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Bench Is Helen’s Only Home : Homeless: Woman’s presence in Corona del Mar is a stark reminder of how another segment of the population lives.

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She sits on a bench, a stone’s throw from the million-dollar beachfront homes, a black homeless woman wrapped in a heavy wool blanket, seemingly oblivious to the affluence around her.

No one is quite certain of her real name, but those who care enough to ask know her simply as Helen.

For Helen, home is the bus stop on Coast Highway near the Studio Cafe. During the day she takes the bus to Laguna Beach, but she always seems to return to the bus stop.

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And it is here that the residents of Corona del Mar share their relative wealth, dropping off small cakes and pastries, coffee.

“It’s like the wild cats of Corona del Mar,” said Marla Mazura, 39, a psychiatric nurse and local resident. “People bring her food every day like they do with the stray cats on the bluffs. I’m amazed and impressed that the police let her stay.”

Helen, speaking from from the wall by the Studio Cafe, Corona del Mar’s hot spot for jazz, dining and singles mingling, said she has three places to go.

“I choose not to go to any of them, and that’s all I want to say,” she explained.

For a long time Helen slept alone on the bench where the sounds of ragtime, laughter and clinking dishes poured from the open restaurant windows. When her bench disappeared several weeks ago, she set up camp on the flower bed wall facing the highway, at the edge of the cafe parking lot.

Rich Edmonston, city traffic engineer in Newport Beach, said the removal of the bench had “something to do with the woman who claimed it as her home.” The bench was replaced earlier this week, however, and Helen promptly returned to her post.

Robert Oakley, Newport Beach police spokesman, said the city has received some complaints about Helen in the nine months she has been there, but added that she is “allowed to go about her business. She’s been contacted by officers on numerous occasions, but in those contexts she was not doing anything wrong.”

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Fred LeFranc, owner of the Studio Cafe, is one of a growing number of residents pitching in to help the woman.

“We feel bad for her and have offered to help, but she is not interested in going to a shelter,” LeFranc said. “Some people do this by choice.”

Elaine Kray, a self-employed Corona del Mar mother of two, is one of the residents who regularly brings Helen food.

“At first I was afraid, so for a long time I’d just pull up and deposit a bran muffin and a little white napkin on the bench while she was sleeping,” she said. “I figured she’s been living on Carl’s Jr. bags from the trash can so for $1.10 a day, I take her breakfast.”

Kray said that one morning, Helen was awake.

“I couldn’t decide what to do. I wondered, ‘What if she’s nuts and starts screaming?’ But she smiled and said ‘Hello, so you’re the one with the muffins,’ so I talked with her.”

Helen follows a regular schedule each day, Kray said.

“When I bring the muffin at 6:45, she’s usually sleeping under a blanket in nightclothes with the cap over her face for privacy. When I come back from car-pooling at 8, she’s awake and changing under the blanket into her daytime outfit. She leaves Corona del Mar by bus before 9.”

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Kray said Helen goes to a bench in Laguna Beach for the day, returning to Corona del Mar in the evening. When it rains, she sleeps on the covered bench in front of the Bank of America, Kray said.

“It’s no mindless existence,” Kray said. “I get an intense sense of direction and schedule--she’s living a whole life on benches, with places to go and things to do.”

Kray is frustrated by the hopelessness of the homeless.

“She may say she’s there by choice but I debate that that is a sound decision,” she said. “I don’t know where my personal responsibility begins and ends. I end up feeding one person a muffin because I don’t know what else to do.”

Some residents say Helen is a needed reminder of other life styles.

“The fact that she’s here in nirvana makes the homeless situation stand out in bold relief,” said Mazura. “As insulated as we in Corona del Mar think we are, we are not immune to what’s happening everywhere else.”

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