A Gift of Hope: Helping the Homeless (5 page)

We also realized that we needed a team if we were going to do this regularly. It had been a lot of work for just five of us, jumping in and out of the van all night, and there were safety issues to think of also. There were two policemen I knew well, and I called them to ask if they’d be willing to do this with us when off duty. My one condition in every case was that they tell no one, and they agreed.

Randy and Bob, the two policemen, instantly enlisted. I didn’t know how often we would go out on our secret missions, but I knew I wanted to go back into the streets again, maybe on a regular basis. Eventually, we decided to go once a month, in two vans. It took that long to stock up and reorder things, and even in the beginning, the project was expensive. I decided it was something I wanted to underwrite, and how I wanted to spend my money.

We all noticed that each time we went out, there was a unique atmosphere to the evening. No two trips were the same. Ever. The weather affected the spirits of the people we met, but aside from that, there was a different mood on the streets on any given night. Sometimes it was more serious, almost gloomy, at other times somber, or there would be a strange aura of tension that seemed ominous to all of us. At other times people were more lighthearted, less tense, and easy, and even joked with us for a minute. Sometimes we glided through the evenings without a hitch. At other times
we felt frightened and more worried for our safety, and could feel a palpable tension. It was impossible to predict, but the atmosphere on the streets seemed to have a life of its own.

That unpredictable aura we were all aware of made it even more important to have the right team.

In addition to Tony and Younes, and Bob and Randy, the two off-duty policemen, two more of my employees were enthusiastic about signing up. Cody and Paul had both been Nick’s nurses, and had gone to work in other ways in my office after his death, Paul in security, and Cody as an executive assistant who helped run the foundation we had set up in Nick’s memory. Although I never said so openly, they both sensed correctly that this homeless work had a lot to do with Nick, and both men wanted to be involved. John and Jane were still enthusiastic participants. That brought our team up to nine. Knowing the terminology now, which I didn’t then, we became an “outreach team,” reaching out to people on the streets. Other outreach teams working on the streets do different things, but none did exactly what we did, offering warm clothing and sleeping bags to the people we served.

There was very little coordination or even communication among the other outreach teams we encountered, and often they didn’t even know about one another. Each group was operating independently and doing what they could. And there seemed to be no overlap of services. We had each found a
niche and a role we were good at. And the homeless needed us all.

So that was our original team: Younes, Tony, Paul, Cody, Bob, Randy, Jane, John, and me. That seemed like plenty to us. Later we were joined by two more off-duty police officers who were also friends, Jill and Joe. And much later, on a few rare occasions, I took close friends into my confidence and invited them out with me. They were stunned by what they saw, and I swore them to secrecy about what I was by then doing on a regular basis.

But in the beginning we were a team of nine. We realized that with nine of us, and supplies for a hundred people, we needed more than the two vans we were using. I still had Nick’s van in the garage, the one he had used to tour with his band. It was covered inside and out with graffiti and stickers from a variety of bands they had toured or played with, and it was pure Nick. I loved the idea of using his van. It was another way of making him part of our experiences, and a sweet memory of him as we drove around.

The safety of the team was very important to me. I was very grateful that no one had gotten hurt so far (and thankfully never did). We always reminded one another to be cautious if someone on the team got too relaxed and less alert (usually me). It was also risky business to take the uninitiated out with us, and we avoided it most of the time. We worked
in dangerous areas, serving unpredictable people. Lack of awareness, a moment’s hesitation, stopping to ask “why” instead of getting out fast if we had to, could put all of us at risk, and it was more comfortable to work with people who knew what they were doing. And we, as a team, were slowly gaining experience and becoming more savvy.

Among the few who joined us to lend a spare pair of hands hauling bags out of the van was a dear friend, Michael, who is a person of deep religious leanings. Like Jane and John, he had worked for many years with people with AIDS, through hospice. And after his work with us, he went to the Middle East, Liberia, and South America as a missionary. He was wonderful doing outreach on the streets and became a frequent member of our team. As we began to serve more people, our operation went more smoothly if there were twelve or thirteen of us. It distributed the work better and kept us safer, so we were willing to take one or two additional people with us, if they seemed suitable.

