Runs gauntlet on Leon Ave.

Dear Editor: Once a week, I go to Leon Avenue and park somewhere between the Gospel Mission and Corner Stone homeless shelters. Two winters ago, a kind, homeless couple insisted on helping me across an icy patch on the side of the road, to get to my car.

I was using a walking stick at the time, as I just recovered from a broken pelvis. They saw me eyeing the ice nervously and asked if they could help me cross, adding that it was Valentine’s Day, and they wanted to help.

Reluctantly, I agreed to let them help this old lady across the street, or at least down a curb and across a wide patch of ice. That worked out just fine, and who knows, maybe they prevented me from taking a nasty spill.

I thanked them and they cordially carried on their way. I must admit, I initially was concerned about being mugged or something, but then chided myself for being so suspicious and judging a book by its cover.

Since then, I have seen a hooded homeless man checking car doors to see if they were locked. Last week, I saw a man walking around wearing nothing but his tighty-whitey underwear and sneakers. The police drove by in a cruiser, but did nothing. I had to make a wide berth around him to go into the brick building across from Global. I looked back once inside and he was casually stretching out a tarp and glaring at anyone who looked at the spectacle that he made of himself.

Repulsed by the sight of him so brazenly walking around in his underwear, and I could not imagine my elderly mother seeing him, or some young children having to witness that.

Yesterday, I had to walk the gauntlet to my car, past a woman whose face was covered in open wounds, likely from of crystal meth. She was standing there glaring, with her arms folded, in the centre of the sidewalk, right next to the Corner Stone shelter. Another young woman stumbled past me doing the zombie shuffle of someone on hard drugs. A young man sat with his back to the wall, looking down, clearly traumatized by having to be there. A few other homeless men stood casually around the building.

I looked down and saw what resembled a pool of urine and various spittle marks splattered all over the place and I tried to dodge all that human bodily fluid, as though they were land mines.

I was also scared that the angry woman might do something to me, or just snap. She spoke to yet another young woman, who was wearing a very short, ill-fitting mini skirt, whom I assumed was a prostitute, sadly doing survival sex.

I honestly feel for the downtrodden, but the rest of us shouldn’t be scared for our lives to go downtown either. Doreen Zyderveld-Hagel

Kelowna