El Dorado County church opens a part-time facility.
By
Jocelyn Wiener -- Bee Staff Writer
Photo -- Paul Kitagaki Jr.
So say those who know.
"Third bush from the left, or under a bridge in the rain," said 24-year-old Dustin Pearson, who has been on and off the streets in the Placerville area for the past couple of months.
Alternatively, he and other homeless people say, a full-time emergency shelter would be nice.
In the past several months, some of their housed neighbors have started working to get them one.
On Dec. 15, Barton Memorial Hospital in South Lake Tahoe sent a homeless woman on a 101-mile taxi ride from El Dorado County to Sacramento's Loaves & Fishes homeless services complex. Tim Brown, executive director of Loaves & Fishes, called it "an egregious dumping." The hospital denied that charge and said that - with no nearby homeless shelter - putting the woman in a taxi was their best option.In the days since, the woman reappeared in El Dorado County. Hospital and county officials said she was readmitted to the hospital, then discharged within the county. South Lake Tahoe county jail records show she was arrested and booked there last Tuesday. She was put in custody for public drunkenness and several violations of probation for public drunkenness.
The outcry generated by her long taxi ride has led to a conversation among some residents and officials in the county.
For all their disagreement, most of the agencies involved seemed to agree on one thing:
El Dorado County ought to have a full-time homeless shelter.
Thanks to a decision made by a group of eight friends last Christmas, that may happen.
Under the leadership of Raj Rambob, a local Realtor, his high school English teacher wife, Bonnie, and six of their friends, the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Camino has opened its gymnasium to the homeless a few nights each week.
Last Tuesday, as thunderstorm warnings interrupted radio broadcasts in Placerville, 18 people took refuge in the church gym. A stack of clean, folded sheets was placed on each of the 20 blue mattresses laid out along the shuffleboard courts. Volunteers bustled about the brightly lit kitchen, preparing trays of hot peanut butter cookies and deviled eggs. A few of their children joined Pearson, a guest at the shelter, in a game of basketball.
"We're here because it's a place to come when you have nowhere else to go," said 46-year-old Scott Farrell, who has been coming to the Grace Place shelter with his dog, Jazz, almost every night since it opened last March. Farrell has been homeless for a few years. Every day, he collects cans out of trash bins to earn enough money for a beer and some dog food.
He thinks Rambob is wonderful.
Last Christmas, Rambob and his wife decided to volunteer at a homeless shelter. They found out the county didn't have one.
"I was shocked," Rambob said. "I was absolutely shocked."
Soon after, Rambob said, his wife had a dream and woke up convinced they needed to do something about it.
They asked a group of their friends for help.
For the first nine months, they hosted a shelter in the church every Friday night. Starting this month, they added Tuesdays and Sundays. Rambob believes the community will cover five nights a week by the end of January. Since the homeless woman's long taxi ride last week, he's gotten several more calls from people eager to help, including a call from a few county workers. By March, Rambob hopes to be able to shelter the county's homeless 365 nights a year.
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