LUMBERYARD LOGS: Victories on the streets

There are a lot of battered lives out there, even in scenic Laguna Beach, and it’s the job of police officer Jason Farris to seek out the most burdened and forlorn, the ones marred with grime or reeking of booze, or worse.

Farris is the city’s new homeless beat officer. He’s been on the job for two months, and is proud of his “victories” — four lost souls so far who have been given new lives through his efforts and those of Laguna’s stalwart advocates for street-dwellers.

There are about 40-50 homeless people in Laguna on any given day, so reducing that number by four is significant, Farris notes.

Farris is a seven-year law enforcement veteran, five and a half of those years were spent working on patrol in Laguna. He volunteered for the new position because, as he says, “It was needed.”

Farris scoffs at the idea that he is a kind of social worker. He wants to help get people off the streets, he says, not make their time on the streets more bearable.

He carries a smile and a kind word — along with a gun. He makes it his business to know the intimate affairs of people most of us would be repelled by or even frightened of.

Many of the rumpled and sleepy people he encounters at Main Beach on a recent morning he’s known for years from working on patrol.

“Everything OK?” “How’re you doing?” “Where did you sleep last night?” “Are you just passing through?” he asks of anyone he thinks could be homeless.

“I find out who they are, what they’re doing, what their plans are,” Farris said.

He admits he’s a kind of hall monitor for the homeless, keeping track of their movements and whereabouts. It’s about all he can do most of the time, because, as he points out, “It’s not illegal to be homeless.”

One man, David, sleeps on the beach during the day — which is legal — because he is up all night, and Farris lets him sleep.

“He gets crabby if you wake him up,” he says, with caring that one would not expect.

Others are new to the area, and he learns their stories pretty quickly. One man, Mark, who actually approaches Farris on the boardwalk, says he’s been homeless for a year, waiting for disability benefits after a fishing accident in Alaska. He’s gotten a lawyer and hopes to get it all straightened out soon. He admits that gambling and drinking haven’t helped his situation. He’s just stopping in Laguna on his way to Mission Beach by bicycle.

Farris determines that Mark’s story is reasonable and wishes him well; but to me, he notes that disability pays so little that it is no guarantee of a life off the streets. In fact, many of the homeless in Laguna have some kind of income to meet their basic needs. They panhandle for “fun money” — drugs or liquor — but not for food, which is easy to obtain from daily handouts by volunteers of sandwiches at the beach, or hot meals from the Resource Center on Laguna Canyon Road.

Apparently no one goes hungry in Laguna for lack of funds, and Farris is irritated at people who hand out cash thinking they’re doing a good deed.

One colorful character, nicknamed “Cowboy” — on the streets in Laguna for about 30 years — has just entered a detox program, with Farris’ encouragement and the help of homeless advocate Don Black.

Cowboy, 56, has been in detox before and was sober for a while, but went back to living on the street. He is the city’s most steady resident of the jailhouse “drunk tank,” spending several nights a week there. Farris says he’ll be happy if Cowboy stays in the program for six months. That will be six months the police won’t have to spend time working with him and getting him into and out of jail.

Then there is “Ted” (not his real name), whose story is hard to fathom. Ted is sitting at the end of Forest Avenue where panhandlers congregate, with another man, and Farris recognizes him at once.

“Didn’t I arrest you last week?” the officer says. Ted nods. It was an arrest for drug paraphernalia, a needle.

Ted has only been homeless for a week, and he has the weary and grimy look of someone with no place to go. He’s deteriorating fast.

Ted spent his birthday the day before on the streets. He’s in his late 20s but looks maybe 40. He’s shivering in a torn, soiled jacket and admits he’s cold.

Ted tells Farris that he was making $250,000 a year last year as a mortgage broker in the Midwest. Somehow he ended up with a drug habit, which his family decided could best be treated in Southern California. They sent their son to a treatment center in a nearby town. But Ted “failed out” — he left the center with a girlfriend, and soon the two were using drugs and just as soon out of money.

Then Ted found a “sugar daddy” in Laguna Beach who offered to set him up in a room in exchange for sex. Now he doesn’t even have $1.50 to call his girlfriend.

He tells Farris he tried to get into South Coast Medical Center’s detox program, but he didn’t have the right insurance, another common problem.

After a search, finding no drugs or other contraband, Farris calls the Resource Center and asks to have Ted picked up. At the Resource Center, Ted can get a shower and a change of clothing, plus a meal.

“I can’t live this way anymore,” Ted says.

It could be a turning point for a young man for whom so much has gone so wrong.

In a touching moment, the other homeless man — who had his own story to tell — gives Ted a quick hug and tells him to get help and stay on the right path.

Ted goes off on foot with instructions on how to get to the bus depot, about two blocks away, to meet his ride.

I find myself shaking my head at the notion that this broken man will even be able to locate the bus depot, but then later Farris e-mails me with good news: Ted’s future is looking up.

The Resource Center has contacted a friend of his who is willing to find him a place to stay, and someone here in Laguna will buy the bus ticket back home.

Score another victory for Farris.

CINDY FRAZIER is city editor of the Coastline Pilot. She can be contacted at cindy.frazier@latimes.com