Homeless Panhandlers: Ashley’s Story

Are you as conflicted as I am when I see a homeless person, who appears to be young and able-bodied, carrying a sign asking for help? On the one hand, I’ve watched investigative news reporters catch panhandlers sauntering off at the end of the day to well-tended cars, cell phones in hand. Who knows for sure what each person’s story is?

On the other hand, homelessness is a social issue that cannot be denied. It is everywhere and it is growing. How awful to be the person who has to stand on that corner day after day, holding a sign, pleading for help.

Many cities would prefer that we give to food banks, cot shelters and similar charities if we want to help the panhandlers. Signs are posted in an effort to discourage the rising number of panhandlers in town, many of whom, officials say, are pros just conning us out of our money. A number of them where I live sit on a bench or a curb and “harass” people as they go by. Instead of carrying signs, they beg for money, coffee or spare change, studying strangers to see if they can figure out who might have a kind heart. Business owners say it discourages people from walking around town and doing business there.

Donating to charities doesn’t let us off the hook, though. Our median strips and sidewalks are still likely to have people here and there who are asking for a handout. We are still left with the question of how to respond to their presence.

Three summers ago I came up with a personal plan. Each time I was at the grocery store I would buy a wrapped sandwich and hand it, on my way back home, to a particular woman with a “homeless; please help” sign. She always stood in the narrow median strip of the busiest intersection in town. Other details on her sign mentioned that she was new to homelessness, had always had jobs and wanted to get back to work.

“I hate having to do this,” her sign said right at the top. I could relate to that. I’d played a demeaning role or two in my lifetime.

The first time I handed her a sandwich, she was smoking. I wondered if she’d take the sandwich back to the store for a refund so she could buy cigarettes.

But if you give something away, you can’t put strings on it. It’s no longer yours. Whoever you gave it to can do whatever they want with it.

The second time I gave her a sandwich I asked a question I’d been wondering about. “Is food the right thing to give you? Or do you have places that feed you, so this isn’t really the best way to help?”

She said, “No. Food is good. The shelters are only open certain hours and in between you’re out on your own.”

One day I picked up a roast beef sandwich. I was thinking the iron would help keep her strong. Then I became conscious of some assumptions I was making. Did she eat meat? I wouldn’t want to be handing out something a homeless person abhorred. She had teeth missing, too. Could she chew meat? When I handed her that sandwich, I had to ask if roast beef was OK.

“Yes,” she said. “God Bless.”

If I didn’t go to the grocery store on my trip into town that day, and if I ended up going through this woman’s intersection, I’d hand her a couple of dollars. All I could think was, “I have so much. How could I not act?”

I wasn’t making a dent in the issue of homelessness. I had no impact whatsoever on this one person’s situation. But I was doing something. Doing something felt a whole lot better than doing nothing.

A friend of mine, a minister, commented that the real result of our acts of kindness is the impact on our own hearts, even when we don’t know the truth of what goes on in the person’s life. Doing a kindness opens the heart.

I get that. We do what we do to give our love away – not so much to give away our money or our food, but to give away some of the love abundant we feel graced with, especially in the presence of those less fortunate. A sandwich or a dollar or a gift card to Target can become a way of saying, “No matter your story, I care about you.”

Some turn their discomfort into a shrug of the shoulders to indicate helplessness or disinterest. Others blame the person for their situation. Those are ways of keeping the heart closed against the presence of the needy in our midst.

I didn’t have much conversation with this particular woman that year, unless you count the “God Bless” she said each time I handed her food or money. Nevertheless, if anything had happened to her, I would have been devastated. I hoped she would be able to get out of this awful panhandling situation.

She left with the cold weather. Gone. Poof!

However, when the spring days once again brought warmth, she came back to the very same median strip in the busiest intersection in our community. Even if she’d been drinking margaritas on a beach in Florida all winter, it couldn’t have been good news for her that she was back. As the song says, “To believe in this livin’ is just a hard, hard way to go (John Prine).”

Her cardboard sign was different, a little more basic. “Homeless. Anything will help.” There was more, but I couldn’t bear to read it, couldn’t bear to know this life goes on and on for her.

That year, I changed my approach altogether. “The best thing to do,” I thought, “is to connect, human to human. Take an interest in the person who is holding the sign.” And so began our version of regular contact.

May 12. “What happened to you this winter?” I asked while waiting for my light to turn.

“I went to respite for a while,” she said vaguely. “I had a number of things wrong and needed to be in respite, get them taken care of.”

