Homeless Search for the Face That’s Missing

It is a community in which people rarely know each other’s given names.

But Santa Monica’s large, idiosyncratic homeless population drew together as word spread Thursday, through street rumor and e-mail tree, that at least one of 10 people killed when a car sped through the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market had lived, at least for a time, on the city’s streets.

They met around park benches and at crisis counseling centers and in Bible study groups. They searched the faces at the Helping Other People Eat meal-ticket giveaway, checking to see if any of the regulars were missing. They commiserated with and consoled one another in Palisades Park, the green strip perched on the bluffs overlooking the ocean.

Many homeless gravitated to St. Joseph Center, which offered counseling sessions.

“Basically it heightens their sense of vulnerability,” said Rhonda Meister, St. Joseph’s executive director. “We’ve had our mental health specialist running groups this morning and this afternoon. Just the need for clear, good information is an important piece.”

Indeed, in ad hoc meetings in parks along the beach, clusters of homeless people reconstructed what they saw Wednesday and traded whatever tidbits they had heard since.

“Did he have a little kid’s cart?” asked Jim Thompson, 50, trying to place one accident victim. Thompson asked which corner the dead man, Leroy Lattier, had stood on. “That’s the way it is out here. You know people’s faces but you don’t know people’s names.”

On Ocean Avenue to pick up tickets for a daily afternoon free meal, Alicia Lee, 55, offered up her e-mail address in hopes that people would contact her with information.

“There is a network, and I’m really trying to find out as much as I can,” said Lee, who has been homeless for two years. “A lot of homeless have cell phones, you know, so it’s easy to get in touch.”

Viper Meade, 31, does some writing for Making Change, a homeless newspaper. Along with her husband, she monitored arrivals to the meal, watching for a friend who worked at a flower and herb stand in the farmers market.

She had not seen the man she sometimes called “Fat Boy” since 1 p.m. the previous day and feared he had been injured. She thought that her friend could be Lattier.

“He was like a brother to me,” Meade said.

Moira LaMountain, who runs the free-meal program, worried that some of the dead and injured may have been headed to pick up tickets when the accident occurred.

“Quite frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were clients or friends,” said LaMountain, who pressed city officials Thursday to provide assistance and outreach for the homeless affected by the accident.

Vocal, visible and roughly 1,000 in number, Santa Monica’s homeless have long been integral to the city’s idea of itself. Or, at least, to the city’s idea of what it used to be: a liberal outpost characterized by a live-and-help-live generosity that welcomed the less fortunate.

But that image has taken a bruising lately. Last year, the City Council passed two laws designed to make the increasingly gentrified downtown area less hospitable to the homeless.

Clearly, the place once nicknamed the “People’s Republic of Santa Monica” and the “Home of the Homeless” had changed.

The new attitude and atmosphere has tested the ties that bind an inherently transient group, but the trauma of Wednesday’s accident had the network abuzz.

Johnnie B. Hall, a homeless vet who spends most of his days at the corner of 2nd Street and Santa Monica Boulevard, said he had followed radio reports and was puzzled by how long it took to identify the homeless among the victims.

“Most homeless have ID,” he said, pointing to his own, a card from Veterans Affairs. Hall said he served with the Air Force in Japan during the Vietnam War.

Hall said he had spent hours after the accident nearly motionless, in prayer for the souls of victims.

Larry Cobb, 54, said Wednesday’s accident has, in one sense , made downtown Santa Monica more forbidding to those trying to survive on the streets. Police have locked down favorite hangouts and roped off areas near the crash scene where the homeless scavenge for food and cigarettes. Yet it has also sparked a renewed empathy that connects the city’s residents with one another, he said.

Kevin Scott, 25, a homeless man who lives in Santa Monica, said he senses a new respect for homeless pedestrians in the aftermath of Wednesday’s tragedy.

“Today, I’ve noticed an awareness and a consideration like, ‘My vehicle can wield death,’ ” he said.

But Marie Stone, 57, doubted the city’s embrace would last.

“We’re all trying out there, but we’re all struggling. People are upset now,” she said. “But more than likely [some people] will think the homeless people are the ones who deserved it.”