homes.”

Lisbeth Castillo, who arrived in Worthington from Nicaragua 21 years ago, built a business selling cowboy boots, and then went to college and later returned to Worthington. She often asks herself why she stays. “People say outside town, ‘Worthington is this or that.’ I live here, and I get along with people,” she said.

“If Caucasian people are close to us, it’s because we’ve earned that. You don’t get nothing free.”

MaryJo Webster contributed to this report.