She looked very tired. She is a slightly built black woman of average height, the pinched face of a hard life, thinning frizzled hair tied up in a knot on the back of her head. She has retained an air of femininity and grace, moving down the line of cars as if she might have been a ballet dancer at one time.

“What’s going on for you right now?” I asked. “How are you doing?”

“Well, I have a case manager now. She’s helping me get my ducks in a row.” That was good news.

May 13. The temperature was already 90 at noontime. There she was, on the median strip, in the blazing sun. The line of cars was long. She walked down the length of it, holding the sign and looking into each car. Someone ahead of me handed her folded money.

When she got close, I opened my window and asked, “How are you doing today? Do you need some water?”

She looked back at her stash by the signpost. “No. I have a couple. Although they’re getting pretty warm now, I guess.”

“Can I get you anything in particular to help you right now? Are you hungry?”

“No,” she said quickly. “It’s too hot. If I eat anything I’ll throw up. I learned that the other day. Don’t eat when it’s this hot.”

The light changed. The line started moving. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Ashley,” she said. I started moving with the line of cars, but she came back and said, “If you want to get me something cold, Dunkin Donuts has a coffee coolatta.”

I went around the block, picked up a tall one at the Dunkin Donuts drive thru, and headed back. I had no idea those things were so expensive!

“Thanks,” she said, and carried it back to her stash by the sign post, putting it in her black nylon bag, out of sight. Maybe she took a sip. Maybe not. Maybe she was going to take a break soon, sit under a shady tree somewhere.

June 3. I got some bills ready to hand her. It felt right. “How are you doing today, Ashley?” I asked, going for an upbeat encounter on that sunny and breezy day. “Looks like you have a new sign.”

“Ya. My other one got ruined in the rain yesterday.” She had a little bit of a smile.

“Is your case worker working hard for you?” I asked

“She is. We filled out a bunch of paperwork to get me an apartment.”

“That’s really good to hear,” I said as the light changed and traffic moved forward. “I’m rooting for you!”

“Thanks,” she said, moving forward, showing her cardboard sign to the others in line.

June 11. Ashley recognizes my car. She starts trotting over when I put the window down and hold out some money.

“Don’t run!” I said. “It’s too hot!”

“Ya,” she said. “Some lady told me I need lighter clothes.” She’s been dressed all in black so far. “Last night I went to Walmart and got these pants.” They are still black, but cropped. “I saw some lighter ones there.”

“White would help in this heat,” I said.

“Not white. These were tan.”

“Tan would be cooler,” I said. “A girl’s got to have her clothes.”

She laughed. “Ya. Maybe I’ll go back and get those today. If I make enough.”

I didn’t get it yet, that this had turned into a job for her.

June 19. She has the lighter pants on. “How’s the hunt for housing going?” I asked.

“Well, we filled out two forms yesterday. Supposedly it goes faster if you apply to apartments that you know are Section 8. If you just go through Section 8 it takes a lot longer. So we did two yesterday.”

“Fingers crossed,” I said. “I know you’re a hard worker. I can tell by the way you do this. You work hard at it.”

It’s true. She never stops doing the work of holding that sign, walking slowly down each line of cars as they come up to the light. Back and forth all day long, 9 – 5. Usually Monday – Saturday. She no longer smokes when she is on the median strip. She takes breaks like any office worker: one in the morning, one in the afternoon and a lunch break.

“I’m a good worker,” she said one day, when I’d asked about her job search. “I’ve worked since I was 18. This is the first time I’ve been unemployed.”

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Thirty-two.” The light changed. Cars began moving. She went to work, walking down the median, holding her sign steady for each passing driver to see.

June 23. She is dressed in the raggediest pair of mottled blue jean tights, rips and holes everywhere. Fashion? Projecting the impoverishment? She also has on a black hooded jacket; it’s cold and windy today.

I thought she was sleeping. Her eyes were closed as she stood against the sign post, cardboard sign unfolded and readable in her hands. Her eyes flew open, though, as my car stopped at the light.

She quickly got down to the business of showing her sign to each car in line. “Are you falling asleep there today?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “There’s dust coming across,” pointing to the lanes on the other side of the median. I could see the wind kicking it up. “I figured I could either cry it out or close my eyes for a few seconds to get it out.” She thanked me for the money and headed down the line.

July 8. Every time I go to the grocery store I find myself thinking about Ashley. What could I get her? What does she like? “Do you eat nuts?” I asked her one day. I figured they’d be portable, nutritious, immune to some of the summer’s heat. I had brought some with me while I did errands and was going to give them to her.

“No. Not really,” Ashley said. “Sometimes if they’re inside of something it’s alright.” So. Not a big fan of nuts.

