Tue May 18,11:09 AM ET By Geoffrey Mohan Times Staff Writer
The scrapbook tucked under the bookshelf in Rudy Basurto's living room isn't full of family portraits — just photos of cabinets.
The one with the opaque windowpane doors is the pantry he built for Jamie Lee Curtis. The Mission-style one, in mahogany, is in Bruce Willis' place in Malibu.
Basurto is 48 years old. He makes about $20 an hour building cabinets but can't afford to buy a home in his Highland Park neighborhood. He has bartered his labor to put his three teenage children through Catholic school. They're on their own for college.
Basurto's family is far from poor, by the official measure. The federal poverty level for a family of five is $21,959. Last year, Rudy and his wife, Maryellen, together earned more than twice that: $45,000.
In many parts of the country, they might be middle class. But in Los Angeles, they are struggling. Like roughly a third of the county's population, they live somewhere between where poverty ends and prosperity begins.
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