Written by Nick Michael
He swaggers. He whoops. He dresses like the Fourth of July.
He also saves you money on your taxes.
Known to friends and passers-by as “R.C.”, Rich Cambron is the official “waver” for Liberty Tax Service at the intersection of Beebe Capps Expressway and South Main Street in Searcy, Ark. Now waving for his second tax season, Cambron has received accolades from all angles, most notably from Liberty Tax’s corporate offices as Arkansas’ “2008 Waver of the Year.”
Star-spangled and sun-baked, Cambron sizzled with energy even indoors. Wearing a Captain America baseball jersey and red and white pinstripe pants, he removed a pair of shamrock sunglasses before explaining his amazement at his status as a minor Searcy celebrity.
“I can’t go out of state,” Cambron said. “People know me. They say, ‘You’re the waver.'”
Still, he does more than merely wave. Cambron knows how to put on a show.
“I do the strut like Ric Flair, and I’ll do the twirl,” he said. “It’s like a hurricane spin. Last time they timed me it was four minutes, and I never fell down. Not yet.”
Corporate “waver” judges were impressed. In addition to honors as the “Waver of the Year,” Liberty Tax awarded Cambron a hat and a barbeque grill set.
“I was surprised when a guy from corporate came down and said, ‘I have a surprise for you,'” Cambron said, remembering the day he received the award. “I was speechless.”
Motorists have felt the same at times, but their horns and sheepish grins speak for themselves. Every now and then someone whoops back.
“My first reaction is to smile,” said Sara Shaban, a Harding University student who frequents the intersection. “When you look around at the people in the other cars, they’re all smiling. Everybody secretly enjoys him.”
Cambron, who claims to have elicited 1,500 honks in a day, makes more than noise for his Liberty Tax location. Manager Brad Cooper said he believes his tax center owes as much as 25 percent of their business to Cambron, whom he said is a model employee.
“The worst complaint we have on him is that when it starts raining and lighting outside, he don’t want to come in,” Cooper said. “He’s a grown man, you know. We’ve told him to come inside, but he stays out there and works.”
Cambron said he is hunting something besides the honors or the attention. He said it makes him feel good to brighten someone’s day with a whoop or a twirl. No red-lit Searcy intersection has ever felt so like an audience, and sometimes Cambron gets a little feedback.
“I have kids that come up and hug me,” Cambron said. “And it makes a good feeling in my heart, cause I have kids also.”
Cambron’s stories from this tax season alone have involved him signing 300 kids’ shirts, making a stoic widow smile, receiving lemonade from a group of Harding girls and completing a freestanding back flip.
“I had horns from north, south, east and west,” Cambron said. “And they was honking for at least five minutes.”
With Cambron on the corner, Searcy can’t help but smile back.
