Anthony Robinson, 58, full of talent and energy as a young man, showed such natural skill for flavors and spices that he was working in two restaurants back home in Charleston, South Carolina before he was 22. The cooks trusted him with just about anything, he said. It was a source of pride.

Life was rolling along nicely for a few years, he had a family, a daughter, and a reputation for being even tempered and keeping to himself. That’s when two narcotics officers approached him and asked if he wanted to make some real money. The only problem, Anthony discovered when their drug ring was busted, was these were not undercover cops, they wee dirty cops, doing illegal drug deals. Anthony was given two options: 30 years in prison or leave the state.
He hated the idea of leaving his nine-year-old daughter, but figured being a free man across the country beat prison, so he caught a bus for the furthest point away on the continent.

Landing in San Diego, he headed for the port and immediately got a job hauling and laying cable at NASSCO. It wasn’t a full year before he got sick and had a few spells of vertigo. He thought maybe he had pneumonia, so his supervisor suggested he go to the hospital. There the doctors discovered he had not one but two herniated discs in his spine, one quite near his neck. They told him they were uneasy performing surgery due to the risk of paralysis if things went wrong.

So at age 33, Anthony took his paperwork to the social security office and met with a case worker. He ended up on disability, but while waiting for that to clear and start paying, he couldn’t afford the rent at the downtown hotel where he was living, so he ended up on the streets. He never drinks alcohol or does drugs, he said, and he has no plan of starting now.

Over the last couple of decades, he has been inside for four or five years, then outside for four or five, back in….. back out. He has that same reputation on the street that he had back in Charleston. People can trust Anthony to always do the right thing: to help pay someone’s phone bill or keep the cleanest camp on the street, to keep people’s secrets and make sure everyone around him has blankets in the winter.

“You’ve got to help other people when you can,” he said. “It always comes back to you. It’s what I believe. It’s just what I do.”

His daughter is living in Colorado Springs with three young children. She wants him to come live with her, but he knows she can’t afford to support him, and he isn’t able to work, so he is staying in San Diego for now.

Buying his favorite fried chicken and fish meal from a Chinese restaurant, he walks to a bus stop near the Broadway police station where he can sit down far from the madness and have a quiet meal before staking out a spot on the sidewalk out of view. He’s planning a trip back home to visit family in South Carolina. He always has to call the police when he visits there, as part of the agreement long ago. A couple of officers always meet him at the bus to check his i.d. when he arrives.