“How about snack bars. Protein bars. Do you like those?”

“No. Not really.”

I handed her some money. “OK then,” I said. “It’s not bad out for you today, is it? Not too hot, not too windy, not too cold.”

“No,” she said. “It was cold yesterday, though. I had to go buy a pair of 99-cent socks and put them on inside these shoes.” The shoes are open weave, meant for heat. “But I can’t complain. Sometimes it’s hot. Sometimes it’s cold. I can’t complain.”

July 30. I’ve been away for a few days. Ashley is in her usual place, on her usual median strip. I roll up to the intersection after doing my shopping. “Are you doing OK today?”

“Ya,” she says. “More or less.” A bit of a nod. “More or less.”

“Do people treat you OK?” I asked.

“More or less. There’s some good people, and then there’s the assholes.”

“What do they do? Do they yell at you?”

“Ya. I just let it roll off of me. I can’t afford to let that stuff get to me. So in one ear and out the other.”

August 4. She smiles when she sees my car in line, comes toward me at a quick pace. “How are things going for you now,” I ask. “Has anything changed?”

“No. Not really.”

“You’re a very patient person.”

“Yes I am. I try to be.”

“Any progress on the housing?”

“I have a meeting tomorrow,” she says.

“Oh, good. You’ll be in an air-conditioned building at least. It’s supposed to be getting hotter and hotter.”

Over the rest of the summer, our conversation stagnates into more of the same. I ask how she’s doing, if the caseworker is getting anywhere. I hand her some money.

September 6. She has a new sign on white poster board. I try to remember if we’d had any rain that would have destroyed her battered cardboard sign. How come she could afford spanking new white poster board?

“I know I’m smiling but this is very demeaning to me,” it begins. Maybe this is what’s called a “lure” in panhandling parlance – a sentiment to grab our attention as we pass by in our comfy cars.

A strong element of doubt has wormed its way into my brain, thanks to a story told among friends. It seems the police caught up with two panhandlers over in the next town, followed them home and found an apartment full of drugs and drug users.

Distrust has started to battle with compassion and concern every time I go to town. Some days I’m all in, like when it was so hot out there, I handed her a ten as I went through the line and said, “Get yourself a coolatta, OK?”

Then all of a sudden. WHOA. Another day, another new sign on new white poster board. It said something more than the usual sign, some little detail added about kids and “just trying to get my family back on our feet.” Had I missed that the first time I saw the white poster board?

I said, “I didn’t know you had kids. How many do you have?”

“Three,” she said.

“How old are they?”

“Eight, two and six,” she said, naming the ages in that order.

She gave me some incoherent story about how “they” were trying to take her kids away but she was fighting to keep them. She was going to make sure her aunt had temporary custody. There was no eye contact during the telling of the tale.

Something did not ring true to me. In fact, it hadn’t rung true since the first white sign. Maybe because a guy I’ve seen her talking to is carrying a similar white poster board sign on the median going into Walmart. They stay within sight of each other.

I began getting insistent messages from someplace in my subconscious that said, “If she’d spent as much time looking for work as she’s spent out here these past two summers she’d have a job by now.”

I found myself staying in a middle lane, taking other routes so as to avoid the turning lane that would put me next to Ashley.

Time passed. One day I told myself to grow up and get in the usual lane and just ask how she was – no money, or maybe just a dollar. But she had left her post. It was 12:30, lunch hour apparently. She was over on the other side of the road, back turned to traffic, lighting a cigarette.

I watched in the rear view mirror as she hoisted the full back pack onto her shoulders, inhaled a couple of long drags, then trotted across the road and towards the fast food joints, smoke trailing her every move.

Here’s a weird thought. Are the panhandlers run by a pimp the way hookers are? The way she keeps regular hours, doesn’t smoke on the job, has definite beginning and ending times, takes limited breaks, always holds that particular place among all of the median strip places available, does her work conscientiously when on the job. It’s as if she is following rules.

Do they have to compete for the best spots on the best medians? Each one seems to have a spot they more or less “own.” Do they only get to keep it if they turn in enough money to the boss? Is there a hierarchy of median strips?

Was there a panhandler pimp waiting in McDonald’s for each one to turn over what they’d made?  Did they have to make so much before they’d be entitled to some fries? Does she work for a drug dealer – she hands him money, he hands her drugs?

I wondered if a panhandler’s guide had been published somewhere: a list of situations that might be included on signs to induce donations (children, housing, illness, hunger, shelter, etc.), how often to change your sign, the importance of accurate spelling and readable penmanship, clothes to wear to convey poverty, what not to wear, where to stand, tolerating the weather, hiding your belongings, and so on.

