Margarita
Margarita, 42, grew up in San Diego, went to Patrick Henry High. She started working early, at age 12, and married the general manager at a House of Pancakes where she was waitressing at age 22. They had two children. The drug culture in high school stayed with her, and she began using heroin somewhere in between children. When she was in the first of two rehab programs, she was appaulled by the sexual predators that were involved in running the program. When she got out she found some of her six sisters had turned her husband and kids against her, so she fell back into drug use. When she emerged from the second program, her father told her to move back in with him, but there were too many people there, she said, all of them wanting to tell her how to live her life. So she hit the streets. At age 42, she roams the streets with no visible possessions, save the trolley tickets folded up in a jacket pocket.
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Sandra and Gary
Sandra and Gary were sleeping near each other and watched over each other’s stuff on the streets of San Diego for month before they gradually became a couple. Sandra, 44, was born here, and moved with her family to Cancun when she was five. Even with five older brothers and sisters, lots of aunts, uncles and cousins, she had to work two jobs when she was old enough to do so. The work was hard on her because she injured her back at age eight, falling from a playground bar onto the concrete below. She was too young for surgery, they told her, so her back never healed properly. She moved back the the U.S. at age 31 and started working in the fields in Arizona, mostly harvesting broccoli. After three years it proved too difficult, after her husband pushed her backwards, further injuring her back, dislocating two discs. She moved to San Diego to try hotel work again, but only found 12-hour shifts. She sent her two children to live in Cancun while she tried to sort things out. Gary, 55, grew up in Minnesota. He enlisted in the Marine Corps at 18, a combat veteran of Desert Storm who retired after 20 years with an honorable discharge. He isn’t receiving his benefits, however, because it’s difficult to send papers to someone without an address, they tell him. He figures he is due $7,000 in back pay and has been on the list for the VASH housing program for two years, hoping for help soon.
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Sam
Sam, 23, dodged her mother's mental health episodes till she was finally tossed out of her Oceanside home at age 16. On the streets, other young people were jealous of her fortitude, staying away from drugs, refusing to sell her body for favors like a place to stay or getting high. So they beat her up and overdosed her. She ended up in the hospital, dying three times. When she went to retrieve her belongings upon release from medical care, she was arrested and jailed for having drugs in her system. She moved in with a boyfriend who soon started beating her and threatened their baby. He was arrested and she found help with a street mom who encouraged her to go live with her father, which she did. There she "got her shit together", got a job, then moved into her own apartment. Now Sam has a husband in the Marines, her own income from a good waitressing job, and is moving away from San Diego to live with her in-laws while her husband is deployed. "Life couldn't be no more better," she said.
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Alicia
Alicia Lamar, the kind of name a movie star or singer would adopt. Lamar smiles and quietly states “My voice is the voice of angels.” When asked what she likes to sing, she begins muttering about foster care, too many homes, abusive, hitchhiking across country from Boston, a father in the U.S. Navy: Okinawa.
Clutching a lighter in her hand, dropping her pink-and-blue blanket, her deep green eyes watch a growing crowd of Padres fans stack up across the street from the triangle of dirt she inhabits between the library and the Petco parking lot. Now 35, the U.S. Marine veteran of Afghanistan with square shoulders and a thick head of red hair begins to tear up when talking about her home on the East Coast. She circles a collapsed tent a few times like a cat, then grabs one side, lifting it high to spill its contents on the dirt. After a brief struggle she didn’t expect, Lamar says “It’s heavy for a reason. Forget it.” She pauses then says, “I need a tent.”
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Rayonna
Rayonna has been on the streets in San Diego most of her life. She's smart and tough, and sentimental. Especially when it comes to the two children who died shortly after being born, and another stolen by leukemia at age 15. She dedicates herself to her two surviving children and the "street daughters" she's adopted, counseling them not to sell themselves to men for an occasional roof over their heads or food. She is incensed that the local shelters give less assistance to pregnant homeless women than they give to addicts who just go right back out to the street once they're clean. And she's sad that the men on the street are more inclined to con or abuse the women than to protect them.
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Vilma
Vilma fled the chaos of drug violence and an abusive husband embroiled in a cartel in her native Honduras, bringing her two boys Manuel and Julio by bus to the U.S. border. After five days in detention, the family was granted asylum. But they still had nowhere to go, so they found their way to the fringes of East Village's homeless encampment, pitching a tent alongside others, beneath a sign that reads "No illegal lodging." Wary of trusting anyone, she sleeps with both eyes open, guarding the boys and their most important possession, the wheelchair for her youngest son who has muscular dystrophy. They hope to get into a shelter soon. In the meantime, Manuel buzzes up and down the sidewalk on a skateboard, which makes up for his inability to walk, and Julio learns English by playing word puzzles in a book.
