Do1Thing Blog

Agent Thunder hangs his poetry and art on the walls of his small room at the Daybreak shelter. Photograph by Larry C. Price.

He will be known as “Agent Thunder.”

Why? Is it a street name?

Nah. This just seems like the perfect opportunity to use it.

Agent Thunder has been homeless since February 2008. He is 18 now, which means that he went out onto the street when he was 17 years old and still in high school. Which means that he didn’t finished high school.

To be specific, Agent Thunder was kicked out of his adoptive parents’ home. There was a lot of yelling and screaming. The whys don’t matter. He went back to live with his biological family. Social services took him away from them when he was 7 and now, belatedly, he realizes it was for good reason. He is tactful.

Their lifestyle, it was a problem.

 Their lifestyle involved a lot of drinking and smoking pot and people who made Agent Thunder feel really, really uncomfortable. He left his mother and went to live with a brother, who is not really a brother, but seems like one. And then the brother got into trouble, a  lot of trouble involving drugs and probation violations, and well, to make short work of a long story, Agent Thunder, found himself on the street, looking for a place to stay. He moved from friend to friend, couch to couch, each time wondering how long the welcome would last. It never lasted long.

He spent one night at a shelter for homeless adults. The place was creepy, full of drug addicts and people who didn’t have any problem walking around without their pants. The odor was atrocious and he had to lie on a mat on the floor less than two feet from people on either side of him.

I was afraid.

Afraid? Of being hurt?

 No. Afraid of being like them. Of being in the same situation they were in.

 That night at the shelter, lying awake, smelling the smells, listening to conversations that he wishes he didn’t hear, conversations that he will not repeat, Agent Thunder resolved to get his life together.

 I really began to reflect and think about what I did to mess myself up.  That night convinced me to find something better so I wouldn’t end up with something worse.

A woman told him about Daybreak, a nonprofit organization in Dayton that provides housing and social services for children and youths, and he went, reluctantly at first, to the bright, painted brick building on Patterson Boulevard. At Daybreak he has his own bedroom in the shelter, a clean if spartan space. He’s getting job training and doing some work at a senior citizens center. He likes art and can draw, really draw. He shyly shares a few works, a perfect sketch of people sitting on the day room couches, stylized figures with hearts and birds, a comic book hero with bulging muscles. It’s all done in ink, on lined paper, ripped from a spiral notebook, but it is good. The sort of good that deserves more attention.

He’s working toward his high school degree at the charter school that works with Daybreak residents. At times, it’s been one step forward, two steps back. Agent Thunder will be the first to admit he has a way to go.

I did some things not a lot of people would be proud of. I didn’t have a job. I wasn’t contributing to the household. I was clueless about being on my own. I still have pride issues. I don’t like asking for stuff and hearing no.

 Five years down the road, he sees college or a really good job in fine arts or fashion or the culinary world. He talks about a future in which he hosts art shows in different countries around the world, art shows with paintings, drawings, lots of different pictures. It’s a big dream for a homeless street kid, but then, considering where Agent Thunder has been and where he is now, it doesn’t seem so far fetched.

You never know. You’ve got to believe anything’s possible.

– Debbie M. Price

Rob, now 21, reads the Bible daily in his small apartment at Daybreak. Photograph by Larry C. Price.

Every time I’d get a paycheck, they’d wanted it.

Barely 19 years old, Rob found himself working to support the drug habits of his mother and his sisters and their assorted boyfriends. Social services had taken him away from this same, drug-addled mother when he was only 7 years old. He’d had nine foster families in 11 years. When he turned 18, fantasizing about having a real home, he’d returned to his biological mother.

 I thought it would be different.

It wasn’t.

His mother’s drug habit was worse than ever. Rob was paying the rent and buying the food while an ever-growing cast of characters hung around getting high. It finally became more than he could stand. Figuring that there was no point in working if everyone else was just going to drink or smoke up his pay check, Rob quit his steady job at Home Depot. Soon after, the family was evicted.  Locked out with only the clothes on his back, Rob was homeless. It was winter, 2007, in Dayton, Ohio. And he didn’t even have a coat.

