A Gift of Hope: Helping the Homeless Read online

  Copyright © 2012 by Danielle Steel

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Steel, Danielle.

  A gift of hope: helping the homeless / Danielle Steel.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-53137-7

  1. Homelessness—United States. 2. Homeless persons—United States. 3. Steel, Danielle. I. Title.

  HV4505.S737 2012

  362.50973—dc23

  2011017260

  www.bantamdell.com

  Cover design: Mary Ann Smith

  Cover image: © Creative Crop/Jupiter Images (bear)

  Andy Crawford/Getty Images (duffle bag)

  Jose Azel/Getty Images (snowy bench and rock wall)

  v3.1_r1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Foreword

  One: How and Why “Yo! Angel!” Started

  Two: Second Night Out

  Three: The Team

  Four: What Are We Doing to Help? Or Not.

  Five: The Clients: Who Are They?

  Six: Some Scary Moments

  Seven: Supplies … and Teddy Bears

  Eight: Other Groups and What They Do

  Nine: In Conclusion

  Afterword

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  “Were it not for Hope,

  the heart would break.”

  —Scottish proverb

  FOREWORD

  For eleven years, I worked on the streets with the homeless, and without question it altered my life. It is life-changing to be there, to look into the eyes of people who are lost, suffering, sick in body and mind, most of whom have lost hope. They are the forgotten people, whom no one wants to think about or know. For most people it’s terrifying to acknowledge them, or see them—what if that could happen to us? It’s a horrifying thought. “There but for the grace of God …”

  I’ve watched people quietly disintegrate on the streets, and seen some of them go from people without a place to live to people who have no life, no hope, no way out. Some have disappeared, some have died, some of the young ones have gone home, some have gotten help from the available programs and agencies, but most of them are still out there, their situation worsening day by day. And in our fragile economy, the number of people on the streets has increased exponentially.

  My goals were never lofty. At first I had no goals at all. In my own grief at having lost a son, I tried to help people who appeared to be in as much pain as I, even if for different reasons. I began to learn what they needed, practically, and to supply those needs. And eventually I realized that my “mission,” if you can call it that, was only to keep them alive until real help could address their broader needs. My focus was small and specific: to keep them alive on the streets, to keep them warm and dry and fed, to make them as comfortable as possible in a terrible situation. It was all I could do. I am not a political person, I have no influence on city government, I didn’t have enough money to save them all. I’m not a physician or a psychiatrist to address their medical problems. I was one person who wanted to do what I could, with the help of ten others who helped me form what became a very efficient team. We went out night after night, dealt with whatever we found, and served three hundred people a night, three or four thousand a year. We gave them clean, warm new clothing, tools they needed, hygiene supplies, a few practical things like umbrellas and flashlights, pens and pads, and safe, healthy packaged food. And I hope that along the way, we saved a life or two—or more.

  Right from the beginning, it was essential to me to remain anonymous in this work, both to the people I served, and in the larger world. I remained convinced that it was completely unimportant who I was. We created something unique, helping to keep the homeless alive on the streets, giving them what they needed most acutely. I felt that my identity was irrelevant and could only get in the way. It didn’t matter who I was. Talking about my work on the streets served no purpose either. I was sure that anyone who knew about it would view it with contempt or suspicion, or use it as a springboard to publicity that I didn’t want. I wanted to do the work as quietly and invisibly as possible, and I never deviated from that until finally, with what I had learned, I felt that speaking up for them would help them more than my silence.

  I am lending the homeless my voice now, so that others will think about them and see their plight. If I, who have walked among them for eleven years and care about them, don’t speak for them, who will? Although I have always said that I would never do this, and have done everything I could to stay below the radar, I have finally realized that I need to speak up and share what I’ve learned. I can be the voice in the world they do not have. There are more people than ever on the streets, there is less and less money available to help them, and some of the laws regarding hospitalization of the mentally ill need to change. But before anything can change, people must be willing to see the homeless and not pretend they aren’t there. They so desperately need our help, in so many ways. And we cannot help or change what we refuse to see.

  There is so much that needs to be done, and the smallest effort matters and makes a difference: clothing, meals, medical treatment, psychiatric help, wound care, a ride to an emergency room, a blanket, a kind hand. There is much for even the uninitiated to do. And it takes many to do it.

  So this book is a call for help. There are too few of us reaching out to those on the streets, in a silent, unseen war where too many lives are being lost, when in fact so many more could be saved if only people knew, or cared. There are in fact several groups in every city, working diligently to help the homeless in any way they can, and many of them privately organized and funded when city and state governments don’t do enough to help.

  The homeless need so many things from us. In addition to housing, medical care, mental health care, and job training, they need a strong hand to help them up. And aside from what we can do practically, we need to share our strength and give them hope: the hope that things can change, and the courage to hang on.