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Shirley and Bill Sinclair
Shirley Sinclair, 68 and husband Bill Sinclair, 57, met in Las Vegas where she was hiding out from an abusive relationship in a shelter and he was the security guard. They’ve been married 15 years. They arrived in San Diego’s East Village only three months ago, thinking rents might be cheaper and social security advocates would be more helpful than they are in Nevada. Bill, from Boston, raised in an unfriendly foster home, happily joined the Navy as soon as he was 18, deployed to Iran during the hostage crisis, and throughout the Pacific region. Now he needs a liver transplant and has diabetes. He's lost 100 pounds. The two can't find a home they can afford where they can stay together, so they stay on the street. They're frustrated by San Diego's transit system, and how far it is to the Veteran's Administration.
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Fran
Fran Brown, 49, sits sentry with her service dog Lucky, a cheerful Husky/Akita mix that doesn’t know they are homeless. Born in Oklahoma, raised, beginning at the age of nine, by her full blooded Cherokee grandmother on the reservation, she endured the taunting by American Indian schoolmates who said she wasn’t native enough, and by European American classmates who said she was too native. Her grandmother had rescued her from an abusive home life shared with too many siblings. She thrived in the USMC, an aviation mechanic, for 18 years until sidelined by an accident. Today, she and Lucky just try to get by on San Diego's streets.
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Cheryl
Cheryl Blue, 58, has many interesting life stories; most of them revolve around an obsession with Gregg Allman. She has spent decades mostly on, some off, the streets of San Diego, and keeps a positive attitude by staying creative. She paints tiny greeting cards, mostly in the shape of crosses, or the star of David, or even mosques, so as to not leave any religion out. Raised by a military family that traveled the world, she credits an art teacher in Wales for supporting her artistic tendencies. She tried to be the stay at home mom, baking bread, sharing recipes with the neighbors and home schooling her kids with Christian overtones, but both boys ended up rock 'n' roll musicians anyway. Still, with physical disabilities and living on food stamps, she maintains a smile. "I try not to worry about tomorrow," she says.
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Cookie
Cookie, 48, moved to San Diego with her parents when she was six years old. A graduate of Pacific Coast College, she works as a home health care provider when she can find work; but it's not enough to pay the bills. So she stays on the street, near where her sons are also out on the street. She says you get used to it when you're surrounded by friends and family, but her old bones are getting ready to try and find room in a shelter. In the meantime she directs all her nurturing tendencies towards her three-month-old puppies, Tifu and Nyla.
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Beverly and Ryan
Beverly, 38, and son Ryan, 8, are conscientious about their health despite being homeless. They maintain a vegan diet, and she home schools him, since that's the way she started learning, a much more effective system than the public school in North Carolina full of drugs and gangs. They have tried every shelter in San Diego, some twice, without being able to secure permanent housing. She would love a live-in caregiver position or to work on a community farm.
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Cat
Cat, 63, has a degree in biological chemistry, is a black belt in karate, and spent 13 months in California Youth Authority taking the rap for a murder someone else in her gang committed. She would love to see the government finally do right by veterans and their families, and has a theory on how to retool the local homeless assistance agencies.
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Andrea
Andrea Lewis is a licensed pharmacy technician, hoping to own her own business someday doing nutrition and colonics. She sees that as a path to health for herself and others dealing with too much fast food. She spends her days at the library looking for work and grants to finance education. She traded her life on the street for church back in 2000, went to school and has only been able to get part time or temporary work in her chosen profession. She's been homeless since 2004, but she declares this year as her year to rise up.
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Danila and Darrell
Danila Hendrix, 57, and Darrell Eudell, 38, met on the street a year ago. Their dream is to buy and operate a hot dog cart, but city restrictions prove restrictive to them with no address and no way of setting up a port-a-potty and wash station nearby. She was trained at the Cordon Bleu cooking school and worked as a private chef in Scottsdale, AZ. He sold cars in his home state of Florida. They keep God and the beauty of the natural world in their conversation, trying to stay positive about their situation.
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Joanne
Joanne, 47, usually has a big smile and a hug for everyone on the street. Adopted as an infant, raised in a military family, serving eight years in the US Navy herself, she was hit by a drunk driver once back in civilian life. Battling medical and PTSD issues seemed far away when I saw her, the morning after she'd been assaulted by another person on the street.
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Tanya
Tanya, 44, was evicted from the room she was renting for two years, because the other tenants hadn't paid bills for months. She has health problems that make it hard for her to carry what few belongings she had after the sheriff's deputies impounded everything in the home. She's trying to stay away from the drug scene and an abusive relationship and not call on her adult children for help.
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Martha
Martha Gibson, 66, grew up in foster care group homes in East LA before having her first child at 14. She and her husband left the gang life at age 18, heading north. Of her 13 children, seven are still living. She doesn't want to be told what to do, so isn't living with any of them, deciding to tough it out on the streets instead.
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Phyllis
Phyllis worked as a dental hygienist till she was laid off 9 years ago. She fled an abusive relationship and has been on the street ever since. She worries she is at the breaking point of going insane.
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