That first night on the street Rob slept on a dirty mattress in a dirty garage with nothing but a cheap little candle for light. The place was packed with other homeless people trying to stay warm. An older man gave him a tarp to cover himself with as the temperature dropped below freezing. Later, another homeless buddy would come up with a coat for him.

Except for a few nights of couch hopping, taken in by people who felt sorry for him, it would be almost a year and a half before he sleep again in a warm, safe bed. During that time, Rob learned to trust no one, to be alert and to keep his counsel. He learned to carry two rocks tied into a sock as protection against the sort of things that can go bad without warning.

He worked odd jobs, replacing gas tanks, mowing yards, shoveling snow. He scrapped cans for 25 cents a pound. On the coldest nights, he’d walk around and around, just to keep the blood flowing. He got sick, very sick, a staph infection, ear, lung, skin infections. At the hospital, he denied that he was homeless. He knew that the nurses knew that he was lying, but he was too afraid to admit the truth. Too afraid he’d be forced to go to a homeless shelter where he was certain he’d become one of them, the hardcore, the crazy, the lost.

 His weight dropped to a skeletal 90 pounds. He tried to keep warm with things he found in the trash, a torn blanket, a tarp with a hole in it. His every thought was about finding enough money to buy food. He stole and didn’t get caught but felt like he should. He had a high school degree, he wanted a real job, he longed to return to Home Depot, but, and he looks so ashamed when he talks about this part, he didn’t dare apply anywhere decent because he stank so bad.

 Finally, in November 2008, Rob found his way to a church where the pastor told him about Daybreak, a nonprofit Dayton organization that provides housing and social services to runaway and homeless teenagers. Now 21, Rob has been at the new Daybreak shelter near downtown Dayton since late 2008.  He has his own room with a warm bed and a hot shower down the hall, three meals a day and people who, he says, seem like family, a good family. He’s getting job training and looking for work. His ambitions are simple: a job, a bed, hot and cold running water, heck, he says, even a cup of cold, clean water is more than he had.

 People who try to conquer big things have to go after little things. The little things add up to big things.

 There are things that happened during Rob’s time on the street that he won’t talk about, things that he saw that make the lines around his eyes tighten. He looks down and away, nervous, with the residual anxiety of someone who has come through a horror, like war.

 He is far older than his 21 years, but for a moment, when he lets himself fantasize about his new life, complete with a dream house, his eyes shine like a little boy’s.

 Oh yes, he knows what he wants in this dream house. He would have a tower on some land, a place where he could look out over the trees and up at the sky. His room would be all white with white tile floors, white to reflect the other colors. There would be a mirror over a fireplace.

There are going to be trees. I can build a fire, right?

 He smiles at the thought.

It is a simple fantasy, no home theater or even a flat-screen TV, no fancy sports car in a three-car garage. Just a tower in the trees with pure white walls. Safe and clean and his. 

And one more thing, he says.

Everybody needs to take their shoes off when they come in my place.

— Debbie M. Price

Antwuan, 19, in crisp white shirt and bright geometric tie. Photograph by Larry C. Price.

Nights on the street in Dayton, Antwuan stayed awake, listening to jazz on his iPod, a relic from his comfortable, middle-class life. As he counted the hours until dawn, too afraid to sleep, a single question played over and over in his mind.

 How could someone who was so successful in high school end up like this?

 The bad decisions and their consequences had piled up with stunning swiftness. He was going to enlist in the Navy, but didn’t. He drove without a license, hit a car and left the scene of the accident. The court was lenient; his parents weren’t. They hassled him, had expectations. He didn’t need them. His parents, fed up, said, fine go.

It was a minor dispute over something trivial. I thought I was ready to leave the nest. Words were said. I felt I couldn’t stay there anymore.

He stayed with friends; his welcome ran out. He didn’t know what else to do and was too proud to ask. By September 2008, Antwuan, 19, was homeless. He found places to hang out near traffic and lights and kept to himself.

