A Gift of Hope: Helping the Homeless by Danielle Steel

muttered, “Oh shit!” In all honesty, I figured we were going to be killed.
    We had the other van to escape to, but we still had one locked van with the motor running that we couldn’t get into. Five of us, panicked, scrambling into the unlocked van, was the kind of exit from the situation we’d all hoped to avoid. Within seconds, Randy gave one of his bellowing “Yo”s, told everyone to line up single file, and informed them loudly that we had more than enough to go around. Much to my amazement, they grumbled, but even in their bleary-eyed, aggressive state, they lined up single-file. Randy looked calm and in control. Our other men kept a watchful eye on the situation, and Jane and I sorted through jackets, hats, and the rest, and handed them out with lightning speed. Tony found a spare set of keys to our van in his, and we were able to unlock it.
    We handed out everything we needed to, the men we were serving calmed down, and within a few minutes, the first van was backing out of the alley. Jane and I sailed into the back of our van through the back doors, and landed flat on our faces on a stack of sleeping bags, laughing nervously. A moment later, our doors were closed, and we were gone.
    All’s well that ends well, but it had been a more stressful situation than any of us liked, and we all agreed: No more dead ends, and next time we check it out more carefully before we just hop out. That didn’t stop us from getting into afew narrow squeaks at other times, but little by little we learned the things we had to do to stay safe, and what to look out for. For our first night together as a larger team, it had gone pretty well, with only a few minor hiccups here and there, the dead-end alley being one of them. Jane and I still laugh at the way we sailed into the van that night. I swear we looked like we were flying, but the truth is, we were damn lucky to get out.
    We gave away a hundred of everything that night. There were the now all-too-familiar touching, poignant moments, and the last stop that ripped your heart out. It never failed. We had left my house in good spirits, making jokes and munching doughnuts, but as we drove home, and as it would always be from then on, we rode in silence, thinking about the people we had seen, the moments we had shared, and embedding every one of them deep into our hearts. Everyone knew then, just as I had weeks before, that what we were seeing had already changed our lives. How could it not? We would have had to be dead not to absorb into our souls all that we were seeing every time we went out. We took a part of them home with us, and left part of ourselves with them on the streets.

FOUR

What Are We Doing to Help?

Or Not
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    O ne thing I was shocked to learn once I began working on the streets was how hostile the city was to the homeless, while claiming otherwise. I suspect that may be true in almost all cities. I never see homeless in Beverly Hills, so where do they put them? What do they do to move them away or hide them? New York has its homeless, yet the city claims they have made vast inroads into the problem. Really? How? Informed sources say that one of New York’s best tools to deal with the homeless is bus tickets to New Jersey. Likewise, at one time San Francisco had a program to give them bus tickets to anywhere but here. Just get them out! It’s a modern-day version of the pea-under-the-shell game. Just move it around to somewhere else, and hide it there.
    Civic leaders in every city find homeless people lingeringon the streets and in doorways an embarrassment. They want them to go away. Merchants complain that the homeless interfere with business. And there are programs in every city designed to assist them to get off the streets, or so they say. But in truth only the most functional among the homeless are able to access those programs. Lines are endless, forms are impossible to decipher, qualifications can’t be met, standards don’t apply. Waiting lists for