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The warehouse at Pima Computer Recycling is packed with our digital castaways.

Printers, keyboards and towers jam shelves while pallets of computers idle, waiting for techs to make them new again.

An outgrowth of the old Desert Waste Not Warehouse, Pima Computer Recycling is the place to be for aged machines. For the past year the warehouse has taken old computers, cleared their memories, restored their hard drives and processors and either donated or sold them to people who wouldn't normally be able to afford a computer.

And starting today, Pima Computer Recycling will begin teaching the trade of refurbishing computers to some of Tucson's down and out and disadvantaged.

The six-week class will take students referred from Pima County and teach them how to strip computers, test their components, wipe hard drives and, ultimately, put them back together for someone else to use. The students will be paid a stipend for attending and completing the class.

"We want these people who are homeless or disadvantaged to go out and get employment," said Pat Benchik, president of COPE Community Services. "It's jobs."

Pima Computer Recycling is COPE's baby. It's run by a COPE subsidiary, RISE Inc., and Benchik said everything about the program fits in with COPE's mission of helping people with substance-abuse and mental-health problems who are generally mired in poverty. The job skills can lead to work, which in turn can lead to stability and structure.

Although Pima Computer Recycling, 1134 S. Park Ave., is only a little more than a year old, it indirectly has deep ties to the Old Pueblo.

Its predecessor, the Desert Waste Not Warehouse, essentially acted as a clearinghouse for secondhand goods like clothing and furniture.

But during the 1990s, computers started trickling in more and more to Desert Waste Not Warehouse until they were becoming the bulk of its donations.

"It grew so much, it outgrew me," said Maiola Coleman, who was the director of Desert Waste Not.

About three years ago, up to her ears in computers, Coleman began to talk with Benchik about COPE, with its resources, taking over the program.

"You can't live without computers," Coleman said. "That's where the world is going."

In this way, organizers and community leaders say, the program serves a number of purposes, making computers accessible to all people while also providing technical job skills.

"We are all aware of the digital divide that exists in our community," said Pima County Supervisor Ramón Valadez. "This program here is about bridging that divide."

There is an environmental side, too. Many of the computers get picked up at the landfill, and there are a number of chemicals and toxins in the machinery that can seep into the ground.

"Our goal is to keep everything out of the landfill and keep the land clean for future generations," general manager Eva Macias said.

Pima Computer Recycling either donated or sold to the public 350 computer units — a combination of tower, monitor, keyboard and printer — in the last fiscal year, Macias said.

The most expensive computer, which has a 2 gigahertz processor, is going for $200. If people can't afford to buy a computer, they can also volunteer for 40 hours and then get one for free.

Macias said she is excited about the new classes, which will be conducted in a computer lab named after Tucson City Councilman Steve Leal, who secured some grant funding, and she hopes for continued community support in the future.