Danila and Darrell
Danila Hendrix, 57, and Darrell Eudell, 38
“We met on the street,” they both said, finishing each other’s sentences.
“I ended up on the street and met him,” said petite blond Danila Hendrix, 57, in a pink tee shirt, pointing to her side, “he was a quiet man, kept to his own, and that, that interested me.”
“I was selling groceries on the street and she came up with her nice green eyes…” Darrell Eudell, 38, offered, smiling. “She’s an exciting person. And she knows a lot about God, so that intrigued me.”
Hendrix graduated from the Cordon Bleu cooking school in 2005. She was working in Scottsdale, AZ. as a personal chef. In the off season she would work in the hotel restaurant field catering weddings. Eventually she wanted to do something with her life so she decided to come to San Diego, get a food truck and feed the homeless with her profits.
“I ended up being on the sidewalk because of politics and places not being what they said they are,” she said, “as far as internship programs. I wanted to feed the homeless, now I’m one of the homeless being fed.”
Eudell sold cars for a living in his home state of Florida where he grew up eating lots of oranges and having a pleasant childhood. He lived with his mother for “too long,” he admitted. He wants to own his own business instead of selling cars for someone else. So he meandered his way across country looking for opportunities. He has a 19-year-old son in Florida, “who’s taller than me,” he said with a smile.
Together Hendrix and Eudell dream of buying and operating a hot dog cart. But they ran into resistance from the city of San Diego which apparently told them they can’t place it anywhere without a port-a-potty and a wash station, as well as permission from a storefront owner. “That’s the reason why we’re in the predicament we’re in, unemployed and out here on the streets,” said Eudell, “I had a business license and everything.”
They feel compassion but frustration for those of their homeless neighbors who are managing their harsh reality with mind altering drugs. “It seems hopeless so it’s better to fantasize,” Hendrix said.
“Some of these people have no dreams, no intuition about anything. They’ve been out here for centuries and they’re trying to tell you how to run your business,” Eudell added. “It’s crazy to listen to someone that’s older than you, but not older than you in the mind…they can’t think two plus two.”
Eudell appreciated the natural world. He thinks too many people are distracted and forget to look at God’s creations. He likes photographing birds, like hummingbirds and crows.
Hendrix credits her military family upbringing, traveling a lot, adapting to new places, building forts from cardboard refrigerator and stove boxes in military housing. Some of the things you learn as a child are useful as adults, she said.
She smokes marijuana to deal with PTSD, but stays away from the speed, crack and prescription drugs circulating on the street. “I try to stay positive, focus on the things I have that that are good, not the things I’ve lost, that I don’t have any more,” she said.
“There’s choices that you have to make in life, and you have to make the right one. If you choose the wrong one it can lead you some place like this. There’s urine-smelling dirt everywhere… it’s just raw and uncut right here”.
He blames the city for not having enough public bathrooms, and for shop owners who won’t let them use their restrooms even if they buy something.
If you come here, get ready. “This is the hottest, beautiful-est, warmest, stanky-est place I’ve ever been.”
This is not my last place to live; there’s too many rules, and … there’s a lot of tacos, a lot of tacoshops, so hot dogs probably won’t matter to this place unless I had a hot dog taco or something.
“We’re not bums, we’re not homeless people, we’re just trying to make a way for ourselves!”