Hospital Staff Puts Homeless Man on Bus Back to Family

It started as a routine call for paramedics, who found a dehydrated and disoriented homeless man lying on a sidewalk Thursday morning in Gardena.

It ended with the man on a Greyhound bus, headed for Idaho and a reunion with his estranged family, thanks to the staff at Memorial Hospital in Gardena.

“It’s Christmastime; I think everybody wants to pitch in and do something to help others,” emergency room nurse Dawn Henry said later.

Paramedics found the man about 11:30 a.m. Thursday on Redondo Beach Boulevard, near the hospital. Weak, unable to stand without assistance, he identified himself only as “Crenshaw”--an apparent reference to Crenshaw Boulevard.

Henry, who attended to the man when he was brought to the emergency room, said it appeared that he had not eaten in several days.

“He was very confused and unclear about where he was,” she said.

After he was fed and treated, he remembered his name was Robert Ellis. He said he had been homeless for at least six years.

After several inquiries, Henry said, Ellis, 44, finally told her he had family in Buell, Ida. Nurses then contacted family members, who said they had not seen Ellis in years and that they reported to authorities that he was missing three years ago.

“His father said he wanted him home but only if he gave up drinking,” Henry said.

Ellis agreed and called his father. “When he got off the phone there were tears in his eyes,” Henry said.

Ellis’ father purchased a bus ticket and forwarded it to the Greyhound station downtown, but staff members collected more than $200 to defray the cost of the $142 ticket and to give Ellis some spending money, Henry said. In addition, the hospital arranged transportation to the downtown bus station for Ellis in a hospital minivan.

The nursing staff bathed him, shaved him and washed his clothes.

On Friday afternoon, a hospital staff member put Ellis on a bus headed for Twin Falls, Ida. He was expected to be reunited with family in nearby Buell late Saturday night.

His father, Jesse Ellis, contacted in Idaho by telephone Friday, declined to comment, saying only that “they are very nice people down there” at the hospital.

Staff members said they were moved to help Ellis in part because he had a pleasant personality.

“He was different; he was a nice guy,” Henry said, adding that many of the homeless who come to the hospital are inconsiderate or impolite.

There was some seasonal spirit involved, too.

“This is really the meaning of Christmas,” said Marre Randels, a supervisor in the hospital’s cardiology unit. “It makes everybody feel good.”