Ghost Rider
Ghost Rider, aka David Lloyd, 65, was born in Iceland. His mother died in childbirth. He quit high school a month before graduation, but got his GED in jail at age 18. His father and brothers joined the military but recruiters wouldn’t take him because he was the “last son”. His father died in 1985 from complications due to exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. He got married young, but his wife was killed by a drunk driver when their daughter was two. After raising his daughter he took off hitchhiking across the U.S. and Canada.
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Bella and Amber
On a quiet stretch of 16th Avenue downtown, Bella Roberts pushes a red shopping cart to collect trash from the sidewalks and turn the full bags in for a cash reward. Her girlfriend Amber Logan sits beside their belongings on the other side of the street, watching a friend’s cat, and organizing their belongings so they can move before the city crew arrives to wash down the sidewalks. Bella and Amber have been together, more on than off, for six years now. Amber feels especially protective of Bella, having seen what can happen to women alone on the streets in San Diego. She has had to “rescue” Bella when she had a “manic episode” at one point.
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Kathy Shely
Kathy Shely has a naturally positive demeanor and upbeat outlook on life. After working as a social worker for the county for 22 years, then caring for her terminally ill mother for more than three years, being out on the streets doesn’t deter her from gravitating towards connecting people to what would improve their quality of life. Once her mother passed away and the state swooped in to take possession of her mother’s house, Kathy found herself on the street, having to fight to keep her sanity and dignity, even physically having to fight when she refused to have sex with someone in exchange for a cigarette or bottle of water.
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Aaron
A second generation San Diegan, Aaron grew up in Pacific Beach. Both his parents were junkies, he said, but his father got sober before Aaron was born, hoping to persuade his mother to do the same. But it didn’t work. When Aaron was about a year old, his mother started taking him with her to drug deals. “Her rationale was, ‘Who’s going to shoot the lady with the baby?’ That was her mentality,” Aaron said.
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Moses
Moses’ mayoral campaign slogan is simple. “You cannot fix a city if you do not love the city.”
That’s why, Moses said, he’s going to one day run for mayor himself. He loves San Diego and wants to see it prosper, and believes a first step would be renovating historical landmarks that made it a tourist hub to begin with. But he also believes that in order to really start improving the city you need to start with the “weakest link,” which he thinks is people like himself — San Diego’s homeless. “How are we going to move up another step if they stay at the bottom?” he said. “We can’t move up because they're going to be like that ball and chain.”
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Matt Masloski
Matt Masloski, 37, keeps photos of his two children in his wallet. They live with their mother in Nebraska, from where he moved to San Diego five years ago for a new start. He was shocked by the number of people living on the street. “There’s new people every day,” he said. “Fentanyl has hit the streets at an alarming rate,” he said. “Since COVID it’s blown up. It’s everywhere.” There were times, he said, when it was impossible to find any other drugs on the street, even meth. In the last two years alone he’s lost close to 30 friends to fentanyl-related overdoses, and the trend shows no signs of stopping, he said.
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Voices of Our City Choir
Beginning with the early days when San Diego’s Voices of Our City Choir co-creator singer-songwriter Steph Johnson walked the streets offering oranges and a song to unsheltered members of the community, this unique coming together of souls has changed the lives of those who participate as well as those who hear them sing.
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Grandma's Annual Thanksgiving Feast in the Park
This Thanksgiving, many traditions were revived after being abruptly halted last year. One of those was Grandma’s Thanksgiving feast for the denizen of Balboa Park. Now that Richard, aka Grandma, lives indoors he has raised the bar. This year, the tenth annual feast, the cooking and prep went on for five days.
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Ian and Oreo
Ian, 41, was born in Ohio, but moved to San Diego when he was four. His father was in the navy and his mother was a registered nurse. He went to Spring Valley High School - a stand out water polo player. After his parents divorced and his mother remarried, he was abused by his step-father who threatened to have his two sons from a previous marriage beat him up if he said anything. A string of bad luck before, during and after his service in the Air Force finally broke his spirit. He and his dog Oreo make do on the streets.
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Randy and Bullet
Randy, 63, was born and raised in San Diego, graduating from Sweetwater High with a love for anything to do with mathematics. He father, a veteran, convinced him to join the military after graduation. A long-haired surfer, Randy opted for the Merchant Marines, since they promised he would be sent to Hawaii. He was in Hawaii for two days before his unit was shipped to Saigon. As long as he has his dog Bullet with him, he is just fine, he said. Currently his is living in a downtown SRO, hoping to get into housing through the VASH program.
