HOT on Trail of Transients in Van Nuys

8:36 p.m.: The call comes from the Yoshinoya Beef Bowl on Van Nuys Boulevard, “A homeless man is annoying customers. Can you help?”

Within minutes, Theo Booker and Cheryl Martin, who work for a pilot homeless outreach project coordinated by the L.A. Family Housing Corp., have rushed to the restaurant and are gently coaxing the man to a warm shelter bed.

“I was trying to find a shelter,” he says, thumbing anxiously through a phone book in the dark.

Martin’s voice is calm, reassuring. “That’s where we can take you,” she offers.

He nods, relief lightening his eyes.

*

The man’s name is Mike and he grew up in Van Nuys. The town is still home for him, but his is a nomadic street life for reasons both simple and complicated.

The Homeless Outreach Team, or HOT, deciphers names, sometimes an occasional life chapter, of the otherwise anonymous street people such as Mike.

Now in its sixth week, the HOT workers walk downtown Van Nuys every night from 8 p.m. to midnight, dropping their cards off at businesses and peering into dark doorways to find the homeless and gain their trust.

The pilot project, which ends in June, assists the homeless in just one section of downtown Van Nuys, near the police station and the courthouses. The focus is on those with drug or alcohol dependencies; others can be taken to the cold-weather shelter.

For the intoxicated, the goals are both immediate and long-term--first, to get them into one of six beds at the sobering station at Valley Shelter in North Hollywood for the night.

The next day, arrangements are made for continuing mental health and substance abuse counseling with agencies, such as the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center or Pacoima’s People in Progress for drug counseling and recovery.

If Martin, Booker and another team member, Thomas Madrid, seem at ease in the nocturnal, nether world of the homeless, it’s because they’re just a few steps from being there themselves.

They were chosen for the job because of their own struggles living on the streets, an insight the homeless seem to detect almost instinctively.

*

10:27 p.m.: Each block presents new and familiar faces.

A man with a pocket Bible points to the sidewalk and says to Martin and Booker, “If I don’t see you in hell . . . “ He pauses to add, with a glance skyward, “then I’ll see you in heaven.”

At the LAPD’s Van Nuys station, Officer A. Hollands takes a HOT flier from the pair. He has called the team several times recently, and they have responded within four minutes.

Sgt. Walter Teague says when he worked downtown, he’d rely on the Weingart Center for help with the drunk and homeless. The Valley lacks such a resource, and police are limited to holding the intoxicated for four hours.

“You guys are the best-kept secret,” Teague tells Martin and Booker. “You guys feel like coming to a roll call?”

*

Booker, 25, marvels at the invitation to meet with police.

When he was a child, his mother died and he left his Kansas City home to live in L.A. with his father. By 15, he chose to live on the streets.

“When I fall, I fall hard,” he says. “And I don’t have people to fall on.”

He has worked as a dog trainer and as a crew member aboard a Marina del Rey fishing boat. But this gig is unique.

“I got this little job. It only pays $10 an hour. But it’s the highest-paying job I’ve ever had,” he says. “I don’t feel I can save the world. But I can help.”

Madrid, 51, has lived in the Valley since 1949; he can remember his grandfather riding a horse from Calabasas to Canoga Park.

A machinist, carpenter and ex-con, Madrid says outliving many peers has forced him to consider his purpose in life.

Yet convincing the long-term homeless to come off the streets is a slow process.

“We’ve built up a little rapport with people,” he says. “It may plant a seed.”

Articulate and charming, Martin, 50, has the polish of a professional. Conversations come easy to her, whether they’re about current events, music or her life. One of her favorite jobs was as an interviewer for the Los Angeles Times Poll.

Do you know my supervisor, she asks? Tell him Cheryl Martin said hello.

*

11:14 p.m.: At the Beef Bowl, Booker spots David, who--with his bookish wire eyeglass frames and neatly trimmed hair and beard--might pass for Steven Spielberg.

Neat and polite, David wears linen pants, a clean white shirt, a tie, leather shoes and a jacket. He’s studying a textbook from his nightly sidewalk perch outside the restaurant.

Hey Theo, David says.

“What are you reading?” Booker asks, looking at the mangled pages.

First-year law, David replies.

The Beef Bowl worker who called earlier comes outside to complain about David’s nightly sit-ins. I come from Mexico, he says, I work two jobs and get three hours’ sleep. Why can’t he, an American, get a job?

“It’s all about attitude,” Martin says as Booker hands David a sack lunch. “Something’s happened. What it is, I don’t know.”

*

Nearly everyone has a theory about why downtown Van Nuys draws so many homeless: The agencies and churches that serve them are magnets for more street people; the area’s recycling centers offer a convenient way to make some quick cash.

Some also cite the lingering effect of a now-defunct Los Angeles Police Department project to centralize the Valley’s jails into one in Van Nuys. The concept died years ago, but the jail is still the Valley’s largest, and some released inmates end up sticking around.

It has been easy to guess at the causes, but exasperated residents, business owners, service agencies and police never jointly discussed solutions. At times, the anger was vicious: Use the homeless as speed bumps, someone suggested.

John Horn, the L.A. Family Housing Corp. coordinator who supervises the outreach team, remembers when the issue first came up in June at a Van Nuys Targeted Neighborhood Initiative meeting: “People weren’t interested in the homeless.”

What they were anxious about were street people urinating on neatly clipped front lawns, customers turned off by panhandlers and parking lots transformed into car camps at dusk.

Out of the reluctant consensus that the homeless couldn’t be shouldered by social service agencies alone, the Van Nuys/TNI Homeless Outreach Team was formed.

“The TNI enabled all these groups to sit down at a table and have a process to tap into some dollars,” recalls Rosalind Stewart, deputy to Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski. “That in itself forces them to collaborate.”

Funded by $19,100 in federal money and the donated time of nonprofit staff such as Horn, the outreach project links social service providers, city officials, businesses and residents.

Don Schultz, a 30-year resident and president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn., says he’s seeing cooperation for the first time: “There is a dialogue going on right now.”

*

11:59 p.m. The shift is over, and the outreach team is in the van, headed home. It approaches the Beef Bowl again.

In past conversations, David has told Booker he has to stay outside the restaurant until midnight for some unexplained reason. When the magic hour strikes, David disappears.

Booker thinks David drives a beat-up Honda, its bumper falling off.

“David is gone,” Booker confirms as the van cruises past the restaurant. The Honda is gone, too.