The park cleanup in Venice Beach was a disaster.
Protesters from a harm reduction advocacy group launched a verbal assault against Will and First Contact, accusing us of stealing from the homeless. Will countered that he had permission from the people who lived in the park to help them clean up their garbage. The protesters opposed Will’s nine-step plan to end the homeless crisis, but mostly they objected to interfering with what they called “free will.”
The first step in Will’s plan was to make contact—find out who each person was, their name, their background. Basically—what was their story. The second step was to find out where they were at—if they used drugs, how long, if they were on medication, if they needed medical care, if they had identification (necessary to get into virtually any housing program), if they needed help to fill out government forms for disability or Medicare.
Everyone was different, but the stories were remarkably similar. The majority of the people living on the streets had been abused as children. Depending on which statistics you read, up to 67 percent were addicted to drugs or alcohol or were mentally ill—but working with them every day, Will put the number closer to 90 percent who had a history of addiction. The only way to get them off the streets permanently and teach them to become self-sufficient was to address their problems head-on and help them take ownership over their lives. Will had done it over and over and over again, but it wasn’t easy. It was time-consuming and frustrating. The government put more hurdles on success than anyone.
It was especially frustrating when I looked across the boulevard from the park we were cleaning and saw the four-story, 170-unit transitional housing project that was being built with a grant to Angel Homes.
Each unit, once completed, cost $1.1 million to build. Subsidized housing would be available for the homeless and those living below the poverty line—benefiting only 170 people. Two hundred million dollars wasted.
All I could think about was how far two hundred million dollars would go if the city spent it on actual affordable housing, real rehabilitation to help people not only get clean but stay clean. Job training, mental health screening, teaching people who had been living on the street for years real skills so they were empowered over their own lives. It was clear that the city could construct a far greater number of units at a much lower cost, but doing so would not benefit the personal interests of campaign contributors, politicians, contractors and the bureaucrats who served them.
It made me sick. I knew what was happening and felt like David battling Goliath, but I didn’t even have a rock for my slingshot.
I was doing something, but it never seemed to be enough. Each week I came closer to figuring out how to locate the files deleted in the computer crash. I would find them, but would it be soon enough? I feared that Craig Dyson and the others were becoming frustrated at how slow and laborious the process was. I had given them details on the nonprofits involved, but didn’t have the financial documentation between the city and the nonprofits.
Craig assured me that his office was digging into the publicly reported financial records of each entity and that everything I had provided was a piece to the puzzle. But we still couldn’t see the whole picture.
Will was talking civilly to one of the protesters who started swearing at him. I didn’t know how he could remain so calm, so reasonable. How he could tolerate being yelled at by people who disagreed with his solution. I didn’t see them picking up trash; I didn’t see them talking to the homeless. I doubted they even knew the name of one person who lived on the streets.
I continued to pick up garbage. I didn’t like confrontations. Will came out here often, but I didn’t. I didn’t know most of the people living in this park. I introduced myself, asked them if they had any garbage they wanted me to take away. Some ignored me. Some helped me.
“Do you have an extra bag?” a familiar voice said.
I turned to face Colton Fox. He was filthy, but his teeth were still too clean. He got away with it because he didn’t smile, didn’t show people he had a complete set of straight, white teeth. Sunglasses shielded his eyes.
I handed him a bag. “I haven’t seen you all month.”
“Busy,” he said. “I gave some stuff to Will when he got here. Good stuff. Go through it. Pictures. People I don’t know. Some documents I found in the trash.”
Somehow, I didn’t believe that. Not that he hadn’t found documents, but I wondered what rules—what laws—he might have broken to get them.
I realized then that I didn’t care. I didn’t care if Colton Fox broke every law if he found evidence of what these people were doing.
“The woman in the blue tent over there,” he said and jerked his head to the right, “between the two palm trees?”
I glanced over. “Yeah?”
“Her name is Sissy. She knows your mom. She won’t tell me anything, but she knows her. Maybe you can find out where she went. I’ve been here a week and haven’t seen her.”
I swallowed nervously. “Thank you.”
I waited until the other volunteers left, then told Will what Colton said. He was tired, angry with the protesters, frustrated that they had impacted his work. But he still went over to the tent with me, and I was grateful.
“You talk to her,” Will whispered as we approached. “I’m here for you.”
Sissy was sitting on a broken chair next to the tent in the shade of a short palm tree. She watched us suspiciously. She appeared to be in her midthirties, wore heavy pants and a flannel shirt over a T-shirt. Her short, frizzy red hair stood up in tufts, her scalp mostly visible.
“Hi, Sissy?” I said. “My name is Violet, and this is my friend Will.”
She eyed us, chin up. I could hear her breathing, a raspy, shallow sound. Her pupils were pinpoints and she had hollow cheeks, as if she were malnourished. Several square foils littered her space, all of them burned through the center. A fentanyl addict.
My heart broke. The drug was going to kill her if she didn’t stop.
“You from the gov’ment?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “We’re with First Contact, a volunteer group. We helped clean up the park today, helped some of your friends here with whatever they needed.”
“You have some blues?” Blues, fenty, dragon, jack, TNT—fentanyl went by dozens of different names.
“No, I don’t.”
“Then I don’t need your help. Come back with blues.”
“One of your friends here—”
“I don’t have no friends. No one here is my friend. You lyin’ to me.”
“I won’t lie to you. The white guy with the beard, wears an Army jacket with a flag patch?”
“Colt. Yeah. I know him. He’s not a friend. You with the gov’ment trying to fuck him over?”