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but along with the supplies we handed out, we gave them hope. We stopped our vans, we jumped out, we walked up to people who had never seen us before and probably wouldn’t again, and we handed them bags filled with what they needed to survive for weeks or even months. And we wanted nothing in return. Nothing. They didn’t have to embrace our religion, our beliefs, our politics. They didn’t need to know where we came from, or why. They didn’t even need to say thank you, although they always did, always. And for one shining instant, they knew with total certainty that someone cared, and fell out of the sky to help them, like an answer to their prayers. It led them to believe that good things could happen again. It showed that someone cared. It gave them hope, which was our most important gift to them.

  ONE

  How and Why “Yo! Angel!” Started

  The homeless outreach team that changed my life, and that of many others, began at a very dark time for me. My son Nick showed signs of suffering from bipolar disease from his earliest childhood. At eighteen months, I found him “different,” and precocious long before that (he walked at eight months and spoke in full sentences in two languages when he was a year old). At four, I was convinced that he was manic. When he was fi
ve, I sought advice from doctors and psychiatrists who brushed off my concerns, and assured me he was “fine.” And when he was seven, I alternated between panic and despair, convinced that he was sick, begging for help for him, while every doctor I consulted reassured me and insisted there was nothing wrong. I have a great fondness now for doctors who respect the bond that mothers have with their children and acknowledge that we know them best of all. I knew my son was sick, but no professional would agree.

  When Nick was a very young child, which is not so very long ago, the tradition adhered to by most psychiatrists was that manic depression (or bipolar disease as it is more frequently called now), could not be diagnosed until a patient was in his early twenties, and was staunchly never medicated before that age. The medication most commonly used for bipolar disease was lithium. And it was considered exceptional and almost revolutionary when I found a very respected expert on manic depression at UCLA, who gave Nick lithium at sixteen. And for a brief time, lithium was a miraculous wonder drug for him. For the first time in years he was able to lead what appeared to be a totally normal life because of the drugs, and his diagnosis was established: He was bipolar. To be diagnosed at that age was almost unheard of then. Today, they give lithium to children suspected of being bipolar at four or five. That was unthinkable when Nick was that age. And the belief now is that if you diagnose and medicate bipolar children, they have a much better chance of having a normal life later on.

  I’ve written a whole book about Nick, his illness and his life, his victories and defeats, and our great love for him, so I won’t go into detail here. He had two very good years of productive, normal life once he was medicated. And at eighteen, still on the appropriate drugs, he felt so normal that he insisted he wanted to stop taking them. Much to my chagrin (and terror), he spiraled down immediately once off them, and within five weeks he made his first suicide attempt, and very nearly succeeded. Miraculously, he survived, and assured me he wouldn’t do it again, but did so ten days later, and was saved again. He made three unsuccessful suicide attempts in three months, then got back on his medications and improved immediately, and with the naïveté of a loving parent, I thought we were home free. After those three suicide attempts, he seemed better, happier, more productive, and more functional than he had ever been, until fierce depression hit him again six months later. He made his final and tragically successful suicide attempt eleven months after the first one, and died at nineteen.

  It was a heartbreaking time for me, my eight other children, and all those who knew and loved Nick. Although I have eight wonderful children for whom I am immeasurably grateful, he left an enormous hole in our lives, and will be forever missed. The first months after he died were bleak, to say the least. Like many grieving parents, I had a hard time getting from one day to the next.

  To compound things further, as sometimes happens at difficult times, like after a death—particularly the death of a child—my marriage disintegrated as well. Life couldn’t have seemed worse. And as the holidays approached, I was in dark despair.

  Years before, I had learned a valuable lesson from my oldest daughter, then only fourteen. She had a serious moped accident in our driveway, which damaged her knee, resulting in seven years of grueling physical therapy and repeated surgeries, and kept her on crutches and in wheelchairs for those seven years. It would have been challenging for anyone, and even more so for a young girl of fourteen. She was extremely brave, and in constant pain, and to distract her from her troubles, one of her doctors suggested that she work with people who were even more unfortunate than she. She took the advice to heart, and within a short time she had volunteered in a pediatric cancer ward. And there she found not only something to think about other than her injury, she found her true passion and lifelong vocation. She spent hours there, fell in love with the young patients, volunteered for many years at a summer camp for kids with cancer, and many degrees later, she is a therapist and social worker in a pediatric oncology ward. I can’t think of a more heartbreaking job. I admire her immensely for it, and she loves what she does. It is her passion. And I’m sure that in the beginning, at fourteen, it helped keep her mind off her leg and the agony she was in.

