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Activist, organizer and volunteer for the city's homeless and mentally ill, Steve Kersker knows the routes that have brought these folks to him.
By TOM ZUCCO
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 15, 2001
ST. PETERSBURG -- Diane lives with a dog and a cat in a cluttered and ancient Ford van that has no mirrors or lights but still runs because -- well, no one can figure out why it still runs. She's absolutely certain CIA agents are looking for her, so living in a van is a practical matter. Her mother usually takes care of her, but she's in jail for passing bad checks. So Diane waits in the van with the cat and the dog and an eye out for the feds.
You can usually find Tangerine Man at a downtown bus stop having a detailed conversation with someone who isn't there. Buses come and go for hours. But Tangerine Man, who got his nickname from the volunteers at the shelter because he hordes free fruit, remains behind. His legs and arms are like broomsticks, he wears a plastic watch that's two hours fast, and sometimes he looks like he's ready to explode.
And then there's Edward. He started hanging around a tattoo shop near his apartment just for something to do. As a cruel joke, some people at the shop dyed his hair red, dressed him in a skirt and videotaped him. Edward, 44, knew he looked ridiculous, but he didn't protest. He just wants everyone to like him.
None of these people is a drug addict or an alcoholic.
They're just lost.
Edward, Diane and Tangerine Man are part of an invisible population -- St. Petersburg's homeless mentally ill. They are manic depressives and schizophrenics. Most of them won't take their medication or can't get any, and because of that, they wander off or become so disruptive that the shelters and the assisted living facilities have no choice but to ask them to leave.
So they end up on the streets, living their own private nightmares. And when they get hungry, they come here.
To the St. Vincent de Paul shelter. And to Steve, who used to be one of them.
Loaded down with used blankets, a balding, thickly muscled man with a cross on his baseball cap threads his way to the middle of the dining room. He is Steve Kersker, director of Loving Others Together, the group that coordinates the nightly meals at the shelter.
"Who's out on the street tonight?" he asks.
Dozens of people get up and move quickly toward him. He hands out all 18 blankets, then gives out every donated coat, jacket and sweater he has.
It's a full house tonight at St. Vincent de Paul. Cold weather tends to ensure that. Well over a hundred people are here, and they're still filtering in.
They appear at the door one or two at a time, red-faced and weary. Most are middle-aged men and women, but there are several families with children. They all seem to know the drill. Get your ticket, find a seat and wait.
It's just a large dining hall. Folding chairs and tables. No pictures, no mirrors. No yelling or cursing allowed.
In the kitchen, volunteers slap baloney and cheese sandwiches together as fast as they can. The crowd is larger than anyone expected, so Kersker makes another trip to his car for the loaves of bread he was saving for the next day's meal.
What about tomorrow?
"Oh, we'll find some more somehow," he says happily. "We always do."
At least there's no shortage of volunteers. They come from churches, colleges and civic groups. Or they just show up.
It doesn't matter how they got here, Kersker says, although it would be nice if more of them made eye contact with the homeless people. Or even talked to them. If they broke that barrier between those who can go home after dinner and those who can't.
"Whenever I'm driving down the street, I always beep my horn and wave," Kersker says without looking up from his work. "It makes people feel like somebody knows who they are. Like somebody cares."
He knows the feeling. Once, he was on the other side of the serving line. He lost his home because of his mental illness, but managed to find room in a psychiatric hospital and a treatment center until he got better. Took him two years.
He never went hungry or without a place to sleep. But in every other way, he has been down this road. He knows that worse than the hunger or the cold is the shame.
"It took me a long time to realize I didn't have to be ashamed because I had a mental illness."
Tonight's bill of fare is sandwiches, cream-filled cookies, soda and coffee. Lots of coffee. Liquid heat on a night like this. Kersker watches the clock, and at exactly 7 p.m., he raises his bullhorn, asks for quiet and offers a short prayer.
Just as it ends, someone in the back yells out, "Let's hear it for Jesus!"
The room erupts in laughter and applause.
"These people don't have a lot to cheer about," Kersker says. "So when they can, they go all out."
The Man Who Won't Sit Down seems oblivious to all this. He got here an hour ago and is still standing at his table. His matted hair has bits of dirt and grass in it. His face, neck and hands are scarlet from the sun, and he's wearing faded slacks, disintegrating sneakers and a stained work shirt.
