Finding Human Opportunities
For some reason I was thinking about David the other night. David was a homeless person I hired once to work on lawn maintenance tasks. There wasn’t any special incentive for doing so – no government program that would match the wages – and I wasn’t paying him “under the table,” just to gather some kind of minor advantage. I had been in the downtown area and he approached me looking for some work.
I would pick him up each morning at the shelter he stayed at and he would travel with me to the various jobs and help out. He had an estranged wife and a kid, and he was trying to get things back together.
One day while we were eating lunch at a little diner some robbers pulled up and started unloading equipment from the trailer. I ran out and nabbed the handle of a mower that one of them was trying to load into the back of the station wagon. His accomplice was in the driver’s seat ready to pull away. The guy pulled a knife and in the seconds that followed I remember entering a zone where everything slowed down to a crawl. It was as if I had ample time to avoid any jab or slice. David showed up before the robber’s blade moved in my direction and he pulled a blade from a sheath inside his high-top boot.
The robber let go of the mower and scrambled into the back end of the now moving car, getting away with only the mower bag.
David worked with me for quite awhile after that and I asked him once if he wanted to manage a crew. But, he didn’t want any part of that, and that was cool.
As fall approached he said he needed to go to California and would check back with me when he got back in the area. That was the last time I saw him. So, I was wondering about where he was, how things were going, and if his life was working out like he wanted.
Then, today, I was reading about a program in Vancouver that was training street people to work in construction. Companies in the industry are involved along with an organization called the Building Opportunities with Business Inner City Society.
Life is full of opportunities, and they come from all economic backgrounds.
