Mark Sheetz

Mark Sheetz was born in Phoenix, AZ. His father was a fighter pilot who flew P-51s, P-38s in combat and was in Barry Goldwater’s squadron, Satan’s Angels. Once out of the military his father worked for commercial operations, so the family moved a lot. They moved to Chandler, Indiana, followed by Louisville, KY where where he spent most of his youth from second grade through his first year in college.

In 1977 he got hit by a car as he was delivering newspapers. The right side of his brain got hit hard and caused a temporary paralysis. He had to learn to walk again. Just 11 years later he got hit by a truck, also delivering newspapers. He hit his head again, and decided to give up delivering newspapers. He left college to move to Texas and try to start a career in radio.

That didn’t pan out so well, so he started working in restaurants, nearly got married, fled back to Kentucky, where he regrouped before moving to Tampa, Florida where he worked days in restaurants and nights at a radio station. That situation proved exhausting and didn’t appear to have much promise for advancement so he joined a traveling circus, worked his way to Little Rock, Arkansas where he worked at a church long enough for a pastor to help buy him a ticket to San Diego.

He arrived with $5 in his pocket. At first he headed to St. Vincent de Paul, but he had issues with the mismanagement there. Every day he’d go out and look for work, the facility wouldn’t help him with a bus pass unless he had the physical paperwork in hand showing he was headed to a job interview, which he of course couldn’t get until he’d been to the job site. So he walked his cowboy boots to tatters and looked for another place to live. Meanwhile, though St. Vincent’s talk him it was ok to give a phone number at the facility to prospective employers, every time he would circle back to those employers, they would tell him they’d left multiple messages that were never responded to. That included a security guard job and various restaurant jobs he missed out on, he said, because those jobs were filled when he checked back a few months later.

He didn’t fit the profile for living at the Rescue Mission or Salvation Army or other shelters because they “put you on lock down for 60 days,” he said. “Those places are good for people who love the bottle… or have a needle hanging out of their arm all the time.”

He was getting basic General Relief money which was slightly more than $200/month, so hestarted selling cigarettes for extra cash $60-80/week. Then someone approached him at a trolley station in San Ysidro and offered to get his recently stolen i.d. back (they knew who he was), if he’d drive a stolen car with migrants in the trunk across the border. They showed him the pistol in their waist and said it was that or get shot. So for the better part of two years from 2005 to 2008 he did just that until he was caught.

After probation, and time at a halfway house, he’s back on the streets, but with less opportunities for work now due to the felony.

“I’m a woosie when it come to life on the streets. I’ve almost always found shelter somewhere, on a couch, someone’s floor, the VOA, group homes. Concrete sucks the energy out of me.”

He recently picked up a banjo, having not played since he was a child and his mother bought him one. He’s learning how to write songs. He joined the Voices of Our City Choir, and currently volunteers as a caretaker at the Living Waters Church in downtown’s East Village. He can leave his banjo indoors when he sleeps outside.