Danielle Steel’s secret mission
Loss of novelist’s son drove overnight forays to help the homeless with supply bags
Fans of Danielle Steel, one of the top-selling authors of all time, eagerly await her novels, which the disciplined writer has faithfully delivered since “Going Home” in 1973.
Her stories are often set in opulent surroundings and peopled with dynamic heroines, wealthy scions and characters who triumph over illness, heartbreak, war, death or even incest.
Most assume that Steel’s life is as glamorous as her fiction — brimming with exotic travel, dashing gents and couture-filled closets in her Paris home and storied Spreckels Mansion in San Francisco.
The real Steel is a bit more complicated. And she struggles with her own demons, from failed marriages and embezzling employees to the death of her son, musician Nicholas Traina, who suffered from bipolar disorder and committed suicide in 1997 at the age of 19.
But almost no one, except for the crew she worked with, her children and two close friends, had any idea that for 11 years, beginning in 1998, Danielle Steel would slip away from her Pacific Heights home under midnight shadows into a van filled with supplies to assist homeless people she sought out in the dark, dingy corners of San Francisco.
Last month, the prolific author released three books: A novel, “The Sins of the Mother”; the paperback of a previous novel, “Hotel Vendome”; and a nonfiction title, “A Gift of Hope: Helping the Homeless” (Delacorte Press; 144 pages; $20), about her work with the homeless and her outreach foundation, Yo! Angel!
“I started this during a very lonely, desperately unhappy time in my life,” says Steel, in a drawing room of her home. “After Nicky died, I went to church and prayed for a way to help. Nicky was always very kind to homeless people, buying them a sandwich or a pack of smokes. And ‘helping the homeless’ is what kept returning to my mind.”
As a child, Steel’s first vocational dream was to become a nun.
“I guess I need to suffer a little to feel like I’m useful. I liked the fact I was putting myself at risk by helping the homeless and doing something physically strenuous,” she says. Though Steel speaks about her cause with passion and commitment, she’s also the first to have a laugh on herself. “When this ‘help the homeless’ first came to mind, I resisted and wondered, ‘Why can’t I help by doing something like shopping?’ ”
Her anonymous forays began the night before Christmas 12 years ago, when she and an employee gathered some clothes, scarves and sleeping bags to deliver around her tony neighborhood, where she’d noticed a few homeless huddled in the doorways of local businesses and parking lots.
The next night, after her elegant, blacktie Christmas dinner, which included a futile discussion with a local politician about homelessness, Steel and her employees changed clothes and hit the streets again in search of people in need.
“In the beginning we were so naive and got ourselves in a couple of dicey situations. I was afraid for the people working for me because we were at risk every time we went out,” she recalled. “But on cold, rainy nights I couldn’t resist throwing some sleeping bags in the trunk and going out on the streets. Helping these people brought out some strange gladiator-cowboy side in me.”
The foundation’s name was born one night while Steel was handing out supply bags. With a salute, a homeless man cried out his appreciation, “Yo! Angel!”
These monthly missions lasted six or seven hours. Steel’s team eventually grew to 11, and included four vans and three off-duty police officers who set ground rules for safety. Steel paid for all the supplies and vehicles out of her own pocket; the police officers volunteered their time. At its zenith, on each trip out, Yo! Angel! distributed 300 bags filled with long johns, tarps, ponchos, food, toiletries and teddy bears. Steel estimates she was spending about $100,000 per mission and $1.1 million per year.
Determined to remain anonymous, both for her team’s safety and to allay accusations that she was seeking publicity, Steel never asked for donations or discounts on supplies. But after the first year of giving, she realized she needed to form a charitable organization.
“Homelessness isn’t a sexy problem. It’s not pretty, it smells bad and many people think, ‘There but for the grace of God go I,’ ” she said. “But as I spent more time with the homeless, I found it shocking that we sit in our comfortable homes and talk about going to Africa to help Third World countries when, 10 blocks away, there are desperate people in our own community.”
Steel also discovered that for many people on the street, it’s not a housing problem but rather a mental health problem.
“Nicky was young. But he’d been sick with bipolar most of his life and was used to being on his medication. So he never slipped off into the mists,” she says, wistfully. “But then, Nicky never got old.”
The homeless Steel encountered on her missions were off their meds, she says.
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However, in 2008, Steel discovered that her decades-long employee Kristy Watts was embezzling the author’s money by manipulating Steel’s financial accounts. Steel sued her in federal court for $2.7 million. In 2010, Watts pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion and stealing $768,000 from Steel and was sentenced to federal prison.
“She’s basically the reason why I ceased my street work and closed the gallery,” Steel says. “That was the beginning of the end of my romance with San Francisco. I loved my homeless work and the gallery. Without them, and with my kids almost grown, I felt useless.” (She also found herself explaining why she remarked in the Wall Street Journal last year that “there’s no style” in San Francisco, even though she admitted to looking “like a mess when I’m there, too.”)
Steel designed Yo! Angel! as a hands-on organization, which allowed her to remain an active participant for those in need. In addition, to honor her son’s legacy, Steel founded the Nick Traina Foundation to support people with mental illness and fund other organizations such as Larkin Street Youth Services, which she admires greatly.
Being useful is a mantra for Steel. If she doesn’t keep busy, she says, she feels sad.
“Then the misfortunes of my life catch up with me: I start thinking about Nick. I get sad about other stuff, failed marriages or whatever,” she admits. “What keeps my demons away from the door is being busy.”
Steel says she would love to resume her Yo! Angel! work on the streets someday. (The organization still exists, but is currently inactive.) But for now she’s using her gifts as a writer to give voice to the homeless and the crushing societal problems generated by mental illness. “A Gift of Hope” was first published by Presses de la Cité in France. And a portion of proceeds was donated by Steel and her publisher to Emmaüs, an international charitable organization founded in France.
“What I found on the street is there’s such a generosity of spirit and heart,” she says, brightening. “It brought out the best in our team. The homeless were so kind to us, and we felt grateful to them. They gave us something every time.”
Catherine Bigelow is The San Francisco Chronicle’s social correspondent. E-mail: missbigelow@sfgate.com