Sirprina King

Sirprina is proud of her three grown children, all who live in Chula Vista. As a single mother working long hours cleaning homes and office buildings to make sure they all went to school and were well-fed, she feels a big part of her life was successful.

That’s why, even though being homeless this past year and a half has been difficult, she feels hopeful about life in general.
All those years at physical labor resulted in two hip surgeries and avascular necrosis. So she has trouble getting around. Sleeping on a sidewalk doesn’t make it any easier. But she meticulously sweeps up around her sleeping space, carefully organizing her belongings before seeking shade and food for the day.

Sirprina never knew her own father, and her mother died when she was 10 years old. She was “adopted by mom’s white friend,” she said. Even though she appreciates the woman’s kindness, she felt isolated from the world, not fitting in at home or at school.

Much of her present mental anxiety, she says, comes from an experience when she was in a hospital ward, sitting in a wheelchair about to go into an operating room for tendon surgery. “It was a mental hospital,” she explains. “Suddenly this white guy with tattoos attacks me. I don’t know why. I was just sitting there. He was crazy.” The staff pulled him off of her, but she was traumatized.

Many factors contribute to her being on the street right now, she said. The PTSD from being attacked, some family abuse issues, not having an income because she can’t handle the same physical demands of the work she used to do. She has a mental health case worker now, she says, and she calls 211 when she can’t figure out how to find services. She has a payee to help her assure she deposits her SSI check and makes timely payments on her bills. Sirprina was staying in a shelter for a while, but missed a bus and so missed bed check and lost her bed.

Though she smokes pot and drinks, she says she doesn’t do anything stronger. She’d actually like to quit both of those but she needs some stability first. She wants to get into housing and have a mental health case worker so she can get to NA and AA meetings. Until she can figure out how to make that happen, she says she finds strength is her faith in God and the goodness of most human beings. She hopes other people don’t judge her for being on the street and not having her life completely together.

“You have to forgive,” she said softly. “There’s a lot of ill people on the street.”