In fact, if you Google “panhandler signs,” you’ll probably see versions of all of the signs that have cropped up in your area.  Some are simple; some elaborate. Some are quiet pleas for help; some are attention-grabbers. We have a local guy whose sign says, “I can’t lie. I need a beer.” It seemed worth a chuckle, until I saw that that’s one of the one’s pictured on line.

Increasingly, I felt the fool.

September 12. A couple of times I’ve noticed that Ashley leaves her usual position in the late afternoons. She’ll switch to the other side of the intersection when traffic starts flowing away from the university. The university crowd is always the biggest flow during the commuting hours. I’ve seen the guy I think she hangs out with move from the Walmart exit to the Home Depot exit across the street, getting himself set up to panhandle the cars that take that shortcut from the university.

October 9. In the pouring rain on a Sunday (a Sunday now!), Ashley was at her usual end of the median strip and Walmart guy was at the other end, facing her. They both had white poster board signs, though his statements were a little more edgy (“My tent leaks!”). He had on a clear, hooded rain poncho, hers was a fashionable blue that went nearly to the ground, sashaying like a ball gown as she strode to and from her signpost.

On another day, when the rain was on and off, she hung the long raincoat over the traffic sign. Ashley’s’s coat rack.

She looks better clothed now. She has a few different outfits, not just the same one every day. And, she is always wearing a fanny pack belted around her hips. That is new. From time to time I see her slip money in there. From time to time, I see her on a cell phone that she slips back in the pouch.

October 12. An October surprise of driving snow swirls around. Ashey has on a jacket with the hooded sweatshirt underneath. No raincoat.  The snow was driving right into her face. She squinted against it.

What is my role with this human being I supported for two years and then abandoned to my own doubts and whispers? Mostly I’ve become an observer, taking in the details of Ashley’s presence on the median but keeping my distance.

October 16. Another Sunday. Is she making up for lost time? On a 7-days-a-week schedule now? All the intersection corners are occupied with individuals holding “homeless; help” signs. Where did they all come from? Their pimp went on a rampage?

Ashley is at her usual post looking worn and tired. She holds up her sign as if directing a laser beam towards me.

That skin tone of hers! The only other time I have seen it is on my old guitar buddy, Dontrall. I said to him once, “Your skin is like a Native American’s when you have had a lot of sun. It has so much red and copper in it.”

“I’m black,” he said. I need to look up Dontrall on Facebook. See if I can discover what became of his daughter, Justice. She would have skin like that, burnished like antique copper.

Maybe I should holler out to Ashley one day, “Hey, Justice!” See if she answers.

November 16. It’s 11:30 in the morning. Ashley is on the other side of the street by the abandoned Burger King, smoking and laughing with Walmart guy, who has his own shabby homeless garb and a white poster board sign. It looks as if her shift today doesn’t start until 12, because some other guy is at her usual post.

For about a week, it looked like Ashley had her stuff in a brown plastic bag. Then I figured out she was hiding her backpack in there.

November 17. Maize colored sweatshirt these days, still the black fanny pack. In the pouring rain she was out there Monday, the rain poncho floating around her heels.  Her partner was out there on the Walmart median with his poncho and his white board sign.

Tonight, 5:30, pitch black and she is out there, I suppose because homeward-bound commuter traffic brings in the bucks.

A friend visiting from Houston today said she’d asked a man who worked with the homeless what to do, given the complexities of the situation and not knowing if it’s for real or a scam. He said, “There’s no way you can know their situation. Do what you feel like doing. If you feel like giving them a couple of bucks that day, do it.”

Here’s the saddest thing. It’s clear that Ashley doesn’t plan to leave in the winter anymore. When it snows, she and the other regulars on their median strips carve a footpath down the middle of the snowy median as they go back and forth all day long. Panhandlers used to be seen around here only in the summers.

December 21.  She waves at me when I am in line. Sweet. I don’t hand her money as often, but I’ve gone back to chatting with her, each time I’m going through the intersection.

“It’s just not happening today,” she said. “My goal for the day was $40, but it’s just not happening.” So, the good folks of this area aren’t giving her as much as I imagined. Maybe that’s the cost of being there day after day, month after month – diminishing returns.

January 4.  The sign today says, “Please help. Homeless. Cold and hungry. Living in a tent.” The secondary purpose of the sign is to hide covert activity with the pouch on the fanny pack – putting away all those folded bills from the hands of good people, checking her phone, sometimes lighting a cigarette.

