Laguna Street Person Doesn’t Stand Up, Isn’t Counted

His name is Sandor Nagy, and he wraps a tattered sleeping bag about his body as he wanders barefoot along the streets of this seaside art colony with a smile on his grizzled face.

As distinctive as Nagy looks--passers-by do doubletakes when they see him shuffling along, hands clasped in prayer--he managed to elude Census workers conducting a head count of the homeless Tuesday night and early Wednesday.

While the counters scanned the nooks and crannies of Laguna Beach and other communities with large numbers of homeless, Nagy, a former Los Angeles car salesman, spent the night anonymously secure in a large flower planter atop a two-story parking garage.

“God bless you and your family,” he said to a visitor before covering himself with a blanket and retiring for the night.

Nagy, 36, a Hungarian immigrant, was one of an undetermined number of the county’s homeless who were apparently missed in the census.

In Laguna Beach, two very intoxicated men hopped a one-way bus to Capistrano Beach late Tuesday night before they could be included in the count. Four other homeless people said they had had no contact with census takers as of 10 p.m. Tuesday, when all headed off to find places on the streets to sleep.

Local homeless activists said they were not surprised that street people were missed in the count, considering the abundance of hiding places that can be found in the hills, canyons and bluffs of Orange County.

“Doing a census is pretty self-defeating here because the people with street skills are not going to be found,” said the Rev. Colin Henderson, executive director of Laguna’s Friendship Shelter, which houses about 20 of Laguna’s estimated 70 to 90 homeless every night.

Directors of the census effort had said that they expected to have difficulties in finding all the homeless.

“We’ve always admitted that we probably would not get all of them, but we did everything we could to get as many as we possibly could,” William Bellamy, manager of the Census Bureau’s South Orange County district, said Wednesday. “We had locations where the homeless might be identified to us by the community, and we sent people to those locations.”

Bellamy acknowledged, however, that some of the homeless “float,” or move around frequently, hampering efforts to find them.

As Orange County’s census count began with a check of homeless shelters Tuesday evening, Nagy conversed with a group of four other homeless men on the sidewalk outside an all-night diner.

Although it was 10 p.m., the night was still young for Nagy.

“I don’t even know what time it is or what day it is,” Nagy explained as he strolled along the Main Beach boardwalk later. “I just know there is the water and the waves.”

Nagy is known locally as “the Holy Man” because of his propensity for reciting prayer and bestowing religious blessings. According to Michael Avery, an art gallery owner and local homeless advocate, Nagy was a successful car salesman in Los Angeles until he was struck by an automobile and left mentally disabled two years ago.

Nagy emigrated from his native Budapest 20 years ago, settling in Los Angeles. His family is in Hungary.

Nagy walks for miles each day. Tuesday night, after walking non-stop for three hours, a visitor asked why he did not rest.

“If I stop, my heart will stop,” Nagy said.

Leading an intricate tour of the Laguna downtown area, where many of the community’s homeless are concentrated, Nagy pointed out some of his haunts.

“I used to sleep here before the city cut it short,” Nagy said, nodding toward a clump of newly landscaped shrubbery near a children’s playground on Main Beach. “I awakened to the laughter of children.”

Nagy described his current sleeping spot as a “grave” because it offers him so much concealment.

Feeding and clothing himself is not a problem, he said, because “brothers and sisters” in the homeless community and well-wishing downtown merchants help him out because of his accident.

“People feed him because their hearts go out to him,” said Lin Rivers, owner of a Laguna decorating service and another homeless advocate.

While Nagy expresses general contentment, he occasionally shouts in anger over two nemeses: memories of the accident and what he calls harassment of the homeless by local police.

But he quickly shakes the bad feelings away through prayer. Having walked for three straight hours with his visitor, Nagy ended the night by reciting the Lord’s Prayer while kneeling in his flower-bed home.

Then, his head disappeared into the flowers as he went to sleep.