In the Tenderloin, memorials for the forgotten

The Rev. Glenda Hope attends a groundbreaking for a new shelter in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. A Presbyterian minister, Hope holds weekly memorial services for homeless people who die on the streets or in one of the city’s many cheap residential hotels. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

June 23, 2013 7:58 PM PT

Since founding San Francisco Network Ministries more than 40 years ago, the Rev. Glenda Hope has helped thousands of anonymous residents leave the world with grace.

A homeless man named Ron bundles up against the chill as dusk settles on San Francisco City Hall. For years Glenda Hope has presided over an average of two or three memorials each week. Some, for the neighborhood’s more gregarious residents, attract dozens of mourners. Others are attended by the minister and a single hotel employee. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Skid row residents loiter on the sidewalks of Turk Street in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. Anyone can do a memorial, Glenda Hope said, and a clerical collar is not required. But serving the Tenderloin takes a special touch, and she has yet to find just the right person -- or people -- to take over when she retires. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

A man peers from a window of a cheap residential hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, where homeless people die destitute and alone on any given day. Glenda Hope has been described as a woman whose life and work have helped create “a compassionate community” in 30 or so of the city’s poorest, most densely populated blocks. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)