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Charity opens temporary home for injured woman

Gifts from strangers allow a homeless hit-and-run victim to have a safe place to recover.

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published June 1, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - Peggi DuHoux, the badly injured homeless woman who was worried about being thrown back onto the streets, is getting help to keep a roof over her head - for a little while.

After her story appeared in Neighborhood Times a week ago, several people offered to help prevent the 48-year-old from having to return to the streets during her convalescence.

DuHoux has been staying in the Empress Motel and Apartments at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street and 15th Avenue N since she was discharged from Bayfront Medical Center. Her stay at the motel, arranged by Bayfront, expires on June 17.

The St. Petersburg Dream Center, 2756 Central Ave., an organization that helps the homeless and poor, has been giving DuHoux food and providing other assistance. Sam Infanzon, the charity's director and pastor, said response to the woman's plight will help provide her with a home for about three months.

"There was a small voucher from Pinellas County Health and Human Services and in conjunction with some other money that was received through the Dream Center, we are going to try to find her a small efficiency with handicapped accessibility, but there are still other areas," Infanzon said.

"Right now, we are helping her with some food baskets, because she doesn't get food stamps. She needs to be taken out there to apply for food stamps. She needs a special vehicle to take her out there."

According to a police report, DuHoux was hit on Feb. 26 in an accident at Second Avenue and Third Street N. A witness said the car was a dark sedan, but police say no one has come forward.

Her leg, hip, back, arm and shoulder injuries kept her in the hospital for 81 days, DuHoux said.

David Landy, who lives in Seminole, said he will ask his congregation, Beth Rachamim - a small Jewish congregation that welcomes gays and lesbians - to give money from its tzedakah, or charity box, to DuHoux.

"We have that money and I thought, well, why not use it. That's exactly what it's for.

"I was moved by the story and by the fact that she is going to be in a wheelchair for six months and trying to get around. I have been in a similar situation and in a walker and trying to get around my house," Landy said.

"I had had quadruple bypass surgery and I had come home when they were putting in hardwood floors in my house."

A Seminole woman sent $500 to the St. Petersburg Dream Center, which is helping DuHoux with food.

Lance Monlux, a deacon and counselor at Solid Rock Christian Recovery Center, 4224 28th St. N, in the Lealman area, said he offered to give DuHoux a place to stay if she would agree to enter its treatment program. DuHoux, who has been arrested twice and charged with disorderly intoxication, declined the offer.

"I've been sober for about four months," she said. "I used to work with alcoholics and drug addicts and I know the whole gamut."

She said the help comes with "too many strings for me."

She said a stay at Solid Rock would require that she attend church services and meetings. She's disinclined to attend services, because she's not religious, DuHoux said.

In addition, it's difficult for her to sit for long periods in a wheelchair for either worship or meetings.

[Last modified June 1, 2005, 00:38:18]