Cat

Cat thinks about the fact our country is going to be 250 years old pretty soon.  She feels we desperately need to upgrade our educational and political systems to reflect the 21st century of civilization.

Cat has a degree in biological chemistry. She was a research and development technician. She studied business management and did years of social work, ironically, with the homeless.
A proud San Diegan with four children and nine grandchildren, she remembers being the first female valedictorian at Perkins Elementary School. And then there’s the dark side, where she joined a gang as a teenager, took the rap for someone else’s murder and spent 13 months at the California Youth Authority.

All of that personal experience in the system, and professional training in how to help others deal with it, makes Cat a tough, smart authority on the street.

She has critically observed that when children don’t have stability before the age of five, have no sense of who to trust or even how to trust anyone, “that sets the tone for their lives,” she said. They end up on the street, like she did. But Cat doesn’t have a victim mentality. She’d rather analyze the system and come up with solutions.

“Half the people here get a check,” she said, sweeping a hand across a patio of homeless individuals having breakfast. “But they can’t afford housing. Once they are in a place they’ll have cash to pay for food and look for work, but it’s just that initial getting over the threshold into a place they can call home.”
She especially feels the VA system has failed our veterans and their families.

“It’s a revolving door at the non-profits that help the homeless,” she said. “All those programs are just set up to feed themselves, keep themselves employed.”

It’s too noisy at the Rescue Mission to get any sleep. She joins the chorus of people who feel that at St. Vincent de Paul people feel their belongings aren’t safe and the residents don’t get any respect from the staff. She didn’t like the “permissive partying” at Rachel’s.

Cat proudly talks about her role in creating some of the safer camps on the street and in the park. As a slight, older, blond woman, it might be easy to take her for a push-over. That would be a mistake. She’s been a black belt in karate since she was 17. “I took out four guys that jumped me on the street,” she commented. “They didn’t come back.”