Scorpio
Scorpio, 53, moved to San Diego in 2003 when his two favorite football teams, the Raiders and Bucaneers, were playing in the Super Bowl at Qualcomm. A skilled worker in carpentry, roofing and cement, he figured the proposed residential high rises that were slated to go up around Petco Park would mean plenty of work to go around. Not so. He ended up in his car, doing a lot of crystal meth and spending time in jail here and in L.A. Having frown up in the Pacific Northwest skiing on snow in winter, lakes in the summer, he prefers being outdoors anyway, he said. He said most homeless are fat and lazy and need counseling. He also feels the city's politicians are taking money earmarked for homeless programs and putting it in their pockets because there are no public showers or bathrooms.
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Tshakalisa
Tshakalisa, 34, emigrated from Zimbabwe as a college student, intent on medical school. With the help of friends and scholarships he earned a degree in biology and a secondary education in nursing. He worked at fast food restaurants until he had his degree and then worked in health clinics, in a jail clinic and with the healthcare company HCA as a surgical nurse. Until his visa ran out. He couldn't get help renewing the visa, so couldn't keep a job. Back home, war was threatening his family so he was granted asylum. But the stress took its toll on him. The stress and his dyslexia made taking medical exams difficult. He was worried about what his parents would think of him if he failed. He turned to drugs, did a few too many, and pulled a knife on someone. He went to jail. When he got out he fled that scene, coming to San Diego to start life over.
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James
James Forristal, 40, grew up in Kansas City. His father had anger issues, and his mother wasn't around much. His sister moved in with her boyfriend, and he earned his GED so he could get a job and move out on his own. He did clerical work in a bank and a corporate office, but it became boring. So he moved to San Diego, where his family had spent a happy vacation. All was well until his uncle got cancer last year and James returned home to be with him through is passing. A sensitive, introverted individual, James is affected deeply by global crises like Fukushima and war refugees. Since returning to San Diego he has had stress issues, been beaten and was recently hospitalized with pneumonia. He turns to opiates for comfort but retains his quiet independence.
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Nicholas
Nicholas, aka Poodle, 29, ran away from his Oceanside home at age 14. He’s been living in Balboa Park pretty much ever since. And it’s been a good life, according to Poodle. He was disinherited by his family because he wanted to be an artist. He loved fashion and makeup. His parents wanted him to be a businessman. In San Diego’s vast urban park he met other runaway kids and they formed their own family. Learning to survive has been fun, but has its challenges. He's been stabbed, almost kidnapped, and twice jumped off the Prado bridge. He still loves fashion and drugs. But he's trying to cut back on the drugs. The most important thing for Poodle is being able to live happy, and for now, he's happy.
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Fran
Fran Brown, 49, sits sentry with her service dog Lucky, a cheerful Husky/Akita mix that doesn’t know they are homeless. Born in Oklahoma, raised, beginning at the age of nine, by her full blooded Cherokee grandmother on the reservation, she endured the taunting by American Indian schoolmates who said she wasn’t native enough, and by European American classmates who said she was too native. Her grandmother had rescued her from an abusive home life shared with too many siblings. She thrived in the USMC, an aviation mechanic, for 18 years until sidelined by an accident. Today, she and Lucky just try to get by on San Diego's streets.
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Frenchie
Frenchie Jackson, 56, retired USMC, graduated from Lincoln High, has strong opinions. His father was a great role model, who retired from General Dynamics, his mother was a social worker. He has four siblings, and reveres his youth where kids danced and played football, rather than running in gangs and shooting at eachother. After five years in the U.S. Marines, he did manual labor jobs and laments he didn't have a life plan. He got into drugs and was arrested for sales. He went into a program to clean up. Now his main purpose is staying positive and saving money to buy a fishing boat and Harley-Davidson. He hates homeless who use the street as a public bathroom, opposes swearing in songs on the radio and takes the "don't give someone a fish, teach them how to fish" approach to life.
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Duck
Don "Duck" Wills, 64, remembers important dates. Like the Christmas Day his mother told him she wished he'd never been born. Or the day when he was 10 that his father committed suicide. He remembers every Friday when his stepfather beat him with the buckle end of a belt until his 13th birthday when he stood up to the man and threatened to kill him. He remembers joining the Air Force and trying to commit suicide. He left Texas on January 1, 2001 and came to San Diego. He has lived on and off the streets here ever since.
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Enrique
Art is Enrique's happy place. North County native Enrique Alonzo Cabrera, 53, migrated to the east coast when his parents disapproved of him being gay. He lived in Baltimore with his partner nearly a decade before missing the California sun. He moved to Hollywood, found a new partner, who survived longer than most with AIDS. Enrique soaked his sorrows in a bad decision, having sex with someone in a nightclub bathroom, who told the police Enrique had assaulted him. After three years in prison, seven on probation, Enrique keeps a low profile, watching his diet because he is insulin-dependent, painting paper roses in exchange for coffee and a combo meal, and sleeping in a secret spot away from the downtown homeless scene.
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Brittany and Joey
At the point most people would call rock bottom, these two met. And through an act of compassion they became an unlikely but complimentary couple, married nearly four years now. Both were abused as children, were in and out of CPS, CYA, and had seriously combative home lives growing up. After his mother committed suicide, he suppressed his emotions and lashed out at everyone, including prison guards. She went through the foster care system and escaped being sex trafficked to fend for herself. Despite physical ailments and no reason whatsoever to trust anyone ever again, they found a quiet storm in supporting each other against the world. They would really like to find a normal living situation and even menial labor so they could start life afresh together.
