Thomas
Thomas, 55, grew up in San Diego. He went to several different high schools because it was the era of busing kids around the county to better integrate students of different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. He worked at several jobs and ended up as a marketing manager for a technical college. Then he developed lung cancer. He credits his supervisors with great compassion, trying to limit his work load and allowing for long absences. But the chemotherapy just beat the energy out of him. Now he’s on permanent disability, but he lost his job, his home and his car to medical bills. “Just trying to survive is a 24/7 job,” Thomas said. “There’s no showers, no public bathrooms.” More than anything he misses the ability to have a good hot meal, specifically steak, or eggs and potatoes for breakfast. He and his immediate neighbors on a freeway overpass help each other move their belongings each week when the city crews come to clean up. Ironically, he moves three blocks to the sidewalk in front of where he used to live.
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Mark Sheetz
Born in Arizona, his military family moved around and settled in Kentucky. Mark migrated to Texas then Florida pursuing a career in radio, but ending up waiting tables before joining the circus, then catching a bus to San Diego. After a brief stint at St. Vincent de Paul, where he felt the staff wasn't very helpful, and other shelters only had programs for addicts, he went back onto the streets. Eventually he was pressured at gunpoint into smuggling migrants across the border till he was caught and jailed. Now he plays banjo and sings with the homeless Voices of Our City choir, trying to find a place to stay indoors and make an honest living.
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Margarita
Margarita, 42, grew up in San Diego, went to Patrick Henry High. She started working early, at age 12, and married the general manager at a House of Pancakes where she was waitressing at age 22. They had two children. The drug culture in high school stayed with her, and she began using heroin somewhere in between children. When she was in the first of two rehab programs, she was appaulled by the sexual predators that were involved in running the program. When she got out she found some of her six sisters had turned her husband and kids against her, so she fell back into drug use. When she emerged from the second program, her father told her to move back in with him, but there were too many people there, she said, all of them wanting to tell her how to live her life. So she hit the streets. At age 42, she roams the streets with no visible possessions, save the trolley tickets folded up in a jacket pocket.
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Sandra and Gary
Sandra and Gary were sleeping near each other and watched over each other’s stuff on the streets of San Diego for month before they gradually became a couple. Sandra, 44, was born here, and moved with her family to Cancun when she was five. Even with five older brothers and sisters, lots of aunts, uncles and cousins, she had to work two jobs when she was old enough to do so. The work was hard on her because she injured her back at age eight, falling from a playground bar onto the concrete below. She was too young for surgery, they told her, so her back never healed properly. She moved back the the U.S. at age 31 and started working in the fields in Arizona, mostly harvesting broccoli. After three years it proved too difficult, after her husband pushed her backwards, further injuring her back, dislocating two discs. She moved to San Diego to try hotel work again, but only found 12-hour shifts. She sent her two children to live in Cancun while she tried to sort things out. Gary, 55, grew up in Minnesota. He enlisted in the Marine Corps at 18, a combat veteran of Desert Storm who retired after 20 years with an honorable discharge. He isn’t receiving his benefits, however, because it’s difficult to send papers to someone without an address, they tell him. He figures he is due $7,000 in back pay and has been on the list for the VASH housing program for two years, hoping for help soon.
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Sam
Sam, 23, dodged her mother's mental health episodes till she was finally tossed out of her Oceanside home at age 16. On the streets, other young people were jealous of her fortitude, staying away from drugs, refusing to sell her body for favors like a place to stay or getting high. So they beat her up and overdosed her. She ended up in the hospital, dying three times. When she went to retrieve her belongings upon release from medical care, she was arrested and jailed for having drugs in her system. She moved in with a boyfriend who soon started beating her and threatened their baby. He was arrested and she found help with a street mom who encouraged her to go live with her father, which she did. There she "got her shit together", got a job, then moved into her own apartment. Now Sam has a husband in the Marines, her own income from a good waitressing job, and is moving away from San Diego to live with her in-laws while her husband is deployed. "Life couldn't be no more better," she said.
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Alicia
Alicia Lamar, the kind of name a movie star or singer would adopt. Lamar smiles and quietly states “My voice is the voice of angels.” When asked what she likes to sing, she begins muttering about foster care, too many homes, abusive, hitchhiking across country from Boston, a father in the U.S. Navy: Okinawa.
Clutching a lighter in her hand, dropping her pink-and-blue blanket, her deep green eyes watch a growing crowd of Padres fans stack up across the street from the triangle of dirt she inhabits between the library and the Petco parking lot. Now 35, the U.S. Marine veteran of Afghanistan with square shoulders and a thick head of red hair begins to tear up when talking about her home on the East Coast. She circles a collapsed tent a few times like a cat, then grabs one side, lifting it high to spill its contents on the dirt. After a brief struggle she didn’t expect, Lamar says “It’s heavy for a reason. Forget it.” She pauses then says, “I need a tent.”
