Danielle Steel's signature (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Whether you read her stuff or not, I’m willing to bet you know the name Danielle Steel. Her amazing years of output have made her one of the top-selling authors of all time. Today we are going to take a look at a side of Danielle Steel that is far from the bodice-ripping imagery oft associated with her.
Unbeknownst to her fans, Steel has been leading a Batman-like double life since 1998. That was when she started her late-night forays into San Francisco’s homeless scene, driving a van full of supplies.
In Newsweek Magazine’s The Daily Beast she shares her reasoning, showing once more that the situation changes when you put a human face on it:
It’s easy to say “they should clean up and get a job.” When was the last time you hired a homeless person, or even stopped to help one? Homelessness is primarily a mental-health issue, of mentally ill people not receiving adequate treatment, and there are not enough in-patient facilities to house and treat them.
I carry the people I met on the streets in my memory forever. I never ask how they got there; it’s none of my business. They’re already in distress and pain; they don’t need to be humiliated, too. I remember the 21-year-old girl I met on my first night. She was sleeping on a piece of cardboard, under a thin tattered blanket, on a freezing cold night. She was undergoing chemotherapy for a brain tumor, and died a year later. I remember the woman who began life on the streets in a flowered silk dress and a string of fake pearls; she eventually lost all her teeth, one leg, and is now unrecognizable, but always kind and polite when I see her. There was the man in the pin-striped suit with shined shoes, who looked like your banker and was living in a sleeping bag on the library steps, while interviewing for jobs in Silicon Valley; he had lost his job as CFO, his marriage and his money. I remember the barefoot people on freezing nights, the ones in T shirts plastered to their bodies in the pouring rain, the pregnant girls suffering from malnutrition and the teenage boy I saw just before Christmas, sitting in a doorway in the driving rain. He was delirious from fever, with scabs all over his face, and had recently lost a leg. How can we turn away?
While many celebraties use their fame to draw attention to issues like these, Steel has actively fought to remain anonymous during her late night missions. Instead she poured her own significant finances into the effort.
What had its beginnings as one woman with a van grew, at it’s height, to a team of 11, including three off-duty police officers who helped to keep them out of dicey situations. At it’s most active point the group, now named Yo! Angel!, distributed 300 bags of food, long johns, ponchos, and teddy bears. The author estimates that each run cost $100,000 for a whopping $1.1 million each year, all of which she paid for out of her own pocket.
The author’s observation about homelessness and mental illness speaks directly to the need for therapeutic and substance abuse programs. So many of those on the streets suffer from these issues, most especially the chronic homeless.
As we move into this holiday which celebrates plenty, let us consider those who have nothing. It is our responsibility to our fellow humans that makes it imperative that we effect a major state change in the way that we handle this forgotten population. On both the state and the federal levels we must not falter in our push for more effective rehabilitation programs.
Not only is it in the spirit of the season, but it is also much more expensive in both lives and money if we do nothing.
