Somewhat of a small-town celebrity, Lawrence Ortiz — commonly referred to as “The Trampoline Man” — can be found every day around noon on East De la Guerra Street, jumping away on his mini-trampoline in his front yard.
Ortiz grew up in Santa Barbara with his parents and five siblings. When he was younger, he was an avid marathon runner, running the Los Angeles marathon seven times and the Long Beach Marathon several times as well. “You see those mountains behind you?” he asked. “I would run all through those … I’d go up De la Guerra, to APS, up to the Mission, and back down,” he explained. “I was able to do it; I never got tired of it,” he said, looking into the distance.
“When you’re running, you get your second wind, and then you don’t get tired,” Ortiz explained. “I could run and run and run.”