  During those early days and months after my son’s death and the end of my marriage, trying to find some meaning to life and to struggle through such hard times, I went to church every day. I realize that’s not for everyone, but it helped get me through it, and to hang on till the next day. And one dark winter evening, I was thinking about what my daughter had done in her teens, reaching out to help people who were in even greater distress than she was, and I prayed about it, kneeling in a dark, candle-lit church. The only things that were keeping me going then were my children and my faith. So with my face in my hands, I prayed for something to make me hold on, and to find a way to help someone else in greater need. The answer came faster than I expected, was loud and clear, and was by no means the answer I wanted. I don’t know if I even knew what I hoped the message would be, but surely not the one I got. I didn’t like the thought that popped into my head within minutes of my prayer and request for direction and guidance. It came to me very simply: Help the homeless. And all I could think was Oh no!! Not that!! Please!!

  I remained kneeling for a while, and then lit some candles, trying to pretend that I hadn’t heard that message clearly in my head. How about some other project? Working with children maybe—I was good at that—or some other nice, neat, clean line of work. All my life I had been a somewhat skittish person, nervous about unusual or ominous-looking people, frightened when drunks or homeless people approached me on the street. It was something I didn’t want to see. Their intrusion into my neat, orderly, clean life was something I wanted to avoid, not embrace. But suddenly, in reality, there was no longer perfect order in any aspect of my life anyway. With my son’s death and husband’s departure, my life was a mess. My life, head, and heart were in disarray. Nick’s death had nearly destroyed me, my whole family was badly shaken. Everything had changed.

  My children were remarkable to me and one another during that incredibly hard time. There was a sense of solidarity and determined survival, from children who were still so young (five of them from nine to fifteen at the time of their brother’s death, and still at home). Although we were very close before Nick’s death, it has created an even stronger bond between us since. I remember thinking one night right after he died, as we all gathered for dinner, that we were like survivors of the Titanic or some other shipwreck, huddled over our plates, and barely able to speak in our communal pain. And yet we hung on to one another, determined to get through it and one day come to life again. It was a slow and grueling process, with some heavy bumps along the way.

  Into that atmosphere of life gone awry, and even despair, came the remarkable message I heard in church: Help the homeless. Nuts … no, no … anything but that. I resisted the thought with all my might. But I also remembered Nick had always been particularly sensitive to the plight of the homeless. Whenever he saw a homeless person, he would stop what he was doing, go to the nearest restaurant or food store, and buy them a meal and “a pack of smokes.” He would return with his offering, never too busy to take the time to do it. He visited shelters, and as the lead singer of an increasingly successful band, he performed at family shelters whenever he could. So I knew that helping the homeless would have been meaningful to him, which made the voice harder to ignore. But I still didn’t like the idea. Not at all!

  I had already organized a nonprofit foundation in his name, to assist the mentally ill. But this was different. It was about the homeless. Because the idea had come to me in prayer, the message had a sacred meaning to me and I felt as though I was supposed to follow it, even if I didn’t want to. It was close to Christmas, and it seemed like I’d just been given an assignment from “upstairs.” I argued with the idea anyway. Wherever the message came from, I spent several more minutes on my knees in church that night, negotiating … come on, God … not that
… how about something else? No deal. The message kept coming like a subliminal ad: Help the homeless. Too bad if you don’t like it. You asked who to help. I told you. Now go do it. (I was not thrilled.)

  Worse, I had a strange, overwhelming feeling that I had no choice. But believe me, the thought of helping the homeless scared me to death. Being at close range seemed terrifying. I suspect this isn’t a unique reaction, since most of us would rather pretend the homeless don’t exist. People look through them on the streets, turn away, don’t meet their eyes, and whenever possible, would prefer to cross the street to avoid them. Most people would rather leave solving the problem, and ministering to the homeless, to someone else. And to be honest, in my own ignorance that night, so would I. But being a religious person, I figured I had been given a job, and however I felt about it, no matter how reluctant or terrified I was, there was no turning back, no way to act as though I hadn’t heard what I did. I was sorry I had asked, as I walked quietly out of church.

  I thought about the response to my prayers when I went home that night and the next day, and the day after. But the clear directive wouldn’t go away. And finally, I thought, Okay, God, I get it, I hear you.… Okay, I’ll do it. I figured that doing it once would get me off the hook. And hell, I could do anything once. Couldn’t I? Yeah, right. So I thought about what to do. I asked a dedicated employee of mine if he’d come out with me on a night just before Christmas, and being a kind person, he agreed. I bought warm down jackets, a stack of sleeping bags, and some wool socks and gloves. I can’t remember how many, probably around forty or fifty of each. We put it all in a van, and set out on a bitter cold night. And I will admit that I was gritting my teeth, but there was something of an adrenaline rush too. I don’t think it was excitement as much as fear. I had no idea who or what we would encounter, nor what to expect, and I was anxious to fulfill my mission, do the job, and get it over with. Nothing in the message I’d heard said I had to do it more than once.