Feeding Homeless Makes Lasting Impression : What began as a school requirement has become a real commitment--and a crash course in real life--for a Laguna Hills teen-ager.

At first glance, Paul Cunningham looks like the sort of kid who’d be more at home perched on a surfboard than handing out free sack lunches in front of the Salvation Army in Santa Ana.

But as the blond, tanned 19-year-old Laguna Hills college student has learned over the past two years, first impressions can be deceiving.

“Before I started helping feed the homeless, I thought they were all weirdos who stood on corners and talked to themselves,” says Cunningham, who is beginning his third summer as a food distribution volunteer with SPIN (Serving People In Need).

The Newport Beach nonprofit organization was created five years ago to help the homeless and working poor of Orange County by providing basic necessities, as well as alcohol and drug recovery programs, employment and housing assistance and counseling.

“I remember thinking they’d be really different from me, that they’d be dangerous,” Cunningham says. “I was shocked, because for the most part they were friendly and normal. Some of them had mental or drinking problems, but the only real difference between me and most of them was that I had somewhere to live and they didn’t.”

Ann Emmerth, SPIN’s director of volunteers and street services, says it’s unusual for people Cunningham’s age to make such a consistent, long-term contribution.

“At Paul’s age, there’s typically so much going on in your life that it’s difficult to make an ongoing commitment,” says Emmerth, 25. “But that’s part of what makes him unique. For some volunteers, this work is sort of a sightseeing tour. They want to see for themselves what it’s like out there; they help out for a while, and then they move on.

“But Paul has taken it a step beyond. He’s really gotten involved. He has a level of maturity that a lot of people his age don’t.”

Since June, 1990, Cunningham has met thousands of homeless men, women and children through his work with SPIN’s Street Services Program, which last year distributed 36,400 sack lunches, more than 6,000 personal hygiene kits and thousands of “Jobline” flyers.

Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at 4:30, rain or shine, SPIN volunteers meet in the parking lot of Our Lady Queen of Angels in Newport Beach and load boxes of sack lunches into the back of a blue Nissan minivan. They head toward Santa Ana, where in less than two hours, they make three stops--at the Salvation Army on 3rd Street, the Civic Center and across the street from the Orange County Rescue Mission--and give away anywhere from 250 to 300 meals.

“Until you talk with people on the street face to face, it’s easy to think of them as a group, as ‘the homeless,’ rather than as homeless people,” says Cunningham. “They may be in the same place at the same time, but that’s all many of them have in common. I’ve come to realize that they’re as individual and unique as anyone else.”

And every one of them, says Cunningham, has a story to tell.

On a recent Tuesday, Cunningham and his three cohorts encounter everyone from a bruised, swollen Latino woman who looked as if she had gone the distance with Mike Tyson to a fast-talking but good-natured old man who said he was entitled to two lunches because he had a split personality.

“You get to know some of the regulars because you see them so often,” says Cunningham. “When one of them doesn’t show for a while, you wonder what happened to them. You just hope it’s good news.

“Earlier today I heard about one of the guys I hadn’t seen in a while, a guy named Brian. Apparently he’s sobered up and is doing really well. When I hear that kind of news, it reminds me that this work matters to people, that it’s helping.”

Cunningham is quick to admit that his initial motives for getting involved with SPIN were less than charitable.

“I did it because I had to,” he says. “In order to graduate (from Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Rancho Santa Margarita), we were required to do 80 hours of community service.”

Cunningham heard about SPIN from a friend of his mother’s, who knew SPIN founder Sam Boyce.

“It sounded interesting, but it was also kind of intimidating,” says Cunningham. “I’d never done anything like that before, and I’d never known anyone who was homeless.”

Within days, he was going out with the other volunteers to distribute food. For a 17-year-old from Laguna Hills, it was a crash course in real life.

“I had no idea that the homeless problem was so close to home,” he remembers. “I was totally ignorant to the problem. Nowadays, I notice it all around me. I see homeless people living just a couple miles down the street from South Coast Plaza. But back then, I just didn’t see it.”

Once Cunningham finished his 80-hour commitment, he decided to continue volunteering for the rest of the summer.

“I was really surprised that I liked it so much,” he says.

As the summer ended, so did Cunningham’s stint with SPIN.

“I got busy with school and all the other stuff you do during your senior year,” says Cunningham. “I didn’t really have a lot of free time. But then I had to do a report for my religion class, so I wrote about my experience feeding homeless people. It reminded me how much I missed helping out, so after I graduated I showed up one day and offered to go along.”

Cunningham stayed with the program until January, when he left Orange County to attend Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Now that he’s back for the summer, he’s begun working with SPIN again. He found a summer job as a delivery driver for Flowers of Laguna Niguel, but says he was able to arrange his schedule so that he can help deliver food at least one afternoon a week.

Cunningham says that while he usually goes home from his 2 1/2-hour volunteer shift feeling good about what’s he’s just done, there are times he feels frustrated.

“Sometimes you run into people who act like you owe them,” he says. “If you give them one sack lunch, they want two. If you tell them they can’t have it because there are other people in line, they’ll cut in line and try to sneak through. There’s something really sad about a grown man lying to get a second bologna and cheese sandwich.

“You try not to let that stuff get to you, but sometimes it does. But then you meet someone who says ‘Thank you’ and really means it, and you realize that what you’re doing really matters to people.”

Cunningham’s mother, Carolyn, says the changes she’s observed in her son over the past two years have been remarkable.

“Paul would be the first to tell you that he didn’t go into it with an open heart,” she says. “At first, he was very prejudiced and judgmental of the homeless. He couldn’t understand why anybody would be living on the street if they were physically able to work.”

She says that as her son became more involved, he also became more tolerant and aware.

“The fact that he stayed on with SPIN long after he had to was, to me, a real sign of how much he enjoyed it,” she says. “He’s taken it on very much as a personal project. He tells me about some of the people he meets, how talented some of them are. I think it’s really helped open his eyes to the real world. He’s told me more than once that he thinks most people are only two paychecks away from the streets.”

Cunningham says his work with SPIN has helped him put his own problems in perspective.

“I think it’s easy, especially when you’re my age, to focus exclusively on your own little world,” he says. “You think that your problems are a lot bigger than they really are. Some of the stupid stuff I worry about--whether I look OK, whether people are going to like me, or whether I’ve got a date for the weekend--aren’t really that big a deal when you think about other people who are wondering whether they’ll eat that day.

“Getting out there and finding out how other people live really opens your eyes.”