Eleven on the team were barely enough and more than thirteen were too many. But adding the wrong “guest worker” was more headache than it was worth. Although our nighttime activities sounded appealing to compassionate people, coming face-to-face with the hard physical work of unloading the vans, carrying the supplies, and confronting the dangers on the streets and miserable conditions in bad weather scared
most people off, and they didn’t sign up again. It was never what they expected and was always hard to predict or describe beforehand—and some nights were tougher than others. The risks we faced, became used to, and took as commonplace were frightening to people who had never been out there before. For some it was just too much. Others found it remarkable, but had no desire to join us again. We always understood and were grateful for their help, even once.

When we began our work, we used two vans and eventually added Nick’s as a third. Seeing his van always gave me the comforting sensation that Nick was with us. And halfway through the night, we would reload the third van (which left us short-handed temporarily and was a little dicey for the rest of us). But we delivered four vanloads of goods to the streets, and the system of reloading worked. Using trucks would have been too cumbersome. And four vanloads of goods were all we could afford. If we had had the funds to do it, we could have given away twice as much—the need was always there.

As our outreach team grew in the beginning, we formed a group of volunteers to sort and pack the supplies. It took two or three weekends to do it, with Jane overseeing and ordering the supplies. With time, we became increasingly organized.

We left for our “missions” shortly after six o’clock at night,
with the vans loaded. We realized that going at night made the most sense, because in the daytime people on the streets roam around, pushing carts and wandering. It was easier to locate them once they settled down for the night, so we went out after dark, and it was safer for us to go out when we were less visible.

I always prayed silently for the safety of everyone involved. Despite my enthusiasm and commitment to the idea, I was well aware, as we all were, that there were dangers on the streets, and obvious risks. We had no set plan as to how to deal with those dangers, but two things gave me the illusion that we were safe. One was that the idea had come to me in church. How could anything happen to us if we were sent out there to do God’s work? I mentioned this to a priest once, who was quick to respond that the church does not canonize the foolish. Good point. And it took me a while to realize that getting the idea in church did not guarantee our safe passage on the streets, not by any means. We had some close calls over the years. You have to watch your back, be smart, alert, and sometimes get out of the way fast.

I was reassured by the presence of four off-duty police who were part of our group. But even that didn’t guarantee that we would have no mishaps, I realized later, because we spread out, we found ourselves at times alone with groups of homeless people around us in dangerous neighborhoods and situations,
and bad things can happen fast. But certainly having police officers with us helped, and I might not have been brave enough to do it otherwise long-term. I was concerned with the well-being of everyone on the team. Our police officers in the group never had to put their professional skills to use, but their awareness, caution, instincts, and expertise at handling difficult situations saved us more than once, and probably avoided greater problems.

More than once, as we set out for the night’s work, I remembered a film I had seen as a child about bullfighters, and how they prayed before going into the ring. Strangely, I felt like that, not sure what we’d be facing, but praying that everyone would come back unhurt and alive. I felt very responsible for the team. Going to mass before our nights on the streets became a ritual for me, as well as lighting candles for everyone working. No matter how comfortable I got out there, I never lost sight of the risks or the potential dangers of what we were doing, and that we were on the streets with the grace of God, and hopefully doing His work as best we could.

No one ever had time to eat before we took off in the vans, so someone had once thought to bring a big box of doughnuts. They became the source of many jokes over the years, but they actually sustained us through the night. Later, trying to add a more “upscale” note, Bob brought a box of almond croissants. These two items became traditions on our trips.
Unfortunately, both boxes always sat next to me in the van, and I ate far too many of them every time, but they really hit the spot! It was a crazy diet for nights when we needed a lot of energy, but it was all any of us ever ate on those nights, along with occasional offerings of popcorn from Jill. Most of the time, we were too excited, and running on too much adrenaline, to eat. If thirsty, we drank soda or water. We never stopped for coffee, even when we were cold. We didn’t want to slow down, stop, or waste time. We had better things to do.

