Too curious for my own good, I walked down Lake Ave near my house in Pasadena carrying my camera, a notebook, some oranges, and three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Homeless people and the very poor congregate at the freeway exit on the overpass, holding cardboard signs asking for help or hoping to sell flowers. I wanted to know about them.

This is Susan. She grew up in LA and has several children who live with her mother-in-law. She had a baby on the streets a year ago; he was taken away by the police and turned over to Susan’s family. The local police know her by name and are the ones who take her to the hospital when she has seizures. She spent last week at Huntington Memorial, was released and now holds a sign that says “Hungry Please Help.” Her and her husband have a tent in an empty lot over the wall of the freeway a few blocks East. He works, landscaping people’s lawns. They sometimes eat at the Salvation Army.

“How did you end up out here?”
“I did bad things.”
“What bad things?”
She looked back at me, then to her shoes, “things you shouldn’t do.”

I handed her a sandwich, and asked if I could take her picture. “You don’t want my picture,” she shuffled her feet, “no one wants to look at me.”
“You’re beautiful.”

On my way back, I had a sandwich leftover. I gave it to her for her husband. She thanked me. “As soon as you left, before, the four police officers over there, they looked over here and” she shook her finger at me, “telling me I can’t be out here. They don’t want me here.”

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I stopped to talk to Jason because he said hello to me. I asked him what he was doing just sitting on a bench and he said he was trying to figure out how to get money for gas. “My van’s empty.” He had a Target receipt and said he was going to try to return something. I don’t know what he could have been returning, he didn’t have much else with him. “I’ll give you some money for gas if you let me take your picture and talk to you.”

He graduated from high school, lived in Pasadena his whole life, and worked in groceries, telemarketing, ballots, and a Mexican restaurant. “You looking for a job?”
“Yeah. It’s impossible here though. I have to, like, get out or something.”

I asked him if he had a resume. “It’d be a lot easier to get a job if you had a resume. You know how to make one?”

“No.”

I pointed at the Kinko’s across the street and asked if he wanted to learn, but he “was about to go over to [his] people’s house for a shower.”
“Here, if you give me all the information: addresses, phone numbers, etc. I’ll type one up for you and print it out.”

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Carlos was selling bouquets of roses. He didn’t speak a word of English except “Flowers, five dollars.” I knew the word ‘casa’ and could point. I found out he lived somewhere south of Pasadena with his familia. We had 10 minutes worth of useless conversation and I offered him a sandwich. I deciphered the proposition that he would teach me Spanish and I would teach him English. He asked if I had a cellular…numero…something. I didn’t understand what he was trying to get at at all…. I laughed and said that I would be around. Maybe mañana. I shook his hand and said goodbye. He handed me a bouquet of roses.

“Por ti. Gratis.”

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Another woman I came across was talking to herself or someone else who I couldn’t see. I said hello and asked her what her name was.

“I don’t give out my name.”
“Okay, do you want a sandwich?”
“No. I’m not here for that.”
“Then what do you want?”

She had a shopping cart very neatly piled with pieces of junk in between layers of blankets and organized garbage bags of bottles and cans hanging from the handle.

“Nothing. I don’t want you here. I want you to leave me alone.”

I said goodbye and walked away. She resumed her jabbering and rocked back and forth on the cement wall.

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Chuck’s story is heartbreaking. He was brought out to LA from Memphis three months ago by a preacher because his dad was dying. When his dad passed, he slept on the floor of the preacher’s house with 100 other homeless and wanderers. He had worked in a warehouse in Memphis and was trained to operate fork lifts and leg presses; he had been trying to get a job out here. He was mugged by a Mexican gang and lost the rest of his money, his ID, and his birth certificate.

“No one’s going to hire you without your birth certificate.”

I asked him if he was going to get another, he said he was going to. He wanted to find work, he doesn’t like being on the streets.

“Did you see them just now? The police just kicked me off the street. Now I can’t work. I’m just trying to eat and maybe sleep and clean sometimes. I’m not doing drugs, I just can’t get a job. And God, God was with me, but he must’ve left with my dad, ‘cause he’s gone now.”

I gave him the oranges I had left. He has a mom in Oklahoma and a sister in college. “They don’t know where I am now. I don’t want ‘em to.”

“Can you buy me a soda?” I was out of money. I really didn’t have any left, I hadn’t brought my wallet and I told him that. I don’t think he believed me. I wished him luck and walked away, he called after me, “Pray for me, tell God to listen to me. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”