Homeless in Life, Not Faceless in Death

Four days before she died under the wheels of an Amtrak train at the Santa Ana station, a homeless woman known as Indiana let an artist paint her portrait.

Skeith De Wine, whose studio is a block from the station, recalled Wednesday that Indiana stopped by his place to get her dog a drink.

Something about the moment struck him, and he decided to paint a portrait of the person he had often seen pushing a shopping cart piled 6 feet high with her belongings, the black dog perched jauntily on top. For two hours she posed for De Wine as the two spoke of life, death and immortality.

“As I painted her,” De Wine wrote in his journal, “she told me how wonderful it was . . . that she was even important enough to be painted. That when she died, people will know that she lived and existed.”

De Wine, 30, was putting the final touches on the portrait Tuesday evening when he heard a train’s brakes screeching outside the station. He had just seen Indiana pushing her dog and cart in that direction.

“I didn’t think anything more about it,” the artist said. But when he saw the newspaper headlines Wednesday morning, he knew.

Police say the woman, whose real name was Monica Gail Williamson, was crossing the tracks just north of the station when her cart got stuck. As a southbound train approached, two passersby tried to get her off the tracks. But she wouldn’t leave her dog or its companion, a golden retriever she was keeping for a friend. The San Diego-bound train hit all three.

Williamson, 48, and the retriever were killed instantly. The black dog was injured and taken to a local animal hospital.

“The dog loved her no end,” De Wine said, “and how she loved that dog.”

De Wine met Indiana about four years ago after she developed a habit of reading the newspaper on steps near his studio.

“She was such a character,” De Wine said. “She always had a hood on, with pens and pencils sticking out of her hair. She would stuff her jacket with crumpled newspapers and always wore two or three layers of clothing, even in the middle of July.”

Frequently, he said, she seemed out of touch with reality. She told stories of having been married to comedian Richard Pryor and said actress Stephanie Powers once tried to do her in. Speaking rapidly, she would weave complicated scenarios combining bits of the Gospel with current events, TV shows and memories of her own life.

She was highly intelligent, De Wine said, and usually thoughtful, occasionally halting in the midst of a diatribe to inquire about the other person, flash “the warmest smile you’ve ever seen” and ask for a blessing from God. “That made her kind of wonderful,” he said.

De Wine said he hopes people will remember Indiana not as just another transient but as a warm and caring person who lived intensely in the moment. “If society took better care of its homeless,” he said, “she wouldn’t be dead right now.”

He plans to exhibit her portrait as part of a series he is painting, and he hopes to adopt her dog.

Karla Nichols, a veterinarian caring for the animal at the Grand Pet Care Center in Santa Ana, said the dog should recover within a week. The center has had nearly two dozen calls from people asking about adopting the dog, but De Wine has dibs and has already filled out the necessary paperwork.

“It’s the least I can do,” he said. “That dog was her life.”