Giving to the Poor, Then Seeing the Poor

From his office next to Fashion Island, he can see the Pacific Ocean.

From his home on Collins Island, he can see Newport Bay.

But one night about six years ago, Thomas Mahoney got a look at a world that, while figuratively just up the street, was also one he’d never seen.

He toured the homeless haunts in Santa Ana, first seeing only the darkness of the night, then eventually the faces that emerged from the shadows to receive his help.

Mahoney had contributed generously to charities over the years, as had his wife. But his contributions were checks he’d written. Numbers and letters on paper. For a successful lawyer, signing a check was easy. Taking the short ride up to Santa Ana, armed with clothing and soaps and personal supplies, was much tougher.

None of this would sound all that unusual if Mahoney hadn’t been 80 at the time.

In other words, that seems a bit late to come face to face with how the other half lives. In Orange County, that means a homeless population now estimated at more than 15,000.

“I wanted to see for myself,” Mahoney says in his Newport Beach law office. “I wanted to know who I was writing a check to. Those people’s names should have been on my check.”

Now 86, Mahoney plans to retire in two months. His simple visit to Santa Ana that night six years ago left an indelible imprint.

“I realized that in most people’s eyes, I was a fat cat,” he says. “And I didn’t want to be a fat cat. I wanted to give something back to society, and the people I wanted to give to were the people who had nothing.”

After he retires, Mahoney wants to spend part of his time as a volunteer in hospital units that specialize in relieving patients’ suffering. “In our society,” he says, “people die alone in hospitals.”

‘What the Human Psyche Retains’

Mahoney is sharing this part of his life partly to help publicize Serving People In Need, the Costa Mesa-based nonprofit on whose board he serves. The group feeds and clothes the homeless and tries to help them become self-supporting.

But it becomes clear in talking to Mahoney that what you often hear is true: Doing good deeds makes the doer feel good, too.

“I was poor and I have a deep affinity for the unfortunate,” he says. “I was fortunate because I just lucked out. I had a good mind and ambition. But I’ve lived in neighborhoods where, in the Depression, the thing you saw most frequently was the furniture of the family out in the street in the winter. Can you imagine the horror of that?”

While no visit to the streets of despair is uplifting, Mahoney was moved.

“The thing that impressed me most of all was when you smiled at them, no matter what their condition, they smiled back at you,” he says. “They still had that reflex of joy, despite the lamentable condition that society consigned them to. It gave me a new concept of what the human psyche retains.”

A lawyer specializing in trademark, patent and copyright law, Mahoney still wonders why a society as rich as ours can’t feed or house all its people.

“I can’t understand why we build all these cultural edifices when there’s such a need on the streets of our county,” he says, hastening to note that he is a man with a refined sense of the value of the arts. “But when there’s a dynamic human need, and you can almost hear the voices crying out, how can we justify it?”

Jean Wegener is SPIN’s executive director and has known Mahoney since he started helping the group 10 years ago. Lots of people donate to the group and some insist on visiting the homeless in person, she says, “but it’s atypical to get as far down in the trenches as he got. He saw the humanity in each person and the beauty of each person.”

Mahoney laughs when I suggest his visit to Santa Ana was the product of liberal guilt. Yes, he says, he’s a “flaming liberal” but denies feeling guilty about the homeless.

Perhaps if pressed, Mahoney would call his visit an epiphany--if that can apply to something as mundane as handing out soap and clothes to strangers.

I think it can.

“When you get to be in your 70s and 80s,” Mahoney says, “you start thinking of the more important things in life, unless you’re not the type of person who thinks about anything.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.