On a bright Sunday morning in early May, Sarah Galvan and her friends prepare to step into the shadows.
Wearing gloves, the women slip through an opening in a privacy fence and leave the normalcy of church services and leisurely breakfasts behind as they enter a world where the sun barely shines literally, let alone metaphorically. Under this concrete bridge, along graffiti-laden walls, are mattresses positioned on ledges, rumpled blankets and an opened box of Ritz crackers. Nearby, a hands-warming fire smolders.
Galvan says under any Southland bridge, and she guesses any bridge in the Chicago area, “lives a community of people.”
This particular place, she says, just happens to be her favorite among the half dozen or so sites she visits.
“Last week, we did a four-hour cleanup here. We brought new bedding and pillows and coolers,” she said. “This week, I have some camping chairs. They asked for that.”
Galvan, a Hometown mother of six, says the people who live under bridges are “the most broken.”
Standing in weeds under the busy overpass, the workers pause briefly to explain their mission.
In 2015, Galvan founded Almost Home, a Hometown-based 501(c)3 nonprofit that helps the homeless and those on the verge of losing their place. Through social media, she pairs needs with donations. She’s helped people pay rent, buy food and hang curtains on their windows. She’s given away donated vehicles, backpacks, gas cards, cases of water and furniture.
Galvan, a graduate of Oak Lawn Community High School, and the fleet of volunteers who embrace her cause are a figurative bridge between worlds kept apart by fear, disdain and shame.
The women greet their hosts, three men on this particular day, and after a few minutes of hugging and catching up, they all get to work raking up bottles, cans, cardboard boxes, and used needles.
The men living here know there are emergency homeless shelters. They’ve been to them, for meals and, when the weather is unbearable, to spend the night. But the shelters close for the season each April 30 and don’t reopen again until October.
Though the men here today say they prefer the outdoors to a shelter, they admit it’s nice to have the option, especially when there’s a wind chill.
“They are people. And everybody needs a little help now and then,” Galvan said.
She knows because she and her family were days from moving into their van after she and her husband lost their jobs a few years back. An anonymous benefactor put them back on their feet and Galvan has been paying the kindness forward ever since.
Dale, who asked that we not use his last name, has been living under the bridge for at least a decade, he said.
“My life is rough, it’s survival,” he said.
He once had a wife, a job and a home, he says. Divorce and DUI arrests changed all that, he said.
Now, he said, because he has a felony on his record and can’t get a drivers license, it’s hard to find steady work, let alone an apartment. A Link card gets him some food, he said. But the month always seems to outlast it, he added.
There are few options, he said, even for a former Marine who was shot, stabbed, run over and had his left hand nearly “chopped off” and sewn back on before he was discharged for playing Russian roulette. He pushes back a sleeve to show the scars.
He says he knows he’s made mistakes, knows he could have made better choices and that he is repentant. Every Sunday, he makes his way to a nearby church to attend Mass.
“I don’t do drugs. I don’t smoke weed. I don’t do Norco, or cocaine, or crystal meth. I do drink beer,” he said. “And I’m an honest man. I’m 60 years old but I feel like I’m about 90.”
The other day, he said, he landed a side job. He used some of the money to wash his few belongings and those of his friend, 33-year-old Robby.
Robby, who also asked that we not use his last name, also has a DUI felony, which he said makes it impossible to pass a background check, which prevents him from getting his own place. He too once had a girlfriend and an apartment in Worth. But when things went south, he couldn’t put himself back on track.
“I just kinda gave up,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what the felony is for. If they see it they automatically think you’re a criminal.”
Though he too prefers the bridge ledge to a bed at a shelter, he said he misses the hot meals the shelter provides during the winter.
Life under the bridge is not only challenging, he said, “It’s boring.”
He wishes he could go back to the days when he had a job working on a farm in northern Nevada, he said.
The Almost Home volunteers have their reasons for getting involved.
Board secretary Rachel Falzone, of Chicago, said, “It’s easy to look away, to pretend homelessness is not here. A lot of people try not to think about what it’s like to be on the other side of that coin. What would you do if you had nothing, if you had no resources and no way to meet your basic needs?”
Falzone brought her younger sister, Rebecca, who lives in Evergreen Park, to help with the cleanup.
Though it’s easy to pretend it doesn’t exist, Rebecca said. “Homelessness is very real. These are very real people.”
Board treasurer Rhonda Rodriguez once was homeless.
About 10 years ago, she said, “I was kicked out of my house and I lived with my daughter in my car for about a week until a friend took us in.”
It was a scary time, she said. “It’s hard, you feel broken, sad. You don’t know what’s going to happen, which way to turn, who to ask for help.”
She’s now married, with her own home in Hometown and a good job in Romeoville. She’s also a site manager at Oak Lawn’s Pilgrim Faith United Church of Christ, which is a stop on the homeless shelter circuit.
“Life happens, you know,” she said. “People say, ‘Ugh, the homeless.’ But at the shelter I treat them like they’re my guests, my friends. They’re people who didn’t get that extra chance to turn things around.”
Jamie Chazinski is Galvan’s friend, neighbor and president of the nonprofit’s board.
She managed a homeless shelter for five years. After her husband died in 2011, she stepped down.
“But I never stopped believing in this cause,” she said.
“Then Sarah had me over for dinner and asked if I would do this with her. I said I was on board 100 percent,” she said.
“When my husband passed away, I could have been in the same situation. I went from two incomes to one. I have three kids,” she said.
Luck, she added, factors into life, too.
Chazinski said the emergency shelters close for the summer for several reasons: lack of funding, lack of volunteers and because the churches they’re located in usually ramp up activities and need the space.
“I would love to open a permanent housing site, like the one in Country Club Hills,” she said. “My dream has always been to find a closed down motel and open up a permanent home where the residents can work to support it.”
Meanwhile, she said, “I just root for them because they need that. They need someone to show the world that they are good people, that just because they made mistakes a long time ago doesn’t mean they should never be able to catch a break.
“Everyone thinks they’re all addicts,” she said. And some of them are, she added. “But not all of them. And, we love the addicts too.”
The hypocrisy, she said, is that there are addicts in all segments of society. But people judge addicts and alcoholics who are also homeless more harshly.
“If you live in a home, addiction is a disease,” she said. “If you’re homeless, it’s a reason to look away.”
Although Galvan says “a little bit of kindness goes a long way,” and indeed, both Robby and Dale refer to the helpers as “angels,” she said she wants to do more than provide stop-gap measures.
She has her eye on a vacant south suburban building that she’d like to buy and turn into a day and resource center for the homeless — a place where they can go to escape the elements, work on resumes and get advice for turning things around. She is currently seeking donations (www.gofundme.com/helpalmosthomebuyahome).
The bridge population is already ramping up, now that the shelters are closed, Galvan said.
More people invariably leads to more issues, she added.
“I just want to show them that people care, we care,” she said. “And maybe give them a chance to get back on their feet.”
Twitter @dvickroy
