Who are the homeless living in the shadow of the Big A?
AGENDA 21 RADIO
A luxury car drives past Angel Mayfield’s tent in the Santa Ana River homeless encampment. The driver shouts out his window: “Get a (expletive) (expletive) job you (expletive) pig!”
Mayfield has a job. In fact, she has two.
The residents in the camp next to Angel Stadium call their neighborhood “River View Village.”
The homeless encampment, some call Riverview Village, is located under the shadow of the Big A of Angel Stadium. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
We spent a week talking to people who live along the Santa Ana River trail. Like any neighborhood, the people are diverse but most share a common goal: they’d rather be paying rent than living in a tent.
Here are 11 profiles of people who, for now, call it home.
Angel Mayfield works a minimum of 31 hours a week between her two jobs in retail. She’s lived along the riverbed for a number of years. She’s a homeless advocate and works as a liaison between her neighbors and Orange County homeless assistance agencies. Most of the residents in the encampment know they can call on her when they need help.
“A lot of homeless people don’t do drugs, they don’t drink, they don’t have a criminal record or mental illness,” Mayfield said. “They just can’t find a job that pays enough to afford a $1,400 studio apartment and still have enough to buy food. Many homeless people want to change their lives around but they are defined by their past and now who they are now.”
Angela Piefer, 32, lives just north of Orangewood Avenue. Piefer has two jobs. She’s a caregiver and passes out food samples at grocery stores.
Piefer was an alcoholic for eight years. She drank every day. When it got to the point that the whites of her eyes were yellow, her fiance insisted that she go to the hospital to detox. Her liver was almost completely shut down. Six months ago, her liver was almost back to 100 percent healed.
“I’ve been clean and sober for a year and nine months. If I can get more hours I can make enough to leave here,” she said, “And I’m never coming back.”
David Doan, 48, is a mechanical wizard. He built a shower for the residents by tapping into a back flow water supply for a drinking fountain. He’s set up a couple of solar panels to power two 12-volt batteries. Residents can use the contraption to charge up their cell phones.
Doan was vice president of an Anaheim company that re-manufactured toner cartridges until 2001. He got into a tussle with his father (the company president) and was let go. Soon after, he went through a divorce and was living out of his car. He got a job with U-Haul but suffered a heart attack in 2009.
“I’ve applied for social security benefits but have been denied three times,” Doan said. “Now I have high blood pressure and have been diagnosed with cataracts. With my pre-existing medical problems, it’s been tough to get a job.”
Bruce Bishop, 57, became a union ironworker in 1981. He was making $67.50 an hour when he got a DUI and lost his driver’s license. He got tangled in DMV red tape and ended up spending more than $6,000 trying unsuccessfully to get his license reinstated, register his car and pay for insurance. Eventually, he lost his union card when he wasn’t able to pay his dues.
He’s working day labor jobs now, and someday hopes to get his license and union card back. When he waits on Orangewood Avenue to get picked up for a job, he can look toward State College and see a 14-story building he helped build 30 years ago.
Markus O’Neill, 37, worked at Outback Steakhouse for 13 years. He advanced from dishwasher to head cook at the restaurant in Garden Grove. He got a better job offer to work in the HVAC business and made enough money to rent a three-bedroom home in the Moreno Valley. He filed a complaint about a foreman and got fired. “I guess I complained about the wrong guy,” he said. Soon after, he got into a car accident and broke four ribs.
“I’ve tried to get back into bartending. But to be honest, it’s tough to get a bartending job these days if you’re not a beautiful woman,” O’Neill said. “I’m a fairly handsome, well-spoken guy but I’m not very voluptuous.”
He said that even if was able to get a job as a bartender, it still wouldn’t be enough to rent an apartment.
“My situation is not permanent,” he said. “Yes, I’m homeless but I’m not helpless or hopeless.”
Michael Sage, 49, spends some of his time delivering donated five-gallon water jugs to other residents in River View Village. Sage worked in maintenance at Saddleback Hospital for 15 years.
“Then I got an offer in 2001 to go up to Northern California to become a project manager for a company that produced fire-proofing material. When the company moved to Orange County it failed. After less than a year it went bankrupt,” Sage said.
He started doing handyman work until he got a staph infection from a piece of asbestos that got lodged in his leg. He doesn’t have any medical insurance so he’s been struggling with medical bills.
“This isn’t a permanent situation,” Sage said. “I’ll get back on my feet again.”
Kyle Bartholomew, 30, was doing handyman work in the Humboldt County area. He got a job offer to come to Orange County so he could work with his dad. He got laid off and turned to drugs.
He said he’s clean and sober now. He’s been living in the encampment for three years. Bartholomew spends his days making custom bicycles.
“I’m homeless now but this is just temporary — just temporary.”
Kimberlee McKee, 30, is almost always lively and jovial despite a hard-knock life. McKee worked as a cashier at Disneyland for five years until she got fired for petty theft. Another petty theft conviction landed her in prison for a year. She was staying in a sober living facility in 2010 until she got kicked out for having a squabble with a roommate.
She lived in a homeless encampment in Fullerton before moving to River View Village. She’s since been diagnosed with epilepsy, diabetes and has a bipolar disorder. She’s been working with the City Net homeless collaborative to find more permanent housing.
Thomas Estrada has been at River View for only a month. He works construction, primarily as a framer. He had a full-time construction job but when business slowed he got laid off. He was living with his fiancee and her daughter. That relationship fell apart and she left him. His landlord said she was uncomfortable renting to a single man so he got evicted from his apartment.
He’s confident that business will pick up again and he’ll be able to leave the encampment and move back into an apartment.
Sher Stuckman, 59, has worked in a precious metals refinery and a diesel engine factory. “I’m handy with anything mechanical,” she said. After being laid off, she was hit with a host of medical problems. She had a stroke followed by seizures and then developed a blood clot in her leg. Stuckman is a breast cancer survivor.
“Every time I apply for a job I get severe anxiety. I get stressed out and I always blow it,” Stuckman said.
Two weeks ago she moved to the encampment to get away from it all for a while. “I’m going to try to relax for a bit and spend some time writing my novel.”
Stuckman said that finds that golf is very calming. Most days she takes a club down to the riverbed and works on her sand game.
Roman Neely, 23, has been at River View for a little over a month.
“I was living in a homeless encampment on private property with my girlfriend in Corona,” Neeley said. “It was called Devils Den. Supposedly it was haunted,” he said. “We got kicked out. My mom and stepdad bought us a tent and we moved here.”
He left the girlfriend.
“I got hooked up a crazy, evil woman. But I still love her,” he said.
Neely said that he’s sworn off women for a least and year and he wants to find a job working construction.
“I’ve got a relative with a car so maybe I can get some manual labor jobs and hopefully some day get an apartment. I know one thing for sure. I’m never going to resort to panhandling.”
I think I heard this is going on along the Santa Ana River Bed from Chino to Newport Beach, makes me grateful to have a roof over my head and food and medical care ect………… Will share far and wide.
We should stop ALL immigration into the country for a long time and put our citizens first especially the most in need.