January 5. The guy I think is her partner had a crudely written sign today, “Please help. Someone slashed my tent!!! Living in a shelter.” It made me laugh.  I mean, they’ve changed their signs so many times since the spring, what will it be next?

January 12. Ashley is holding a full sign today. “Please help. I HATE doing this but I’m homeless. Living in a tent. Shelters are full. Anything will help.”

March 7. She always gives me a little wave and a smile when I’m in line. I always open the window to say hi. “Did you ever think you’d be doing this for 2 years?” I asked her today.

“No.”

“It makes me sad to see you still here every day.”

“Me, too.  I’m not a crier, but trust me, I cry every day.”

April 3.  Last week the white poster board sign was gone. Ashley had a plain cardboard sign that said, “Please help. I’m just trying to help my family. If you can’t give, I understand.  Do you have a little extra you could give once a week? Once a month?” An installment plan for passers-by.

She probably caught a lot of flak for that one because next time I saw her she was back to the white poster board with a message that had been toned down to, “I understand you work hard for your money. Anything will help.”

Today, a beautiful day, her sign was a meager, “Please help. I’m living in a tent.” I asked how she was. “Not good,” she said. “Today is a bad day.” The light had changed, the line was moving.

“Oh,” I said while rolling.  “I send you a big hug.”

“Thanks,” she said, in a way that people do when they really mean it.

Maybe that will be my new approach.  Giving her a hug now and then. If only I could figure out how to make it onto that median strip in the midst of all this traffic.

*******

When I asked Ashley recently what she wants to have happen, where she sees herself after this phase, she immediately said, “I want to get back to where I was: in my own apartment, with a job, and having my kids with me.” You and I know that the path she has chosen to achieve that goal is convoluted and probably toxic.

She is still here. Unless the flow of charity dries up, she’ll probably be here for many months to come. At times, I wanted to make this story about that incredible, continuous flow of charity that keeps Ashley stuck to her spot.

“Some lady gave these to me the other day,” she said when I commented on new, red sneakers she was wearing. “She said it was too cold out here to be wearing those sandals I had on.”

Good people are everywhere. I have seen many people giving her money. Often, it is the “tough,” older guys in large pick-up trucks. Food gets stashed in her backpack or the big plastic bag. Money gets stashed in her fanny pack.

One day a gentleman drove up to her with a brand new, bright red windbreaker/raincoat. It had the Columbia insignia on the sleeve. “It still had the tags on it!” she said, still marveling at it. “He drove over there to EMS and picked it up. Said he saw me standing in the rain yesterday. Half price off on a $100 coat. Who pays $100 for a coat?!”

At times, I wanted to make Ashley’s story about finding the truth. Is she, in fact, a homeless mother of 3 kids living in a tent? How much effort had she given to the job hunt? To what extent is she tied into the social services she needs? How much money does she make a week from panhandling? I’d get so frustrated about not knowing the answers I’d think about trying to catch her in a lie. The truth is probably a mix of many things: she is conning us into kindness and she is in need of help to get back on her feet.

So many passers-by have become used to seeing Ashley right there, on that median. Some have learned to tune her out, because she’s been there now for three years. Others, like me, have become engaged with her, and learned to care about her. In a way, she and the other panhandlers represent an opportunity to bring out the best in us.

Our community has an amazing array of people doing everything they can to help Ashley and anyone else who might be homeless, hungry or in need of a job. They run cot shelters, soup kitchens, survival centers and a host of services designed to help people who are down and out.

Thank goodness for that. I can’t begin to know, much less support, all of the panhandlers who stand in quiet agony on their median strips each day. I will never know their truths. I can donate money to the charities that help them AND I can  treat each one as an equal regardless of the truth behind their signs.

That’s what interacting with Ashley has taught me. These folks may be broken in some way I don’t fully understand. Nevertheless, I can connect with each one. I don’t need a sandwich or a dollar, although I know they’ll welcome that, too. If I am in any of the lines at any of the lights and I am right next to a panhandler, I make eye contact, give a smile, ask their names, take an interest while I’m at the stoplight. If there is time, I am ready to talk about some of the soup kitchens and survival centers available in this area.

Sometimes, the work of living as equals is that basic.

*******

An excellent companion piece to this article is a video done by Charlie Turner and N.J. Park entitled, “All Too Human: A Look Inside the Hard Reality of Homelessness.”  It includes an interview with  Ashley. Go to https://amherstmedia.org/content/new-documentary-short-all-too-human-look-inside-hard-reality-homelessness