"That's Todd."
Todd Morrison grew up in St. Petersburg and lives, for now, in some bushes next to St. Anthony's Hospital. He explains that his face got red because he wanted to go to the beach to bathe and rinse out his clothes in the outdoor public shower. So he walked. Nine miles over and nine miles back.
"I don't have any soap or detergent," he says, fingering his shirt, "so they still look kind of dirty."
Morrison, 33, says he's been homeless since October, when he punched a hole in the wall of his apartment. He couldn't pay for damages, so he was sent to jail, and when he got out, he had no money and nowhere to go. His father is dead, he says, and his mother doesn't want him to live with her.
He had worked as a stockboy for a few years, but lost his job when he went to jail.
"I've been job hunting," he says. "But I haven't had any offers yet."
After he walked all that way, why does he stand -- even to eat?
"Because this is the house of the Lord, and it would be wrong to sit down."
"I think about women sometimes," Steve says, sitting in the afternoon sun in front of his apartment building. "But if I had that, I'd have to give up this."
This.
A one-bedroom apartment. A few chairs and a foam pad for a bed. Donated clothing. No television. An old electric Brother typewriter he bought for $79.
And celibacy.
"I'm married to God," he says. "And I'm the happiest I've ever been."
He was born into a prominent St. Petersburg family. His mother, Marjorie, was a homemaker and his father, Peter, a St. Petersburg obstetrician for 44 years. Before he retired in 1990, his father had delivered 15,000 babies, including the babies of babies he delivered 20 years earlier.
They were Yacht Club members, and lived in a five-bedroom house under huge oak trees.
One of his brothers is an attorney, the other is a chemical engineer. One sister is a teacher, the other works for a dentist.
Steve took a different path.
He was the captain of the St. Petersburg High football team in 1967 and a national history contest winner. He has a genius level IQ.
But something wasn't right.
"I always thought I was stupid," he says. "So I excelled at sports.
"I couldn't socially relate to anybody. Unless I was drunk.
"And I never thought about what I wanted to be . . . had no concept of the future."
The next 20 years were a hazy blur. He was arrested a half-dozen times on charges ranging from selling marijuana to disturbing the peace, and he spent large chunks of time in mental hospitals.
He managed to piece his life together enough to get married and enroll at USF, where he graduated with honors with a degree in history.
He also tried several times to kill himself. By 1987, he weighed 312 pounds and smoked five packs of cigarettes a day. His blood pressure was 221 over 119, he had frequent panic and anxiety attacks, and he was addicted to drugs and alcohol.
"I wasn't much of a husband," he says.
After his wife came home unexpectedly and found he had overdosed on sleeping pills, she had Steve committed to the state psychiatric facility in Arcadia. Then she filed for divorce. He spent nine months in Arcadia, where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and another two months in a residential treatment center.
When he came out, he was a changed person. He decided he didn't want to die. Just as important, he realized he could at least live with his condition if he channeled his considerable energy into something positive.
"I started recovering physically, and that gave me hope," he says. "I also decided not to reject therapy. And my family . . . they couldn't support me like they had all my life. I had to support myself."
"But I needed a mentor," he adds. "Someone I could count on when no one else was around."
That someone was God. And in typical Kersker fashion, he decided he wouldn't just dedicate his life to serving God. He wanted to go all the way. He wanted to be married to God. He wears the wedding band on his left hand.
"I used to get lonely, but I don't anymore," he says. "It's a tremendous amount of joy for me."
He breaks into a grin.
"And I can relate to priests and nuns."
But he doesn't force his beliefs on anyone. To Steve, there is no wrong answer.
"You meet people where they're at," he says. "Everybody wants people to change. I love people just the way they are. Even if they relapse.
"I'm here to show them they can recover, that anybody can move up if you're willing to change some of your behavior."
He is 51 now, and the alcohol and drugs are long gone. So are any luxuries, with the possible exception of his 1999 Plymouth Neon. But he needs a reliable car, what with all the work he has to do.
His friends say it's his work that saved him.
But like his embrace of religion -- or most anything else in his life -- he can't approach it at half speed. Besides running Loving Others Together, which co-ordinates meals for the homeless in St. Petersburg, he is co-chair of the city's homeless services outreach task force and executive director of the Florida Drop-In Center Association, a network of about 30 safe houses for homeless and mentally ill people across the state.
