A Life Worth Living

Wille and Ray on the streets of skid row.

Every Saturday morning for the past 18 years a man named Ray Castellani has pulled a truck or van onto the streets of skid row in downtown Los Angeles and fed some of the most forgotten people in our country. It all started one day after Ray, a retired actor, and recovering alcoholic heard a voice telling him to feed people. That day he made 111 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and got in his truck. Today Ray has a fully functioning non-profit organization called the Frontline Foundation and a kitchen staffed only by volunteers that makes 12 trays of hot food, hundreds of sandwiches and hot dogs that he brings down to the same street corner he started on. Ray estimates that he has fed close to 1 million people, but the feeding isn’t the important part. The humanity, the hugs, the conversations and the care seem to matter most.

I am very familiar with Ray and his foundation because my fabulous girlfriend, Heidi, has gone with Ray every Saturday she has been in LA for the past 6 years and I have gone whenever I can for the past 4. Heidi found Ray a long time ago and as Ray always says if he wasn’t 74 they would be quite the couple! Heidi and I have a lot of friends on skid row. Our friends are convicted felons, people with severe mental disorders and no treatment, ex and sometimes current drug addicts, victims of abuse, and some have extremely violent criminal records, which include killing people. A good majority of the people down there have known Ray for all 18 years of his service as he has visited them in jail or helped them in other difficult times.

What amazes me most when we get down there is how many people with absolutely nothing, sometimes not even a shirt on their back, continue to find the will to live. My closest friend on skid row is named Willie. Willie grew up in Texas. He came to Los Angeles to play football for USC. Much like a lot of other homeless people he had tryouts in the NFL. Two of my other homeless friends played for the Raiders. Somewhere along the way things went wrong for Willie. He got into the system and hasn’t got out. Willie has a tracheotomy that he had to get due to an accident when he was high on crack. When Willie now in his late 50’s goes to jail, which is only once in the past 3 years for a minor offense, he can only be transported in full shackles, because of his violent criminal record. Willie has been able to get off the street sometimes for the past 8 years. He has spent a lot of time in hotel rooms that he pays for with his disability and social security checks. Recently he had to move to Long Beach, because they raised the rents for hotel rooms in downtown LA from $600 a month to $1,800 a month, which is a topic for another blog. Heidi and I have dropped Willie off at his hotels and also in front of spots on the corner where a blue tarp is hung over cardboard boxes marking his home and now we drop him off at the train station to get back to the LBC.

Willie really doesn’t have much outside of his hotel room. He has people he sees occasionally. His family is in Texas and he hasn’t seen them in years. He has a tv with local stations for sports and a dvd player which he cherishes. He loves any violent movie and Shrek! (who knows?) Whenever I see Willie we chat about sports, my speaking, what I am doing and what he does. He has an awesome sense of humor and is usually in a chatty mood, so he jokes about my life constantly calling me a motivational speaker and asking me to motivate him. He does talk about his life and he’s come a long way. He got off of crack about 7 years ago without the luxury of rehab and hasn’t gone back to it. He does drink beer. He tells me that he spends most of his time sitting in his apartment. No one will hire him, because he has the tracheotomy and it’s too much of a risk. He wants to work and I do believe he would, but he is stuck with a life filled with poor decisions, some things out of his control and even poorer outcomes. In the 4 years I have known Willie he has never mentioned giving up. He has said it’s hard. Stressed how much he thinks his situation sucks. And at times I have worried if I’d ever see him again, but no matter what happens every Saturday morning when we pull around the corner there he is in the middle of the street smiling, holding one hand to his throat to say hello. As we get out of the car he hugs both of us, when he says goodbye he tells us he loves us sometimes he cries and when we moved to Berkeley two years ago he wrote Heidi the most tear jerking letter telling her how much she meant to him and how he spends most of his week just wanting to get to Saturday to see us. He wrote just seeing us one day a week keeps him going.

Whenever I see Willie, my other friends and the hundreds of homeless people on Skid Row I wonder to myself could I do this? If I had nothing, no chance at growing, no chance at getting out, no way of seeing my family, could I wake up everyday to a tarp or a hotel room and keep going? I honestly don’t think I could. Anytime I am in any city I look around and see people like Willie and I’m amazed by their resiliency and will to live and love.