heartBROKE

A very sweet woman, who had a difficult last 5 years of life living on the streets, passed away this last Fall, with barely a notice.

Her name is Jeanie Daniels.

She was a really lovely woman. I don't know a great deal about her, other than the few occasions we spent time together. What I can share, is that those times had an impact on me. She was worth knowing, worth being with.

I know there were many others that were taken by Jeanie's sweet way in life. Dee Powers, who is a tireless housing justice advocate, cared deeply about her, as did Karina Wallace at Facing Homelessness, and Damian Monda, who does beautiful street-outreach work. I am hoping they too will share about their friendship with Jeanie in the comments so that you can know more about her.

Here is the Facing Homelessness post I made for Jeanie back in October 2019:

"heartBROKE”

While visiting Dee, who lives in an RV with Devin in the SODO neighborhood, I learned their friend Jeanie was having a really difficult time. We walked two blocks to the U-Haul she was living in, she was sitting in the front seat staring ahead.

When I came up to her my first thought was how kind her face was. I asked, "How are you doing?" She looked at me and started to cry, she said, "Not very good." For an hour she cried, telling about the mess she's in. For 12 years she took care of her mother, then 10 months ago her mom died and everything went downhill. She rented a car to get a job with Lyft to pay for a room in a house and also pay off her mom's burial expenses. All was going well until a car crashed into her, wrecking the rental. At first the guy was nice, apologizing, next minute he took off, before Jeanie could get information. She lost her job, then her room, that was in June.

Up until two weeks ago she was sharing space in an RV, learning to live homeless. She was a wreck, missing her mom, trying to adapt, when the guy kicked her out. She rented a U-Haul on September 15th to move her stuff into storage, planning on returning the vehicle the next day.

Jeanie is disabled, has had 25 knee operations, she moves slow with a cane. While unloading the truck two men came up from behind and knocked her down, hit her again and then stole her purse and money. At first they tried to drag her into the bushes but she screamed and fought back, eventually getting into the back of the U-Haul, where she stayed for two days, fearful of coming out.

Every day that passed Jeanie became more stressed, freaked out that she could not pay U-Haul the rental fee. She wrote a four page letter to them, explaining what happened, hoping it would make a difference. I read it and was overwhelmed.

I told her this community would try to raise the funds to pay the nearly $1,000 owed. I was going to make that post asking all of you to help. But between meeting Jeanie yesterday and now, the police and U-Haul showed up, put everything of hers on the street and took off. I asked the U-Haul person if they could wait one more day, that we would raise the funds owed. He said no chance of that happening.

Tonight Jeanie and all of her belongings are outside. I want to scream. Not at U-Haul. Not at the police. But at who?

Let's raise $750 for a week of hotel stay for Jeanie, giving her some peace of mind just for a bit to help figure things out.

LOVE."

As it turned out, the Paypal link was pulled in that the goal of raising $750 was met with $8,396.46 donated by 260 donors in 13 hours for Jeanie. It was clear that Jeanie struck a connection with many in this community.

Dear Sweet Jeanie, I hope you know how loved you were by this community, how very beautiful of a person you were and how easily everyone saw that in you.

Rest In Peace sweet woman.