Living in the Here and Now : Homelessness: An amnesia victim doesn’t expect a $12,500 settlement from the city of Santa Ana to change her vagabond lifestyle.

She prefers to be called Kathy Jane Doe, but her real name is Karen Paige Kirby.

An amnesia victim, Kirby has lived in Santa Ana since 1985, first on the streets and now in a 22-year-old white van parked in a transmission-shop garage where her boyfriend works.

Although Kirby, 32, is still struggling to remember her past, one thing she has no problem recalling is suffering a fractured cheekbone after being thrown to the ground in a struggle with a Santa Ana police officer two years ago. The officer found Kirby drinking beer out of a paper bag at the railroad station in Santa Ana and arrested her for drinking in public.

Under the name Kathy Jane Doe, she filed a complaint with the city alleging unlawful arrest and excessive force. On Monday, the City Council is expected to ratify a $12,500 settlement in the case, said Christopher B. Mears, an Irvine lawyer representing her.

She said she plans to remain in her van with her boyfriend and “live one day at a time.”

“I’ll just keep doing things the way I’ve been doing them,” Kirby said in a thick Southern drawl as she popped open a cold can of beer in the cluttered van. “The van is fine. We got a stove, a refrigerator and a potty, so it’s fine. I’ll keep eating cheap too, mostly bologna and cheese. Sometimes when we feel rich, we order a pizza.”

For many years, Kirby didn’t know who she was. Amnesia prevented the homeless woman from remembering that she grew up in a small North Carolina town. It wasn’t until she turned to the Legal Aid Society of Orange County three years ago for help in arranging financial aid from social service agencies that her identity emerged.

The FBI used her fingerprints to find out her name and Social Security number, which revealed that she had been disabled in a North Carolina automobile accident in 1975 that prevented her from working. This qualified her for more than $600 a month in Social Security benefits.

When she approached Legal Aid Society lawyers, Kirby “weighed about 80 pounds and looked like she had been wearing the same clothes for about a year,” recalled Jere Witter of the Legal Aid Society.

“Because she would often fly into temper tantrums, by the time she came to us, nearly every door in the county had been closed to Kathy,” Witter said. “We tried to find out who she was, but she couldn’t remember anything.

“She was really quite a personality with all the trouble she caused and the tantrums she threw. But she had a certain charm, and you couldn’t help but like her. People who knew her then liked her in spite of herself.”

Her current lifestyle is a far cry from her first four years in Orange County, when she slept on cardboard in vacant lots and only ate food that she found in trash cans, Witter said. Too proud to eat at a soup kitchen, she would survive on money earned selling aluminum cans, he said.

Gaining the $600 a month in aid made a big difference in Kirby’s life because she was able to buy food, Witter said.

“This brought about a change in her,” he said. “She started caring about how she looked. She just started carrying herself better, and there were less tantrums.”

Kirby has only vague memories of her past. She said beatings from her father caused her to flee the South and hitchhike across the country to Orange County. But that cross-country trip in 1985 brought more beatings and numerous rapes, events she said she remembers because of the pain.

The name Kathy Jane Doe was given to her at a Texas hospital where she awoke after being beaten by a truck driver with whom she had hitched a ride.

“I know my real name is Karen, but I was Kathy for so many years and I went through so many experiences as Kathy,” she said. “My real friends are the ones who know me as Kathy.”

The near-fatal car accident in 1975 is believed to have triggered her amnesia. In that accident, both of her legs were broken and she suffered serious head injuries. Her right leg remains more than an inch shorter than her left, and she wears a special shoe to compensate for the difference.

“My amnesia is a getaway kind of thing for me,” she said. “It’s a cop-out, I know, but it’s real. That’s how I deal with my problems: I forget them.”

She has resumed contact with the family she only vaguely remembers and tries to call her mother at least once a week, though she said she often forgets. She has no plans to return to North Carolina.

“The only way I’ll go back is if they take me in chains,” she said defiantly.

Although the deep lines and numerous scars on her weather-beaten face are evidence of her life on the streets, Kirby said she has no regrets. She is happy with the settlement offered by the city of Santa Ana and doesn’t imagine it will change her vagabond lifestyle.

“I figure God will let me know what he figures I can handle,” Kirby said. “Whatever I am supposed to remember, I’ll remember, and to hell with the rest of it. . . . I’m blessed. God is looking out for me.”