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Jeff
Ten weeks after Jeff Burrell was born in rural NE Ohio his Welsh-Apache mother handed him over to his French-Canadian father and left. His father, a womanizer, used Jeff as “punching bag,” for everything that went wrong mentally, physically or financially. To escape, he joined the Coast Guard, which put him on an ice breaker in the coldest regions of the planet for over three years. He spent time in Florida driving a forklift, in Missouri at a poultry processing plant and back home in Ohio before arriving in San Diego. Looking for quick cash he fell in with smugglers, moving people north and cars south across the border. That earned him two stints each in federal and state prisons. Now, on the proper medications for bipolar disorder, he's a calmer kinder person, with a service dog that he says shares his Napoleon complex. All he wants now is a roof and four walls to call home.
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Pastor Mike
Mike Little knew he was going to join the seminary by the time he was in high school, carrying a Bible around the hallways. His bronchitis kept him from joining the Air Force, which disappointed him and his career Marine father and his mother: a roller queen with the Bay City Bombers in Chicago. He fell in with a street ministry on the South Side, which lasted till one of the ministers was busted molesting a young girl. He traveled the country preaching, until a bad car accident sidelined him. Though his relationships have been extreme, one partner committed suicide, another was heavily addicted to crystal, and he is homeless now, his mission is to find funding for his dream: a ranch in Julian where homeless can live and learn skills like carpentry, landscaping and metal work, while having a safe place to live.
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Rayonna
Rayonna has been on the streets in San Diego most of her life. She's smart and tough, and sentimental. Especially when it comes to the two children who died shortly after being born, and another stolen by leukemia at age 15. She dedicates herself to her two surviving children and the "street daughters" she's adopted, counseling them not to sell themselves to men for an occasional roof over their heads or food. She is incensed that the local shelters give less assistance to pregnant homeless women than they give to addicts who just go right back out to the street once they're clean. And she's sad that the men on the street are more inclined to con or abuse the women than to protect them.
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Jesse
Jesse, 45, gets tired of people judging him and other homeless individuals. He can see it in their eyes, but tries to not let it get to him. "They threw rocks at Jesus," he points out. And those people judging him, "they're gonna have to answer to St. Peter in the end, just like we are." Jesse has PTSD from a life of struggle, fighting for stability. He was tired of his foster parents telling him what to do and trying to force him to read the Bible all the time. He moved out, but being homeless in New England gets rough when winter temperatures are 20 below. He lived in seven states before landing in San Diego, where he doesn't think the city does enough to help the homeless.
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Thomas
Thomas Burke, 34, was born in Hawaii, into a military family. He loved sports and played football, hoping to make it into onto an NFL team someday. He had two older brothers, but one is now a sister. A U.S. Army veteran, he saw combat during Iraqi Freedom from 2004 to 2006. He left with an honorable discharge, but feels the effects. He said he’s been diagnosed by a psychiatrist with bipolar disorder, ADHD and depression.
He has a temper, he admits, and loud arguments led to a divorce, which didn’t help him being grounded at all. He said his drug of choice is alcohol, and it’s not doing his liver any good. And as for his medications, he hasn’t been taking them for the last month because he lost his i.d., or else it was stolen, and he can’t retrieve medications without it.
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Anthony
Anthony Robinson was a promising young chef back home in Charleston, South Carolina. At age 22, he was working at two different restaurants as sous chef. With energy to spare, he thought "why not?" when some undercover cops approached him with an offer to help with a drug ring, and make some money doing it. Unfortunately they were dirty cops, illegally operating a drug ring. So Anthony had to choose between jail and moving out of state in the plea bargain. Leaving behind his nine-year-old daughter and her mother, he went as far as he could, ending up at the Port of San Diego, where he quickly found work at NASSCO laying cable. Falling ill one day, his supervisor sent him to see a doctor. Anthony was told he was sick, yes, but he also had three herniated discs, and no one would dare operate on him, with one being so close to his neck. So, at 33, he filed for disability, and hasn't been able to work since. Not a drinker or drug user, he has developed a reputation for being trustworthy among the homeless community. Everyone loves Anthony.
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Jack
Jack, 40, grew up in New Mexico. His adoptive parents made sure he got to take college courses in high school, he was that smart. At age 19 he fell in love and married a man ten years older. When Jack was accepted to Stanford Law School they moved to the Bay Area. He began working for a world class law firm after only two years of school. But the long hours kept him from his relationship, so he gave it all up; the two moved to Rancho Santa Fe and had parties. That's when he discovered his husband was meeting men online and having sex in public bathrooms. Jack learned he was HIV positive. His partner got abusive, would send him out on needless errands when drunk, so he ended up with DUIs and a stint in jail where he was raped by guards. Out on the streets, Jack is trying to put his life back together. He's studying neuropathy, wants to be a scientist, find secure housing and maybe learn to trust people again.
