My husband and I first met Kelly during the summer of 2006. It was the week after we moved to Maui. A clean-shaven man and his dog were sitting in front of the Jack-in-the-Box entrance. We salute the man.
For the next six months, I often saw Kelly walking her dog through the streets or sitting in front of the Safeway store. I introduced myself to him one night when we were both walking down the hill at sunset. He introduced himself and his dog, a shepherd mix. Before long, Kelly and I spoke as friends. He told me his story as we walked. He had broken his back four years ago. When he couldn’t go to work for several months, he lost his job, which meant he lost his health coverage. Soon his condo went into foreclosure. Soon after, he and his dog moved from the condo to the beach. She applied twice for disability, but was rejected each time. He then found a lawyer to represent him and won on the third try. He could eat quite well on the disability check, but he didn’t have enough money left to pay for a roof over his head.
He loved his dog. She had been with him for twelve years. Neither of them liked the rain. Kelly’s belongings had been reduced to just a blanket and a bag of belongings.
He was the son of a good mother and a doctor in California. His parents died years ago, before he came to Hawaii. He had no siblings. Kelly slept on the beach every night. He said, “I try to sleep as far away from others as I can because most homeless people use drugs and alcohol. They get noisy at night.”
As the months went by, sometimes my husband, Bob, Kelly, and I talked about the obstacles that the homeless face. I thought a lot about Kelly’s situation and occasionally a suggestion would occur to her. I wish he had truly felt how his hope was like a raw and fragile egg, always in danger of breaking into little pieces.
It seemed unlikely there could be a job for him that wouldn’t aggravate his back pain and where he would be allowed to have his dog with him all day, but Bob and I spoke hopefully every other week when we sat outside with Kelly. from the Star Market tables. If we still had a home of our own, we could have invited Kelly to board with us, but we were renting and had a very strict lease. No guests were allowed. They didn’t even allow us guests for more than two weeks.
Kelly always looked well dressed when we saw him. It was an impeccable dressing room even though he bought most of his clothes at Savers, a thrift store. He showered in the community pool and was a frequent laundry customer. Sadly, I am failing to put the essence of Kelly on the page here. Kelly was a smart, genuine and unique person. And when it comes down to it, we everybody is it so. So how do you pass some of the weird and crazy federal and state government programs instead of bills to find ways to house our people? People, human beings, should be the top priority for any level of government.
One afternoon, I was with my daughter Priscilla and my grandchildren when we came across Kelly sitting outside Safeway. He said he was experiencing a terrible toothache and asked if we could take him to the Maui Memorial Hospital in Kahului.
The five of us and Kelly’s dog got into my little car and drove off. I enjoyed Kelly’s company as always. He was so informed on so many topics because he listened to radio shows most of the day. When we got to the hospital emergency entrance, Kelly said goodbye to her dog in five different expressions in Spanish, greeted us, and disappeared for over an hour. We walked through the hospital grounds with Kelly’s dog on a leash. When Kelly came back, she asked if she could take him to the K-Mart pharmacy because the doctor had given him a prescription for pain, but this time he didn’t have time to pull his tooth out. He said he would have to come back on Monday to have his tooth extracted. I was a bit naive, but my daughter wasn’t and she joked with Kelly about the weirdness of going to the doctor in a hospital instead of going to the dentist to have a tooth extracted. Kelly was serious about her toothache and the pain relief she needed.
Kelly asked for our phone numbers after we dropped him off later in the outdoor cafe area of Star Market. He had his pain reliever in a K-Mart bag. As we pulled away from the sidewalk, there were three homeless men running toward him, all friendly and teasing that it was time for him to learn to share his treats.
A week later, Kelly called me on the phone and told me that the toothache had subsided, so she hadn’t bothered to have her tooth removed, but now the pain was back. Could you take him to the emergency room again? I didn’t tell him that my daughter had given me clues about some things. I just said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get more pain relievers, at least not through my efforts, since I really don’t know if you’re in pain.” There was a pause. I thought he might argue with me, but that would be out of place for him.
Her voice had a nostalgia when she said, “Okay. Thanks, anyway.”
I felt very bad. Should I have caught up with him like that? Who was I to doubt if I had a toothache or not?
The days passed. I followed my usual routines. When Bob and I went for an afternoon walk, we expected to see Kelly. We started to think that maybe Kelly was at Star Market when we passed by Safeway and vice versa. He didn’t have a cell phone, so Bob and I couldn’t call him.
One morning about five weeks later, I was shopping for my morning paper at a mall down the street. I saw an acquaintance of Kelly’s standing on the sidewalk. I walked over and said, “I haven’t seen Kelly lately. Do you know where she is these days?”
Kelly left us.
Tears formed in my eyes and I could see the tears in the man’s eyes.
“He died?” I asked.
“Yes, about three weeks ago. They found him on the beach with his dog. She was watching him.”
“Was it an overdose, an accidental overdose, or what?” I asked.
“No one knows for sure. We miss Kelly, that’s all I can say. We miss him. And his dog really missed him. They took her to the Humane Society. I heard through the rumors that they had her there for two weeks and then some friends of Kelly’s went and adopted her. When she saw them for the first time, she screamed. The MHS staff said she hadn’t made a single sound in the entire time she was locked in there. She missed Kelly so much that he was breaking the hearts of all the staff and then when he saw Kelly’s friends he cried, licked them and let out some emotions. “
Two years have passed. I don’t see any of Kelly’s homeless friends around Kihei anymore. Most of the homeless have moved to a beach area on the other side of the island due in part to officers from the DLNR night patrols.
We had a love in our hearts for Kelly and now he is gone from us. Our lives were richer while he was here.
Is there anything we can do to bring the Hawaiian state government’s attention to the fact that real people need real help? The state of Hawaii is not alone in its growing population of homeless people.
I have no solutions. I have a few suggestions, except asking you if there are people who think they have solutions, do the following:
- Do a Google search for the names of your state’s representatives.
- Contact your state representatives with your suggestions and ideas by email or mail.
- Follow up with your state representatives via email and print letters once a month.
- Ask your friends to do the same.
- Write a letter to the editor of your newspaper describing your thoughts and suggestions on the problem of homelessness and encourage others to write to their state representatives with their ideas.
The next time you see a man with a sign and an empty container at the end of the street where cars are leaving a Walmart store, don’t stop and hand him money. Remember it could be you next month or next year. I wish I had been doing more about homelessness when Kelly was still here, still sleeping on the beach, and she could still buy her deli dinners at Star Market. But to live with myself, I have to believe the saying, “We haven’t failed unless we stop trying.” So, in fact, we have failed.