“No. I’m trying to help him like we’re trying to help others here.” I was losing her. Her eyes darted around, and she was on the verge of bolting.
Will whispered, “You got this, Vi. Speak the truth.”
He said that often, to “speak the truth” because so often social workers or volunteers lied to the homeless. Promised one thing, didn’t deliver. Came by with food, but no real help.
I squatted next to her. She smelled of urine, but I resisted stepping back. “I’m looking for my mother. Her name is Jane. She’s in her fifties, has blond hair but it’s mostly gray. Hazel eyes like mine.” She looked like anyone, I thought. “She had this really heavy fake fur coat, dark red, she always has it with her. And a scar on her cheek.” I traced my finger along my cheekbone to mimic where my mom had been cut by a junkie two years ago.
“Jane,” Sissy said, scratching the back of her neck.
“Yes. Colt said you knew her.”
“I remember her.”
“She was here?”
Sissy shrugged. “Here, gone.”
I blinked back tears I didn’t want to shed. “Did she say where she planned to go? She doesn’t have a car. Maybe she went down the beach?”
“No, she’s gone gone. Forever gone.”
“No,” I said before I realized the word came out of my mouth.
“Sorry,” she said and closed her eyes.
I didn’t move. I wanted to shake this woman and scream at her to tell me what happened to my mother.
Will pulled me up, and I whirled around and pushed him away. “What does that mean? What the fuck does forever mean?”
“Let’s go.”
“I have to find her!”
“Please,” he said quietly.
I looked at Will and saw compassion, not pity. Understanding, not frustration. I followed him.
Will didn’t take me home. Instead, he drove to the Los Angeles County Morgue. I didn’t want to go in.
“All the dead pass through here,” he said. “Either she’s here or she isn’t. If you’d rather not know, I’ll take you home.”
I got out of the car without saying anything. Followed Will to the main entrance. He rang a bell before someone opened the door. “Thank you, Shelley,” Will said to the woman who answered.
Shelley was in her fifties, petite, with short gray hair and eyes to match. She wore scrubs. I realized then that the morgue was closed to the public on Saturdays, but Will knew someone who worked here—someone who was willing to do him this favor.
“We’re looking for Violet’s mother. She may not have been identified.”
“What’s the name?” Shelley asked as she walked around to a desk and sat in front of a computer.
“Halliday,” I said with a croak. I spelled the name. “Jane Elizabeth Halliday.”
“No one by that name here.”
“Do you have an unidentified homeless female in her fifties?” Will said. “She wouldn’t have been here longer than two months.” They kept John and Jane Does in the crypt for one year before burying them in a county plot.
She typed. “I have four that meet that criteria.”
“Can we look?”
“Give me a few minutes, okay?”
“Of course.”
I sat heavily on one of the two plastic chairs in the small lobby. “Oh, God. I can’t do this.”
“Yes you can, Violet. I’m here for you. You know that, right?”
Tears burned but didn’t fall.
“You did everything you could for your mother.”
“I should have done more.”
Will sat next to me. Took my limp hand. “There was nothing more you could have done,” he said. “You can’t force people to get help. If you can’t accept that truth, you can’t work with me.”
“Everyone else? I accept it. But she’s my mom. My mom...”
I jumped when Shelley returned. “Follow me,” she said and led the way down a long, cool corridor. We turned once, then at the end of that hall Shelley used her card key to unlock wide double doors. They swooshed open. “Is your mother white?” Shelley asked.
I didn’t answer her. I looked at the huge room filled with stainless steel drawers that held the dead. They were eight high, and a rolling ladder was used to access the higher levels. There were rows and rows of bodies on gurneys, covered with sheets.
“Yes,” Will answered for me. He took my hand, held it tight.
“That eliminates two of the four. We’ll start here.”
She pulled out a drawer on the bottom near the middle of the first row. I stared and my bottom lip quivered. A strangled sound escaped; I couldn’t speak.
Will said, “That’s Jane Halliday.”
I turned and buried my face in Will’s chest.
Shelley let me wash in the employee’s bathroom. Then we sat down in her cubicle and she brought up the file. She changed the records to confirm identity and next of kin, and asked what I would like to do.
I didn’t know what she meant. “Do what?”
“I can give you a couple of days to make arrangements. You should contact a funeral home—they will claim the body. You need to decide if you want her remains cremated or buried. You can talk to the funeral home about costs of each and what kind of service you’d like.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Like I said, I can give you some time to make these decisions. I know it’s difficult.”
“How?”
“I can give you a list of funeral homes.”
“I mean, how did she die?”
Shelley looked at the file. “She was found unresponsive on the beach in Venice Beach. Medics were called, but they were unable to revive her. The autopsy showed she died of hypoxia. That means—”
“I know what it means,” I said with more anger than I wanted.
Opioid users who overdose don’t get enough oxygen, go into a coma and die. Narcan can save them if administered soon enough, but when you’re riding high or with others who are too high to notice, you simply lie down and die.
Addicts that have been resuscitated even once by Narcan and go back to using have a thirteen times greater chance of dying within a year. My mother was now part of that statistic.
“When?” I asked. “When was she found?”
“Her body was brought to us August 20. Two and a half weeks ago.”
I should have looked harder for her. I should have done more. I should have been a better daughter, a better friend, a better person.
Now she was gone. Forever gone.
The system had failed her.
I had failed her. No matter what Will told me, I would never accept that I couldn’t have done more.
She was my mom.