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LaShonna
LaShonna Jones, 33, is one of seven siblings. She quit high school to start working and spend more time with her boyfriend. Then the boyfriend became controlling, hitting her if he thought she wasn’t behaving. They couch surfed when they lost housing, then became homeless, moving around San Diego neighborhoods. When the boyfriend went to prison for stealing bicycles, she was at peace. One day LaShonna was smoking a cigarette and it fell into the dumpster catching some paper on fire. She ran to get some water, and when she got back the police were there. They arrested her for arson.
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Raven Jones
Raven Jones, 62, moved to San Diego from New York when she was six years old. She was homeless for a while, ostracized for being trans and Black. You can spot Raven several blocks away because her outfits are always flowing and colorful. Though she is discriminating about who she associates with, Raven is generous, often giving away her jewelry when someone shows an interest in a particular piece.
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Chris
Originally from Okene, Oklahoma, Chris said he was the middle child, but lost track since he was in foster care since the age of three. In fact he was in 16 different homes before he aged out of the system. He learned construction in prison and on the job. He doesn’t remember a lot of dates, but one stands out. On June 17, 2016 he was shot by a Los Angeles police officer with bean bags. Chris spent 28 days in a hospital ICU unit. When he was released he was confined to a wheelchair due to the injuries.
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Benito
Born in Denver, Colorado, Benito, 59, was one of 11 kids. The oldest brother, a Marine, died in Vietnam. He also has a brother in the Navy. Benito joined the Army. When on patrol in Iraq, a bullet sent a chip of concrete flying that broke his collarbone. That injury brought him home. His second wife died of a heroin overdose when their baby was six months old. That drove him into a depression that was hard to crawl out of, but he did. That lasted until light from a welding arc affected his vision, and he ended up an alcoholic and on the street again.
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Memorial for murdered homeless
An interfaith memorial service was held for Randy Ferris, 65, Walter Jones, 61, and Rodney Diffendal, the three homeless men who were killed by a drunk driver on the morning of March 15, 2020 as they were resting in their tents on B Street near San Diego City College. Two men in wheelchairs who were injured during the same incident, Duane and Jesse, sat solemnly together during the service. The tunnel where it happened is still covered in chalk dedications to the fallen.
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Tabor
Tabor Wright, 30, is proud of being clean and sober. He was born in Southwest Colorado. When his father died in 2015 however, Tabor started shooting heroin. He came out to San Diego to get away from it all and entered a sober living home. He lasted only four days there because he felt like he was being judged for being gay by the Christians who ran the place. Now, however, he is worried that when he leaves the sober living place he is at now, without an income, he may end up homeless again.
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Richard
Richard has a quiet personality that works as a calm in the storm that can be daily survival for many homeless folks. Flush with cash and expensive toys in his early 20s in Minnesota, he sold it all and moved to San Diego when he found his lover in bed with another man. The cost of living in San Diego combined with an economic downturn forced him to live in his taxi, then to couch surf for nearly ten years with a friend down in Tijuana while crossing the border every day to do day labor work. He eventually moved back to San Diego where he spent 20 years living under the same tree in Balboa Park.
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Harm Reduction Coalition
The local Harm Reduction Coalition holds street medicine outreach events despite looming rain clouds and a cold wind. They offer packages of fresh syringes, backpacks, clothing, food and Naloxene (Narcan). The Harm Reduction Coalition began operation in October 2022 following approval from the California Department of Public Health office of AIDS. According to the group’s executive director Tara Stamos-Buesig, they have also been doing syringe service outreach three days a week. San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted in favor of developing a needle exchange program, essentially repealing the ban on such programs enacted in 1997.
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Turtle
Turtle, 38, grew up on the streets of San Diego with other street kids who ran away from foster care. He became streetwise and developed a talent for fashioning jewelry from copper wire and found objects. He also takes makes sure the older folks on the street are treated respectfully by other homeless and by passersby. During the pandemic lockdown, Turtle said is was like a madness out on the streets; too many drugs and no place to wash your hands or use the bathroom. When people can’t maintain a semblance of proper hygiene, he said, they start to go mad.
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Red
Michael Connelly, 62, grew up in Tucson, AZ. and joined the army right out of high school. He was a field medic but realized pretty quickly he couldn’t stand the sight of blood. His original goal had been to work as an operating room technician. At the age of 18, however, the idea of knowing and organizing all those tools when someone’s life was at stake, was a bit daunting. Red came out to San Diego in 1980, worked off and on at odd jobs, got married in 1988, has four kids, then got divorced in 1998. “After the divorce I ended up out on the streets, and got into the drugs and things. I spent the next 20 years out here doing drugs and ruining my life.”
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