Worker Says Newsman Wronged Him Fired From Sam Donaldson’s Ranch Because Of Bad Back

Ranch worker Gilbert Salas has a bad back and a seventh-grade education. He’s living in a converted storage shed, getting by on food stamps and his wife’s $5-an-hour part-time job at a butane company.

The last thing he needs is a debate with ABC-TV newsman Sam Donaldson.

“He’s too good a talker for me to talk against. He leaves presidents speechless,” Salas said in Spanish during an interview Wednesday from his home in Hondo, a village in rural south-central New Mexico.

The 53-year-old Salas believes he’s been wronged by Donaldson, who fired him in July from his job on the newsman’s 11,000-acre ranch, where he raises cattle, sheep and mohair goats.

Salas, who has no health insurance, said Donaldson paid some of his medical bills when he hurt his back throwing tires onto a pickup truck, then fired him when he presented a doctor’s note saying he could do only light work.

“He told me I couldn’t do the work anymore. I told him I was still under a doctor’s care,” Salas said. “He told me, ‘I can’t pay your doctor bills for the rest of your life.”’

Donaldson said it’s unfair to paint him as a “hard-hearted” rancher, because his employees get better pay and have better working conditions than most ranch workers.