 When other homeless people were coming around, I’d go into alert mode. Anything can happen. You’re always bracing yourself.

 During the day, Antwuan worked for a construction company owned by his girlfriend’s father. She packed lunches for him and sent them to the work sites with her father. On the way to jobs, he slept in the van and tried to keep the rest of the crew from finding out that he was homeless. After work, he hunkered down in a nearby park.  The park felt less dangerous than other places, but it had one big drawback. It was entirely too close to home, too close to friends.

 I didn’t want people that I knew to see me on the street. When I’d run into someone, I’d pretend I was just hanging, you know.

 Antwuan was one of the lucky ones. His time on the street was short-lived. His girlfriend’s father figured things out and persuaded him to seek help from Daybreak, a nonprofit organization that provides housing and social services for homeless teenagers. Now living in a supervised Daybreak apartment, Antwuan is enrolled in job training and is working on his application to a community college. He’s interviewing for jobs and dressing the part, dapper in crisp white shirt and tie. He’s learned enough about construction working as a helper on job sites to know that he wants to study basic building design, maybe get a degree in architecture. Going green, he says, is the ticket.

 My goal now is to get myself back on track, to get a steady job, learn how to budget money, spend wisely. I plan to support and maintain a family. If you believe in your goals and work for you goals, anything can happen.

The donations kept pouring in until the volunteers finally packed away the donation table out front.  Those of us in Houston would like to thank all of our subjects for allowing us to tell their stories, the hard-working staff at Covenant House, all the volunteers, and the countless Houstonians who came out to Do 1 Thing today.

Andres checks out some donated sneakers in a room that was filled to overflowing. It took three rooms like this to handle the outpouring of donations from the community. (Photo by Smiley N. Pool)

Writer Jessica Johns Pool got into the spirit of the day. (Photo by Smiley N. Pool)

To learn more about Houston’s Do1Thing team, visit these Web sites:

Dave Einsel, photographer: www.daveeinsel.com

Amina Rivera, writer: www.dailycougar.com

Robert Seale, photographer: www.robertseale.com

Todd Spoth, visual journalist: www.toddspoth.com

Jessica Johns Pool, writer: www.jjpeditorial.com

Smiley Pool, photojournalist: www.smileypool.com

As we consider the plight of runaway and homeless teenagers on this Valentine’s Day, I’d like to toss out two  numbers — $9.2 million and $18 million.

First, let’s talk about the $9.2 million. In May 2008, Daybreak of Dayton, a nonprofit organization that has been helping homeless and runaway teenagers since 1975, opened a new shelter in a former dry cleaning plant. The bright, peach-colored brick building holds a 16-bed emergency shelter for homeless youth, ages 10 to 18; 24 furnished apartments for youths 18 to 21, offices, a kitchen, recreation rooms, a play area for the babies and toddlers that come with the young mothers, and a computer lab for job training.

Private donors raised more than $6 million of the total $9.2 construction cost. The rest came from government grants and other public funding.

It is a bright place where frightened, often abused, young people can feel safe, sometimes for the first time in their lives.

The average stay in the emergency shelter is two to three weeks; older teens can stay longer in the apartments. The place is full almost every night.

Daybreak has another 33 apartments in the community and works with at least 200 “street outreach” clients, young people who can’t or won’t come into the shelter. Those who stay in the apartments pay $40 a month toward the rent, which is subsidized by Daybreak. They also have to   meet the terms of their individual contracts. This means getting job training or going to school, working, attending counseling, staying sober.

The nonprofit’s total budget is about $3 million a year to keep services going 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at the shelter and throughout the community.

Forty beds at the shelter times 365 nights a year is 14,600 bed-nights a year. Or put another way, that is 14,600 times a year that homeless children and youths don’t have to sleep on the street or stay in abusive situations.

