Fifth Feed - Stories

approximate weekly Stats: 40 Servers, 200 served
approximate total stats: 96 servers, 750 served, $522 donate by volunteers

Last night we partnered with Coal Creek Chapel in Bellevue to help them distribute mass amounts of resources that they'd collected; it turned out to be a crazy yet fruitful night.

We sent out 3 backpack teams to our standard areas; Seattle Center, Bell Town, and the 5th avenue shopping area. They were armed mostly with Hottie hand-warmers, but had some food as well. One volunteer had this to say about a certain small concrete park area near the Westin: "It was hard to distinguish how many of the mounds of blankets had people wrapped inside them, but nobody responded when I walked up and offered hand warmers. We were almost worried about whether or not the blanket people were alive under there, and I would've started shaking people but we started to see the feet wiggle a little. We left a couple hand warmers for each person to find when they wake up. We carried on with our night and unloaded everything we had." She goes on to tell of another man that she'd unsuccessfully tried to server earlier in the night: "I told (the other volunteer) that he probably wouldn't accept anything from her, but she approached him anyway. Within seconds of her presence, he started rambling about how he is President of the United Nations while she wrapped an emergency blanket around him."

The crew that went to Belltown reported "Walking around Belltown, our group ran into many people that were very appreciative to receive the hand warmers and care packages. We actually ran out! We stumbled upon a Women's shelter between 1st and 2nd, and there were many women waiting to get in. Apparently, the doors to the shelter open at 6:00pm, but i am not sure if that specific shelter provides food."

I met up with the group from Coal Creek down at Occidental Park handing out cloths, hand-warmers, hot soup and coffee. If you've ever been to Occidental Park at night you know there is never a dull moment, we were reminded of this last night.

There was an ongoing altercation between a man and a woman. Apparently the man had hit the woman in the eye, when the cops showed up she did not want to press charges, and the cops left; that's when it got a bit crazy. The woman kept yelling that "He hit me in my @#$% eye", and every once in a while she would run up and kinda hit him. Often in these situations homeless people will police themselves, however eventually it escalated. All those people jostling around children and boiling water (for the soup) caused some concern. Finally, when they both fell on the ground, and I thought the woman hit her head on a post, it was time to make the disturbance go away, and we did.

We met a number of interesting people, most of whom just want someone to talk too. We met one man, Desert Storm Vet, who even showed us the cancer on his leg to prove his point while pleaing for bus money to a specific hospital; quite the story though I don't remember it all.

Last night was a rough night to be homeless indeed! See ya'll on the 23rd for Sixth Feed!

Todd @ wetfoot dot net