Seizures and Death Rock San Rafael Homeless

It’s been a bad week for the homeless in San Rafael. A homeless woman named Maryann who was known and loved in the isolated but tightly knit community basically keeled over on Wednesday 2/26 out at the Beach Park adjacent to Terrapin Crossroads. She stopped breathing and was on life support for two days before they decided today to take her off. I don't know the cause of death but according to Tory it was not due to a particular incidence of drugs or alcohol.

My friends Steve and Tory were at the park when it happened and both were shaken. According to Tory, Maryann had used the emergency housing services at Mill Street up until a few months ago but owed money and couldn’t get back inside. She had her boyfriend had resorted to using the emergency REST program housing services this winter.

The next day another homeless man who named John suffered a seizure at the main bus stop in downtown San Rafael. As fate would have it Tory was standing next to him when he went down. Acting quickly she found a pencil and put it between John’s teeth as him body violently shook on the ground. Emergency personnel responded and brought John to the hospital. When we discussed the incident today Tory told me, “People are dropping like flies out here.”

A day later, this afternoon walking back to my office from lunch downtown I watched as a homeless man over 6 feet tall approached a silver, late model Benz parked in a red zone on Lincoln. He had been seated next to another man on a sidewalk with their backs against a chain link fence, and when the man got up he swayed unsteadily, walking with small uncertain steps as if he was under the influence. From my approaching angle I couldn’t make out his face and I walked past as he kneeled down next to the car.

With his back to me, facing a closed passenger side window I heard him mumble, “Do you have any spare change? I could use anything.”

I started walking away but thought better of it and just walked about fifteen meters down the sidewalk where I watched as he continued to talk into the closed window. The well dressed woman behind the wheel was middle aged and paid absolutely no attention to the kneeling homeless man on the curb outside her window. She was on her cell phone and I decided to try drawing the man away from the vehicle.

“Excuse me, I don’t think she wants you there.” I said to the man’s back. Wavering like a sheet on a line, he rose up from his knee, grabbing a tree for support and standing above my six feet. As he turned I got a good look at him. “What happened to your face!” I exclaimed.

The man’s left eye was swollen shut. The brow above was reddened and ghoulishly enlarged, the inflated cheekbone below heavily scraped, day old scabs still not quite hardened and dangerously susceptible to infection. A vessel had burst in his one open right eye, filling half of it with deep pool of blood. His face was a Halloween mask of horror.

“I had a seizure,” he said and I instantly put it together that this was the man Tory had been with the day before. Tory had been deeply troubled when she had relayed the incidents to me. I could see why.

“Was it from alcohol or drugs?” I asked, introducing myself, shaking his hand and taking note of the white hospital band still around his wrist.

“I’ve been drinking alcohol for a long time. It’s built up in my system.’ And apparently it was breaking it down, fast. He could either drink too much at this point and kill himself or not drink enough and go into seizures and die. It wouldn’t surprise me if John became the next unreported homeless fatality in San Rafael. ‘I just need to get some alcohol and find a nice place.” His voice was surprisingly small for such a tall man. Perhaps it was the tone of defeat. John had given up on himself, and that ‘nice place’ most likely would become a burial plot.

Many of the homeless in our streets are not drinking or using drugs. There is a way out for them. Surrounding themselves with people who believe in them and engaging in honest work through programs like the Downtown Streets Team must lead to better days indoors. Taking meals through the charity of Saint Vincent’s and getting services through the Ritter House is vital for the homeless and precariously housed. Without our support system they’d have little chance of rising from the depths of homeless despair.