30 Nights with the Martinez / Pacheco Homeless Outreach — Lots of Rides on a Windy Night

Day 7

8:15 p.m. — Tonight I started at the Amtrak Station. It's windy and a little bit cold so I count nine homeless in the parking lot and right away a guy comes up and asks me if i'm the guy who gives rides. I reply with "it depends." He tells me he was brought to Martinez by the California Department of Corrections — he just got out of Pelican Bay Prison. This is actually pretty common. So I tell him I only give rides to BART and he was happy with that so I just asked him to wait for me inside. So next I find a group outside of the Chamber of Commerce drinking. Everyone needed something so we all went to my van and I handed out blankets and socks to everyone. Next, I went over to the display train and go inside and look around. I can tell people have been in there drinking. This time it's not homeless, otherwise all the cans I found inside would have been taken for recycle.

Now I'm out in the Marina park. It's very windy; no one, just a lot of walking and looking around. So I go back to Amtrak and get the inmate and take to him to BART. He seemed OK but they all do for the 15 minutes I get to spend with them. Out of the hundreds of rides I have given to inmates, I never have had a problem with them; the ones I get scared to transport are the ones who have been drinking. So I try not to give rides if someone is too intoxicated. On the way back I make some random stops at camps in Pacheco and Vine Hill areas. It's always the same with these camps — they just need socks and food. Pretty basic stuff, but I always offer services because you never know. People get tired of being outside. I never give up on anyone.

Now I'm out at a vacant house that the county owns and there are two people behind it and it is a mess. I woke up both people and we cleaned. I try to explain to them that it is not cool for them to be in a neighborhood and to make a huge mess — it's unacceptable. They always get mad at me when we clean but they don't realize that it makes all the homeless population look bad — not just them — and that's one of the things I'm trying to change. I really want them to understand the importance of being clean.

Now I get a call to head back down to Amtrak. I get there and a girl is crying. She is stranded and has nowhere to go for the night. She's an Amtrak rider. So we talk — I can't put her in shelter in Richmond because she won't make it back in the morning for her train, plus I can't put people in shelter for just one night. That's not how it works. So we come up with a plan and I take her to Denny's. She says that's great and we're on the way to Denny's at almost 1 a.m .

Tonight was a good night, I made a lot of contacts. Sometimes I wonder if I've become so callous to people's problems now that I just go into fix-it mode right away whenever I'm called somewhere. I never want to lose sight of the goal that I started with, which is to leave people better than I found them. Sometimes it's hard, but I try. I can't fix everything for the homeless but God knows I want to.