Homeless Santa Seeks Own Christmas Miracle

He sleeps in a men’s shelter or in a doorway in Rockefeller Center. He begs outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He’s HIV-positive, an ex-convict, a recovering drug addict--just another homeless person.

And every December, without fail, Joseph (J.R.) Reyes pulls on a red suit and black boots, attaches a woolly white beard and transforms himself into one of the city’s Sidewalk Santas.

He’s one of many homeless men who collect donations for charities during the Christmas season. The monthlong identity switch allows them a chance to break free from their usual, seemingly hopeless lifestyle.

“It just comes once a year and it’s a chance to go out and mingle with people who might not normally talk to you,” said Reyes, 61. “You get to understand yourself better too.”

The homeless men who play Santa are well-suited to the job, said Dottie Watkins, spokeswoman for the Volunteers of America.

“These are people whose families and friends have withdrawn from them,” Watkins said. “They’ve had hard times. They understand humanity better than most psychologists. This is the one time they get to help those who are even less fortunate than themselves.”

When he’s not dressed like Santa, Reyes usually wears a T-shirt and jeans. He has a tattoo on his arm in memory of a girlfriend who overdosed on heroin. He is seeking his own Christmas miracle this year: contact with his long-lost brother and sister before he dies.

To work for the Volunteers of America Sidewalk Santa program, “you must have the spirit, love and dreams to play Santa,” Reyes said. “My dream is to see my brother and sister one day. That’s my dream.”

For 83 years, Sidewalk Santas have been visible all over the city, collecting money in artificial brick chimneys.

Reyes makes $35 per day plus bonuses based on how many donations he gets in his chimney.

“I’m here to help other people get back on their feet as much as me,” he said. “It’s not just me taking, it’s me giving too.”

Since he was 17, Reyes has struggled with drug addiction. He said he quit mainlining speedballs--a sometimes lethal combination of heroin and cocaine--and all other drugs in 1989.

Reyes said he lost his parents to tuberculosis when he was 6. And in 1966, after one of his many arrests, he lost track of his sister, Bernadette, and brother, John. He believes they are somewhere in New York City, where they grew up.

Reyes said he has done time in Attica, Sing Sing and other prisons, and has made the most of it.

“I learned welding, mechanics, forklifting,” he said. “I was illiterate before I went in and I didn’t know cat from dog. But I taught myself to read. Now all I want is to find my brother and sister before I go.”

Reyes has “adopted” an elderly man at Camp La Guardia, the shelter where he often lives in Upstate New York. He said he takes care of the man, sometimes traveling to Manhattan to get him medicine.

“To appreciate you must reciprocate,” Reyes said. “He does things for me from the heart so now I take care of him.”