He also serves as a consultant for the Suncoast Center for Community Mental Health and an advocate for the Agency for Health Care Administration and Bay Care Behavioral Health Centers.
"What's a manic supposed to do who doesn't drink or use drugs?" Steve says, laughing.
There is one more job. Maybe it's his most important. On his tiny kitchen table, he bangs out a weekly column on the typewriter. Titled Lessons from Life, it appears in the Northeast Neighborhood News, a weekly newspaper serving northeast St. Petersburg. The columns chronicle the lives of homeless people Steve has met.
"Sometimes I feel too tired to do it," he says. "But then I think about the good these people will get from it. Because these are people who usually aren't written about. They're the underdogs."
Two years ago, Dave Arata met Amanda Evenson at church. She was 18, homeless and prostituting herself for crack. He was 33, HIV-positive, on six different AIDS medications and crack addicted.
They fell in love and built a new life together. But crack was never far from their lives. Three months ago, they both relapsed. Amanda started prostituting herself for drugs on 34th Street, and they eventually moved into the Palm Aire Motel so she could be close to her trade.
Six weeks ago, Amanda was arrested for possession of crack. Dave, high himself, had told a police officer she was using. Dave was becoming increasingly devastated at her prostituting herself to get them both drugs. She was relased from jail the next day and went right back on the street.
-- excerpt from Lessons from Life, Dec. 1, 2000
He has led a demonstration to a Chamber of Commerce meeting and marched with supporters through BayWalk to call attention to the homeless. He's also a regular at City Hall.
Even there, Steve comes at you like a bus that's running late.
"Steve and I don't always agree," said Virginia Rowell, manager of social service programs for St. Petersburg. "But I believe his heart is in the right place. He means well and is trying to do what he thinks is best."
Once, he thought a certain shelter's strict rules were keeping the homeless from coming in. What's more, there wasn't enough money to fund it.
Something had to be done, Steve thought. Now.
"He certainly gets the word out in the community about the problems of homelessness," Rowell said. "On the other hand, somebody who has been through the experiences he has been through . . . there's an impatience.
"But things can't be fixed overnight. They didn't happen overnight, and they can't be mended overnight. There is a process.
"He used to tell people he saw City Hall as the enemy. But he doesn't see it that way anymore."
Instead of butting heads with city officials over the shelter problems, Kersker worked with them. The troubles were fixed.
"Communication," Steve says, "is much better than picketing sometimes."
Sometimes.
When it's time to march again, he'll be there. With his friends.
If cold weather brings people by the dozens to St. Vincent de Paul, the end of the month brings them out by the hundreds. Social Security and disability checks that were issued four weeks ago have long since been spent.
It's Wednesday, March 28. Tonight, the place doesn't have enough tables and chairs to accommodate all the people. And the hot dogs are late.
Linda McGaughey, a telephone operator who has been a volunteer here for several years, is handing out cookies to hold everyone over until dinner arrives.
"The first time I came here Steve gave me a bag of malted milk balls to pass out," she says. "I was terrified.
"He told me the first time gets to you, but you get used to it and even end up loving it. He was right. He interacts with everyone. Gives them their five minutes. I started doing that, too, and now, I think I know just about everyone in here.
"You know," she adds, "we're all only one paycheck away from being on the street."
Todd Morrison is back tonight, but he's sitting this time. The Lord's house or not, he's tired. He walked to Tyrone Square Mall to look for a job. "I tried 20 different places," he says. "I guess they're not hiring."
Being homeless isn't so bad, he says. Except when it rains. Or it's cold. Or the bugs won't leave you alone. Or someone steals your blankets.
"It's nice to know I can come here," he says. "Steve has always been nice to me."
A volunteer puts a heaping handful of cookies on the table in front of Morrison. He hasn't eaten since the morning, and his stomach is growling in six languages.
But for the next 20 minutes, he sits patiently in front of the cookies. He doesn't touch them.
The hot dogs finally arrive. Steve grabs the bullhorn and offers the prayer. Morrison rises from his seat and bows his head. He is the only one standing.
". . . and bless those who are less fortunate than us."
When Steve is finished, Morrison sits down and devours the cookies.
"He's something else, isn't he?" Steve says. "But nothing is going to change unless somebody radically intervenes in his life."