Tara Chaffee, 43, said she has learned a lot about herself in the two years she has lived on the streets of San Diego. She is situated near San Diego City College because she has registered for classes and hopes to get back into the medical field where she had a career as a CNA specializing in patients with dementia. Living with the stress of constant, imminent police sweeps and the noise of street traffic, especially in the same spot where three homeless men were run over and killed by a drunk driver three years ago, keeps her from making the changes that she needs to make in order to take those life changing steps.

Mike has been reliving a trauma every day for the last three years. His notebook is an angry testimonial to his near death experience, and a memorial to the friends who died that day on the Ides of March 2021. “I was talking with Randy,” Mike said, “and then he was gone.” He wipes away tears with his shirt sleeve as he recounts the memory.

Destiny Jones, 62, feels she is finally emerging from the broken and torn pieces that constituted her childhood and early adult years. Overcoming the depression, anxiety and bipolar diagnoses that generated from multiple childhood abuses, and the addictions she used to deny everything, she has found her voice and her soul in music. Now she wants to help others find their self-worth.

At age 65, she has been living on the streets for 52 years; most recently six years in San Diego, three years in Oceanside. Her father threw her out when she was 13. “He told me to ‘get the fuck out. You’re old enough to find a place, get a job.’ So I moved in with friends but I still went to school.” She got her GED eventually in prison, on her birthday. “They see you but they don’t see you,” DaVida told me about that people passing by on the sidewalk bordering Balboa Park.