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Cheryl
Cheryl Blue, 58, has many interesting life stories; most of them revolve around an obsession with Gregg Allman. She has spent decades mostly on, some off, the streets of San Diego, and keeps a positive attitude by staying creative. She paints tiny greeting cards, mostly in the shape of crosses, or the star of David, or even mosques, so as to not leave any religion out. Raised by a military family that traveled the world, she credits an art teacher in Wales for supporting her artistic tendencies. She tried to be the stay at home mom, baking bread, sharing recipes with the neighbors and home schooling her kids with Christian overtones, but both boys ended up rock 'n' roll musicians anyway. Still, with physical disabilities and living on food stamps, she maintains a smile. "I try not to worry about tomorrow," she says.
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Red
Red knows how to fight. As the only fair-skinned white kid growing up in South Central LA, being called Carrot Top set him off. He slipped right into a gang culture and never left it, gaining a reputation forbeing the one to do the craziest stuff, “like jump through someone’s window to grab their jewelry box,” he said. Hi father was a hard-working machinist who eventually stole something to feed his large family. He went to prison for it. Red was in and out of CYA camps, then prison himself. A road trip with a friend took him to Canada where he fell in love, started a family, but was chased out by his girlfriend's mother, who alerted authorities to his illegal status. After 20 years on San Diego's streets, Red says he's ready to go inside and settle down, but no one will rent to a man with no real income and a prison record.
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Randell
“I don’t know why they just don’t make homelessness illegal,” said Randell, 50, as he folded up his tent for the weekly cleanup on 17th Street downtown. “They keep coming up with this measly little laws around the edge: no loitering, jay walking, no carts, encroachment. I thought encroachment was in football.” Randell grew up in San Diego, went to San Diego High. He wonders why the city doesn't open up it's empty buildings for the homeless; since they're paying for electricity to be on, and the property taxes, he said, why not take the people off the street, give them real counseling. "The city shouldn’t complain about the problem and then not do anything about it,” he said.
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Cookie
Cookie, 48, moved to San Diego with her parents when she was six years old. A graduate of Pacific Coast College, she works as a home health care provider when she can find work; but it's not enough to pay the bills. So she stays on the street, near where her sons are also out on the street. She says you get used to it when you're surrounded by friends and family, but her old bones are getting ready to try and find room in a shelter. In the meantime she directs all her nurturing tendencies towards her three-month-old puppies, Tifu and Nyla.
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Louis
Louis Roldan, 29, is traveling the world playing music and philosophizing through his experiences. Born in Chicago to a hard working teenager and a Puerto Rican heroin addict. His father would sell the food from the cabinets, even the t.v., to get high. Every time he was in prison he swore he would change, but never did. Louis has learned how to not treat people, has studied political science and hopes to some day become a judge. In the meantime, he plays his ukelele for the Universe, mostly in the U.S., Mexico and across Europe. In the U.S., people see him as homeless, but in Europe they see him as a young traveler and invite him in, thanking him for his music and his fresh attitude.
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Steve
Steve Hillard, 52, grew up just a mile from where he is now living on the street under a freeway bridge. He laments the way many of the drug-addicted homeless will stay up all night going through trash "like it's a treasure hunt" leaving the place a mess that reflects poorly on everyone else. He wishes the police and the city officials would treat them like citizens with more money that the homeless have, and give them a decent job with a living wage so they can get a place to live that a person on a minimum wage can afford.
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David
David, 53, born in LA grew up in a patriotic, Christian home, moving around the country. He studied teaching English while wandering the library reading books on chemistry and calculus, which came in handy calculating coordinates for missile strikes while in the US Army. From there he joined an evangelical group converting Taiwanese to Christianity, but soured on their methods. Back in the States he fell into drugs and alcohol but sobered up, fell into a compassionate relationship, but suffered again when she died. Now he plucks out Bowie tunes on the four remaining of a six-string electric guitar.
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Beverly and Ryan
Beverly, 38, and son Ryan, 8, are conscientious about their health despite being homeless. They maintain a vegan diet, and she home schools him, since that's the way she started learning, a much more effective system than the public school in North Carolina full of drugs and gangs. They have tried every shelter in San Diego, some twice, without being able to secure permanent housing. She would love a live-in caregiver position or to work on a community farm.
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Tom
Tom, 63, has a degree in physics. Life was good, raising a family in small town Michigan, working for a company that installs fire sprinklers, designing their systems. Then his marriage broke up, and the people he worked for discovered he had Jewish ancestry. He moved to St. Louis, and his new employers at a similar business were associates of his old company, so he felt he was being pressured out. He traveled the country in his car, with his dog, doing odd jobs, landing in San Diego to live with his son, a machinist in the US Navy, until the son moved. He feels he's escaped death enough times he keeps looking over his shoulder and never sleeps in the same place two nights in a row. Lately, he feels God is telling him to find a safe home indoors finally.
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Cat
Cat, 63, has a degree in biological chemistry, is a black belt in karate, and spent 13 months in California Youth Authority taking the rap for a murder someone else in her gang committed. She would love to see the government finally do right by veterans and their families, and has a theory on how to retool the local homeless assistance agencies.
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Andrea
Andrea Lewis is a licensed pharmacy technician, hoping to own her own business someday doing nutrition and colonics. She sees that as a path to health for herself and others dealing with too much fast food. She spends her days at the library looking for work and grants to finance education. She traded her life on the street for church back in 2000, went to school and has only been able to get part time or temporary work in her chosen profession. She's been homeless since 2004, but she declares this year as her year to rise up.
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