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Vilma
Vilma fled the chaos of drug violence and an abusive husband embroiled in a cartel in her native Honduras, bringing her two boys Manuel and Julio by bus to the U.S. border. After five days in detention, the family was granted asylum. But they still had nowhere to go, so they found their way to the fringes of East Village's homeless encampment, pitching a tent alongside others, beneath a sign that reads "No illegal lodging." Wary of trusting anyone, she sleeps with both eyes open, guarding the boys and their most important possession, the wheelchair for her youngest son who has muscular dystrophy. They hope to get into a shelter soon. In the meantime, Manuel buzzes up and down the sidewalk on a skateboard, which makes up for his inability to walk, and Julio learns English by playing word puzzles in a book.
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Don
Don Kohnhorst, 61, plays air guitar in church. If he had a real guitar he might make some money, he said, playing for tourists over in Balboa Park. He inherited his father's singing voice, though he never was able to follow in his father's footsteps playing country music in bars. His father looked like a tall blond Johnny Cash, and no one messed with him. He and Don's mother drank too much. Don more resembles Willie Nelson, and prefers weed. He keeps to himself, on the streets of Banker's Hill, and hopes to get into a senior affordable housing complex some day soon. One of the fortunate people on the street, he's never been to jail, has a good relationship with local police, and he doesn't have any health issues, though he's afraid the current government will take away Medicare, so he'd like to see a dentist before that happens.
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Tim
Tim followed in the footsteps of generations in his family before him by joining the U.S. Navy, escaping the farms and factories of rural Iowa. He spent five years loving the experience traveling from a construction detail on Diego Garcia Island to Guam then Japan and Greece, where he swears he lived in a previous life. Once he finished his military service he returned to the factories, fixing his assembly line belt to make "invisible pieces" so he'd get paid more than the dismal minimum wage of $3.35/hour. Once he was caught, he couldn't find work in Iowa so he moved to San Diego in 1994, where he's lived an unassuming existence in the shadows of abandoned buildings and freeway bridges, sipping 7-11 coffee and smoking pot. Tim makes a point to catch the free organ concerts in Balboa Park, especially when organist Carol Williams is performing a tribute to David Bowie or Jim Morrison.
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Shirley and Bill Sinclair
Shirley Sinclair, 68 and husband Bill Sinclair, 57, met in Las Vegas where she was hiding out from an abusive relationship in a shelter and he was the security guard. They’ve been married 15 years. They arrived in San Diego’s East Village only three months ago, thinking rents might be cheaper and social security advocates would be more helpful than they are in Nevada. Bill, from Boston, raised in an unfriendly foster home, happily joined the Navy as soon as he was 18, deployed to Iran during the hostage crisis, and throughout the Pacific region. Now he needs a liver transplant and has diabetes. He's lost 100 pounds. The two can't find a home they can afford where they can stay together, so they stay on the street. They're frustrated by San Diego's transit system, and how far it is to the Veteran's Administration.
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Matthew
Matthew, aka Shadow, 31, has a winning smile and clear blue eyes. He sits cross-legged against a signal box with a cardboard sign folded so many times it’s about to split in half. At age 14 months, doctors told his mother he has Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, a rare neurological disease. They told her he would be about 70% delayed in all things motor and cognitive. His mother was more concerned about her drug habit, and not getting too bruised by her husband, also an addict and alcoholic. He learned to swim, and that was the best time of his life, as a teenager, until his grandfather pulled him from the program. Later, after a turbulent marriage, jail and divorce, he is happy with his new girlfriend, an old high school flame, and together they hope to panhandle enough money to get a home together and start fresh.
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Chase
Chase Langley, 41, knows he's lucky to be alive. It was 11 years ago, at the age of 29, he first was hit with the lymphoma cancer that killed his twin brother at the age of nine. Of six children, only he and his brother got the disease, but he's also had two nephews die of it. Born in Illinois to a rear admiral father and medical officer in the Air Force mother with a high security clearance, battles raged at home when it was clear Chase was gay. His father put him up for adoption and worked to throw gay men and women out of the Navy. Chase got a bus ticket to San Diego, learned to be an excellent pastry chef, and had a nice life living in North Park. Until he got sick. Medical bills made it impossible to afford to stay in a home. He's been on the street for two years now, when he's not in the hospital.
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Randy
Randy Ferris, 62, joined the USMC at age 17. His military family moved around so much he had trouble focusing in school so he decided to learn about life by living it. Stationed off the coast of Vietnam for most of his years of service, and returned home to a less than warm welcome. He had anger issues and nearly killed someone. After 15 years in prison he chose living in a van in San Diego over returning to Rhode Island. After being pulled over, and having marijuana found in his car, he served a second stint in prison, and learned to curb both his attitude and his smoking. He hasn't driven for 14 years, but would love to be able to get some paperwork squared away with the military so he can get a check and some health care. He currently lives off the $195 from an EBT card, sharing with other veterans in his camp.
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