A Gift of Hope: Helping the Homeless by Danielle Steel Page B

buses. The danger for us there was that we couldn’t see who was inside, how many, or what was coming at us when the doors opened and they came out. I liked working outdoors, seeing a wide area where I was working, and who was around me, and who wasrunning toward us. I don’t like surprises, and those buses and trucks were an invitation to bad surprises. After a few of those, we decided to avoid them. On the whole, we were pretty brave about the areas we ventured into. Some of what we did was just plain foolish, done in innocence and determination. But we were clearly blessed, and most of our clients were incredibly wonderful people. And sometimes even the less wonderful ones provided a certain kind of blessing.
    We often reminded each other to look out for weapons as best we could. I suspect that many of the people we dealt with carried them, anything from handguns to knives and even razors. I have seen razors flashed next to a pant leg, then quietly slipped into a pocket. We were aware. But we also posed no threat. We wanted nothing from them—we gave, we didn’t take. But in the case of someone mentally unstable, particularly if you startle, frighten, or worry them unduly, you can easily set them off. We gave plenty of warning as we approached, with that resounding “Yo!” We stayed plainly visible, we announced what we had to offer, and theoretically there was safety in numbers. There were almost always eleven of us in three vans, although admittedly once out of the vans, we spread out. We didn’t mean to, and we tried to stay in pairs or groups, but sometimes there were too many people, spread out themselves, who needed us, or we drove into someplacedarker than we expected, or there were thirty people hidden in the darkness when we thought there were only two or three. We took our chances on the streets like everyone else, no matter how careful we were.
    The composition of the permanent team of Yo! Angel! was racially varied, so people were likely to be comfortable with some of us and not others. But there was a face and style for everyone. We were one North African, two Asian (one Japanese, one Chinese)—although you almost never see Asians homeless on the streets—two Hispanics, and six Caucasians. Of the eleven who composed the permanent team, three were women, eight were men. So there was pretty much a flavor, nationality, style, and gender for everyone’s preferences about who to deal with. And we worked wonderfully as a team, and loved each other. The work we shared for so long was a powerful bond between us. We considered our street work a sacred engagement. Most of us just about never missed it, except in an emergency. My guess is that in eleven years, we each missed it once, twice at the most, and only for injury or illness. I stayed home once for a bad back, and worked on the streets with a cast on my leg for six months, with a torn Achilles tendon. None of us ever wanted to miss those nights, for whatever reason. We tried to get out to the streets about once a month from September through May.
    The scary moments were overwhelmingly outweighed by the wonderful ones, for all of us. We acknowledged the hard incidents, and learned from them. In our very early days, we walked into a situation that looked like a fairly large and mixed group, and within minutes we realized that we had wandered into a group of homeless people being robbed by a bunch of young predators. It was a lesson for us, that the weakest and most unfortunate are preyed on by others who take what little they have. There is definitely a pecking order on the streets. We walked into the midst of that group like innocents, smiling happily at those we were about to help, as one of the predators looked at me and rolled his eyes. I was dressed in rough clothes, looking plain but clean, but probably even in my roughest gear, work boots and an old parka and wool cap, I looked pretty civilized. The leader of the predatorial group glanced at me in