As I walked through the new Daybreak facility yesterday, I admired the cheerful daycare area with its white cribs and bright educational toys, the streamlined apartments, the lounge with sofas and a flat-screen TV. The social worker accompanying me, nodded but she looked worried. What was I going to write?

“You know, there are some people who say it’s too nice. That we’re giving them too much,” she said.

I was surprised. The new building is clean and nice and all that, but it’s hardly luxurious.

“I think they would feel differently if they could see what we see with these kids,” she said. “But they just hear the numbers and well…”

How much is too much to save a child? To save 50 or 100 or 500 children? How much is too much to combat homelessness in one of the most economically depressed regions of the country?

To answer that question, let’s consider the $18 million.

Last September at a Sotheby’s art auction, the British shock artist Damien Hirst sold a calf carcass pickled in formaldehyde and encased in a Lucite box for $18 million. The hooves were cast in solid, 18-karat gold. As record-setting as $18 million was for this so-called “animal art,” that price paled next to the $100 million that Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull brought a few years ago. Art critics lauded this pickled bovine in a box as brilliant satire and a few went to so far as to predict the $9 million spent by its new owner would be seen as a good investment.

Now, one can argue that the $9.2 million spent for a new shelter for homeless children and youths has nothing to do with a sum of almost twice that amount spent at an art auction for a pickled calf with golden hooves. But I don’t see it that way. The way we spend our money, individually and as a society, says a lot about our priorities and about who we are. 

Which investment would you rather make? Nine million dollars to improve the lives of countless teenagers? Or $18 million to look at a dead cow suspended in formaldehyde?

Homeless teenagers? Pickled cow? Homeless teenagers? Pickled cow?

Gee, that’s a tough one…

– Debbie M. Price, Dayton, Ohio.

Carmine Galasso is a staff photographer at New Jersey’s The Record newspaper where he has won many awards for his portraiture and long-term projects. His work has taken him on assignment to Malaysia, Israel, Palestine, Northern Ireland, India and Kenya. In 2007, he published Crosses with Trolley Books. The monograph is a series of black and white portraits and interviews with survivors of clergy sexual abuse photographed across the United States. Photo District News named it one of the best books of 2007.

See Carmine’s Book

Erik S. Lesser is an Atlanta-based photojournalist with more than 20 years of professional experience. Erik is comfortable in many shooting environments including news, sports, features, business, documentary projects, public relations and business. He has covered everything from Haitian poverty, spot news, presidential primaries, the Atlanta Olympics, Hurricane Katrina and many sporting events.

Ultimately, Erik enjoys meeting people and learning about their lives, giving a viewers a peek at other’s lives.

A graduate of the University of Florida, Erik moved to Atlanta after working in Knoxville, Tennessee as a staff photographer at The Knoxville Journal.

Additionally he enjoys raising his three children; Hannah, Isaac and Penelope with his wife Kate. He also enjoys fly fishing and cooking.

See Erik’s work

Matt Mendelsohn is a writer and photographer from Arlington, Virginia.

He began is career at United Press International in the 1980′s, where he covered the White House, the Gulf War and the invasion of Panama. After serving as the Los Angeles bureau chief for UPI, Matt moved back to D.C. in 1992 and began shooting for USA Today. He became photo editor of the news desk there and later moved on to become director of photography at USA Weekend, a Sunday magazine with a weekly circulation of 30 million.

In 2001, Mendelsohn left USA Today to work on a family Holocaust project with his brother, writer Daniel Mendelsohn. The two traveled the world over a five year period looking for clues to the deaths of six family members in Poland in 1941. Daniel Mendelsohn’s book, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, went on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for best memoir of 2006. Matt’s photographs from that project are currently on display at Le Memorial de la Shoah, the French Holocaust museum in Paris.

Matt is also known as one of the most exclusive wedding photographers in America.

When he’s not shooting, Matt spends his time writing. He’s written op-ed pieces for the New York Times, the Huffington Post and a cover story for the Washington Post Magazine.

He lives in Arlngton, Virginia with his wife Maya and their five-year-old daughter, Alexandra.

View Matt’s work