Chris

Chris is a family man. His fondest memories are of the times he and his siblings, cousins and father worked at his grandmother’s thriving board and care business in San Diego. And now, after years of turbulent relationships, addiction, prison, health issues and heartache, all he wants is to be able to have his twin daughters stay with him during visitations.

During his early childhood he and his sister were raised by their single mother until “she went to Las Vegas and left us with the neighbors and came back and didn't have the rent money. And we lived in alcohol. And my dad stepped in. I vaguely remember the fight. It was one of my first memories.”

His father, a sheriff’s deputy, took charge, moving them into an apartment near Chris’ grandmother. After a few years his mother fell in with a high ranking U.S. Navy officer who had three daughters. The family moved to Washington, D.C. a year later. Chris felt betrayed by the move. He spent summers with his father and grandmother in San Diego, so when he was 17 and got his GED he moved west permanently. His advanced math skills made it easy to secure an administrators license. He also earned a CNA license and was helping to care for patients while managing part of his grandmother’s board and care facilities by age 22. His father taught him construction skills as they bought homes and build them to code. “We would put in wheelchair ramps, take out the lips of the showers in the bathtub to make everything wheelchair accessible. We put in hand rails, doorknobs, pull down fire alarm systems, concrete all the way around the house in order to get the state to license us.”

He got married. At one point his wife was sharing an apartment with a girlfriend in Prescott, AZ getting her college degree there. On a spontaneous weekend visit he found his wife in bed with another man. That started a spiral of depression. His access to pharmaceuticals made it easy to slip into addiction. After a year he was caught stealing OxyContin and prescription fentanyl. He didn’t last through his five years probation so went to prison. Fortunately he was chosen for fire camp where he learned the skills managing diseased and dying trees that helped him develop a lucrative business upon his release in 2006.

He fell in love with a woman who had two teenagers. They had their own twin daughters in 2010. But the mom refused to be a mother. His family said it must be postpartum depression. “I had no idea what to do. I went to all the appointments and everything prenatal, all that. I did my best to be involved. But I was working these 10 and 12 hour days trying to bring home enough money to pay for her car, my car, for her kids to have a place to live. She wouldn't get up in the middle of the night to change diapers. She refused to breastfeed. I bought her a pump. That was $500. She tried it one time, said no, it hurts. Well, there's $500 I should have just flushed down the toilet. Now I'm having to hire a nanny to watch the kids while I'm gone work because I don't trust her children or with my twins.”

A neighbor finally told him he’d seen his wife at the Sycuan Casino with another man, spending money at the tables all night and doing crack. That led to divorce, and mostly happy years in which he cared for the twins with help from a nanny, till the girls were six. Then a technicality sent him to prison again. The mom took the children, abandoned them with his mother in Arizona, but showed up again as soon as they tried to adopt the girls. In prison, guards beat him into a coma and broke both shoulders while he was having a seizure. He ending up homeless in downtown San Diego upon release in 2016, no longer able to climb trees. He was just in time to watch his father die of cancer. Then his beloved grandmother died from COVID during the first month of the lockdown in 2020. The family had cut him out of her will, so while they liquidated her business and bought nice homes, he was left with a handful of family photographs. His stepfather died soon after, then his mother. He was going downhill fast. He credits learning survival skills in an Outward Bound program with the ability to fend for himself.

“I was never one you'd find under a bridge. I was never one you'd find shacking up with other homeless people. I always tried to keep myself presentable, my clothes clean. Then eventually I lost the car. I wound up living out of a backpack for about two years. And there were nights where I slept in the bushes downtown and, you know, stayed all night on the trolley.”

He was getting help for addiction at a methadone clinic, spending most days in line at the Homeless Resource Center. The HOT team got him a night in Father Joe’s shelter but it gave him PTSD. “It was like being in prison. People were stealing from people who were trying to sleep, there was lots of drug activity - worse than prison.” One day an Alpha Project van pulled up next to him waiting for a traffic light. He recognized the driver as someone he’d been at fire camp with. The next day they got him into the Alpha tent where he stayed 16 months.

“And so I had my little routine. I left very early in the morning for the methadone clinic at 5:30. I begged to work anytime I could work any even though with my shoulders, you know, anything I could do, man, I did a lot of volunteer work.”

Now he lives in a one-bedroom apartment in a new building, close to the trolley, restaurants and a community college where he hopes to take classes. He’s grateful for a home that is more than a room downtown so small you can lay in bed and open the refrigerator with your foot, he said. Every month someone offers him money if he will let them stay with him. He refuses. There are people who roam the halls looking for a deal and a fix, he said. It’s frustrating.

He is doing all he can to get the girls back into his life. They judge knows he has a home. He just needs to save up to buy bunkbeds and a few other things that make it habitable for the girls. He bought cell phones for them so they could chat but when the girls got home from visitation (outdoors at Seaport Village), the mom threw the phones away. She didn’t want the girls talking with him. He wants to get frames for some of the photos he has of his grandmother and other good memories. He dreams of a reunion with his own brothers and sisters, most of whom are in some aspect of the medical profession - an RN, a veterinarian, a paramedic. The closest he has come to a vacation was to go to New Mexico to scatter his father’s ashes, and then to Jamaica for a memorial for his mother. For now he’s taking one day at a time, grateful for those who support his recovery and goals.