5 Months Down and Out in Santa Ana

He’s the man who came in from the cold. He lived in the shadows, watching his back at night and living the life of someone he wasn’t.

But Charlie Martin is no spy. There’s nothing exotic about the way he spent June to early November. He was just another homeless American on the streets and back alleys.

So when he sees the stories about the cold snap and the havoc it creates for the homeless, he doesn’t tut-tut or think that he can’t possibly relate. He remembers becoming one of them -- disabled at 57 with neck and spinal problems that cost him a custodian job at a church and a roof over his head.

As he awaited disability payments, he came up empty. No savings, no family that could take him in.

“The first night was terrible,” he says. “You have to wait for the sun to go down because Santa Ana has a no-camping law, so you have to hide or you’ll get a ticket. They give you a ticket for $50 knowing you can’t pay it and it’ll end up in a warrant and you’ll end up in jail. You’re constantly scared of getting woken up by a police officer, so you have to hide. That, in itself, is a terrible thing.”

Hiding in doorways and bushes -- standard behavior for street people -- “is not human at all,” Martin says. “It’s very inhuman. I don’t know why our country does that. I served in the military from ’66 to ’70. I got out with an honorable discharge and, yet, I have to live like that.”

He doesn’t say it bitterly, because he points out that public and private services in Santa Ana kept his mind sane and his stomach full during his street life.

A few weeks ago, someone told him about a community home for veterans that would house him until his disability checks start showing up in the next few weeks.

With help from the faith-based Orange County Rescue Mission, Martin has found an apartment and an expected return to normalcy.

The word “homeless” has become a toneless description. Even in a country preoccupied by moral values, it packs no wallop. Somewhat numbed to it myself, I try to imagine the reality of it.

“Bed was the ground,” Martin says. “Cardboard on ground, then blanket, then me, then seven or eight more blankets. Then worry about the rats.”

As any prospective home buyer would, Martin scouted for places to sleep. He found one off West 1st Street in Santa Ana, past a discount grocery and thrift store, then down an alleyway to an outdoor mall. “After everybody leaves at night, you can go back there, but you have to be very discreet,” Martin says.

For most of his adult life, Martin was a musician and hairdresser. He has two ex-wives and two grown children, but staying with them wasn’t possible.

Could he believe he had been a street person? “Heavens, no,” he says. “To this day, I don’t. Believe me, I’m not that guy. I had no choice. You have to do what you have to do. I’m not going to say there never was a moment of depression, but I never took a gun to my head. But there were moments I laid and cried through the night, wondering what I was going to do, how I ended up like this.”

A better future beckons. He’s not looking back on his homeless period like some useful adventure. To the contrary, he tries not to dwell on it. “I’m putting it out of my mind,” he says. “Because you know where it got me? Nowhere but depressed. In one second, it can happen to anyone.”

Not anyone, perhaps, but to lots of people. The Rescue Mission estimates Orange County’s homeless population at 35,000 -- a figure that seems hard to believe.

“Come down to 1st Street some morning at 5:30,” Martin says, “and walk from Bristol to Fairview and watch as people start coming out of the bushes. You’ll see your problem.”

Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana .parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.