Ministries helps with showers and food
Ken Rickner renews spirits with gospel message and showers
Denise Caine once lived in a big four-bedroom house in downtown Antioch and worked in a bank. But on a recent Saturday, the 52-year-old mother of six was standing in a line for some free socks, a hot meal, a Gospel message and a shower.
“They’re new and fluffy and will keep my feet warm,” Caine said, cuddling the pair of thick white socks being offered along with new tennis shoes to those in need.
Caine is a regular these days at Shower House Ministries’ weekly Saturday events at the Black Diamond Lines Model Railroad Club parking lot, where founder Ken Rickner sets up his 16-foot custom trailer complete with several shower stalls. After delivering “the word” and a hot lunch, the formerly homeless minister lets attendees — there’s usually 20 to 30 — take 3½-minute hot showers to wash away the grime and renew spirits.
“I think this is the best in the world,” Caine said of the showers.
The diminutive woman — a cancer survivor — said she was evicted several years ago, so between that on her record and some bad credit, she hasn’t been able to find another place to rent. Meanwhile, her car was totaled in an accident.
“I’m stuck. It’s hard to find a job if you don’t have a place to live,” Caine said. She works every day as a
“recycling technician,” picking up aluminum cans for cash. Local churches help with food and blankets, and her small tent keeps out the elements. “I have sons, but I don’t want to bring my burdens on them,” she said, and the shelters are all full.
Rickner’s Shower House Ministries has been a godsend for Caine. In addition to meals, clothes and showers, each week volunteers there offer baggies of crackers, fruit bars, chips and juice, as well as toiletries. Shower House Ministries has received funding this year from Share the Spirit, an annual holiday campaign that serves disadvantaged residents in the East Bay and from which donations have helped support 49 nonprofit agencies in Contra Costa and Alameda counties. Donations to Shower House Ministries will be used to buy fuel to transport the shower vehicle and propane to heat the water and food. The funds will also help provide toiletries.
Rickner, 61, said he’s grateful for any support he can get to keep running his ministry, now in its fifth year.
Nine years ago, he didn’t believe such a ministry was even possible. Struggling to pay his mortgage and other expenses while recovering from a drug addiction, he said he had a vision: a trailer with the words “Shower House Ministries.”
Then one day he picked up an unkempt hitchhiker “who stunk to high heaven” but made him flash back to his vision. Still, he didn’t have a clue where to start.
But “(God) said to me ‘just walk through one door at a time.’”
A stucco contractor hit hard by the recession, Rickner filed for bankruptcy and lost his home in Bethel Island around the same time. Though his world crashed, the experience was also freeing in a way, he said. He started selling what he could — an industrial pump to buy a trailer and his car to buy the showers.
With the help of knowledgeable friends, Rickner equipped the trailer with lights, a generator and two water tanks. Within 10 months it was ready. Meanwhile, he also bought himself a 38-foot trailer to live in. But he never forgot his tough time of being homeless and living down by the river.
“I had to fall flat on my face before I started to get the change,” he said. “Now I feel good about what I do. With showers and new clothes, they are like brandnew people when they come out.”
The former Marine, who once had a short fuse, speaks softly as he greets the down-and-out who come to his ministries.
“Were trying to get them off the streets … and teach them to care for themselves and care for others,” he said.
Shannon Munson, 47, came to a recent shower ministry with her boyfriend and her Yorkshire terrier Chihuahua, Sophie.
The 30-year Antioch resident said she followed an exboyfriend to the streets after losing her job and home when the man she worked for as a caregiver died.
“I lost my place, I lost my job,” Munson said, acknowledging she once was a meth addict but recovered and today makes her home in a field near the river.
“We love this,” she said while clutching a bag with her own shampoo and soap, waiting her turn for a hot shower. “If it wasn’t for Ken, we wouldn’t have showers. We can get the (Gospel) word here. Without this, we don’t know what we would do.”