A Way of Life : Good Samaritans Bring Hope as They Minister to Mind, Body and Soul

The good deeds of good Samaritans nurture the riverbed society and keep it alive.

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Food is handed out free every day to river-bottom residents. Clothing is available, often dropped in a nearby parking lot for the homeless to pick through.

Dog food is dispensed on Sundays. So is religion.

A small band of care givers regularly visits the river-bottom homeless, delivering help and a measure of hope, ministering to the mind, the body and the soul.

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Evelyn Burge troops through the riverbed thickets every few weeks to deliver health care to the homeless.

The county public health nurse goes down at daybreak when many of the river people are just waking up or still sleeping off hangovers.

“Hi, it’s Evelyn,” Burge shouts toward a hovel built up in a crawl space beneath the Main Street bridge. “Who are you?”

“Leon,” the answer comes back after some waiting.

“Is everything OK? Are you alone? Are you alone, sir?” she asks.

No response. Finally, an answer like a low moan: “Yeah, I’m all right.”

Burge runs the Homeless Health Care Program, a countywide effort she launched in 1990 to deliver medical services to a population in desperate need of them.

She says alcoholism is the biggest health problem on the river bottom, but there are others. Infections, dog bites and sprained ankles come easy and often from wilderness living.

Tuberculosis is a common affliction. A number of river-bottom dwellers have the AIDS virus, Burge says.

“A lot of these people just want to be isolated,” she says. “That’s the reason they’re down here.”

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Bob Dailey is the last county mental health worker to have regularly visited the river bottom. He stopped officially working the area three years ago, when he was reassigned to another job.

Still, Dailey says he visits the riverbed as often as he can, checking up on old friends and spreading the word about county services.

“It’s not the kind of job where you can all of a sudden just stop going,” Dailey says. “You can try to leave them, but they don’t leave you.”

Dailey estimates that at least 20% of the river-bottom residents are mentally ill, and about half are hooked on drugs and booze. Because of the obvious need, he says, he doesn’t understand why mental health employees ever stopped going to the river bottom.

“It’s disgraceful,” he says. “It really makes a mockery out of the mission to serve the homeless population.”

Vikki Smith, who runs a homeless outreach program for county mental health, says services are available to the entire homeless population, including the people who live on the river floor.

But, she says, she decided not to send caseworkers to the river bottom after Dailey was reassigned, fearing for their safety.

“The majority of people who work here are women, and I don’t feel it (the river bottom) is a safe place for women to enter,” Smith explains. “You just sort of adapt. You provide services the best you can.”

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Each Sunday for the past three years, Pastor Mary Carr has offered her own brand of help to the river-bottom homeless.

In sweat pants and sneakers, she is the spiritual leader of the Outdoor Gospel Church. Her flock is anyone who will rise up out of the riverbed and listen.

Carr, who is executive director of the Ventura County Medical Society, was ordained in 1990 at Oxnard’s Golden Grain Bible College. The next year, she said, she was called by the Holy Spirit.

“I felt the Lord saying, ‘Go to the river bottom,’ ” says Carr, who started the outdoor church in early 1992.

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The street preacher opened with prayer on a recent Sunday: “We call forth each and every heart you desire to be here this day.”

Fewer than a dozen people attend, though the outdoor service has drawn as many as 80. They sit in a circle of mismatched chairs.

As Carr thunders on, a man drops his head in his hands and shuts his eyes. Another strokes his dog. A shoeless man plops down on a chair and loses a fight to stay awake.

A woman with her head down whispers in prayer. Her name is Dede Twyman. She is 32. And last year about this time she lived on the river bottom. Now she has returned to help Carr spread the word.

As the service ends, the river-bottom dwellers come out in force, knowing that food is about to be handed out.

Carr says she doesn’t mind the late arrivals. Food is handed out slowly.

Fishes and loaves, she reminds herself.