Each time we did outreach, we headed south, three vans in convoy, past a small park where homeless people camp on the grass, even in cold weather. There was no shelter there, but there was a lot of space, and a church across the street, with a handful of people in the doorway. This became our traditional first stop of the night, and most of the time, with rare exceptions, we did a lot of “business” there. We were still giving away loose goods in the beginning, and Jane had organized them well, each size in separate boxes, each item readily available, and one of the vans with only sleeping bags. With three sizes of jackets for men and two for women, my first question as I walked up to people, after telling them we had things for them, was “Excuse me, sir, are you a large or an extra large?” The men stared at me as though I was crazy, and the team made fun of me. (After a while, I could pretty much eyeball our clients and guess the right size.) There was a lot of
teasing among the team about our “winter line” as opposed to our “spring line,” and if someone would be coming out to do alterations later. It kept the mood light in the early part of the evening, when we were able to give people items that really fit in the correct size.

With off-duty cops on board, we were braver about venturing into some nasty neighborhoods that night, and thereafter. We felt a confidence that maybe we shouldn’t have, but we wanted to be where we were needed most. And the policemen added fearlessness. They knew what they were doing and what not to confront. We made some early safety rules, and set some boundaries about neighborhoods. There were so many homeless people in the city that there were a lot of options. We decided to avoid the Panhandle area of Garden Gate Park, near the once-famous Haight-Ashbury, because there were mostly transient young people there, almost all of whom were high on drugs, and whose homelessness often stemmed from that. We wanted to get to the hardcore homeless at the bottom of the barrel, where no one else would go, not the “cream” at the top.

Our fear was that in the Panhandle, the kids would be most likely to sell what we gave them, for more drugs, which seemed to defeat our purpose. There were also parts of the
park where our police teammates felt it was just too dangerous for us to go, where we would have to climb through bushes in the dark and were too likely to get attacked. Likewise, we made Hunter’s Point off limits, where street violence was extreme and where shootings occurred too frequently for our safety. We eliminated another area where dirty needles were the weapon of choice. And the police on our team said that if we worked in the Tenderloin, we were likely to inadvertently interrupt the flow of business in drug traffic, and we were liable to get killed. Sixth Street was the hotbed of drug deals and also the scene of frequent shootings, and Bob and Randy said that we were almost certain to get shot there, so that was out.

But in spite of those reasonable limitations, that still left huge parts of the city, mostly south of Market Street, where we would find countless homeless people. It was a big area, and those still relatively dangerous regions kept us busy all night. And admittedly now and then we strayed into places we shouldn’t have, where we’d promised not to go, but we tried not to stay long and moved on as fast as was practical. Bob and Randy advised us that wherever we went, the goal was to get in and out fast, not to give people too much time to think about it or attack us if we were in a tight situation in a tough neighborhood. In the gentler places, we could stay longer, but they still urged us to move quickly. It’s a policy we
stuck with and that always worked well for us, even when we made mistakes and wound up where we shouldn’t. Moving at high speeds served us well every time. We didn’t need to linger, we gave what we had and got out. We were there to get a job done, not hang out.

Another agreement we made early on was what to do if someone tried to hijack the van. Many people living on the streets have weapons. Some have guns, but knives were more current, and getting stabbed was a real possibility for us, working at close range. More than once I asked myself what I was doing. I am a single mother of eight children who need me. Risking getting killed on the streets wasn’t sensible, yet I had an overwhelming need to continue what I’d started, as did the others. But I had a strong sense of responsibility to the rest of the team too. I worried a lot about them getting hurt, and we all kept a watchful eye and tried to cover each other’s backs whenever we could. It wasn’t always possible, but at least we tried. Despite that, we split up at times or found ourselves alone, surrounded by sometimes hostile homeless men. But we were both sensible and lucky, and I’m deeply grateful that none of us ever got hurt.