I am posting this blog for a close friend and co-worker Diana Robledo. She is Operations Supervisor, Relief and Referral , Primavera Foundation, Tucson Arizona. She and I both work there and in her program which allows any Homeless person to receive services that comes off the streets whether they receive services from any other Primavera program or not. The people that come to her program can receive, case managment, food boxes, use the bathrooms, use a phone, have their mail sent there, receive lotions, toothbrushes, blankets, bedrolls, get vouchers for their clothing store and many other services.

Diana sees and experiences the anguish, heart break and tragedy that is Homelessness on a daily basis. I worry about her sometimes 'cause she is in the trenches and always up to her ass in alligators. I love this woman because her didication is without peer. I have to go some to reach her level.

At any rate on the front piece of Homeless Advocate she has a poem that was written by her for her deceased father that was Homeless and beaten to death while he was so. Please read the the following piece by her and weep.


RIP...I lost another one........
Current mood: sad
Category: Life


Rest in Peace Gordon (hit by a car), Tim (fell and broke c4, quadrapalegic), Walter (heart attack and stroke), James (overdose), Gayle (overdose), John (suicide) Randall (sickness), Jane Doe (suicide), Russell (fell off a train) and the most recent Juan (complications due to alcoholism). Only one of these had a next of kin.



Within the last few weeks the names mentioned above and then some have all passed away. Juan being the most recent, two nights ago. He had no next of kin and last Wednesday as I visited him in the hospital, I sat on his bed side trying to get him to eat or drink something. Juan, only 50 years old looked close to 70. He sat there and stared at me with tears in his eyes as if he knew his final days were fast approaching. He repeatedly thanked me for visiting him. I asked him for family contacts and we tried two phone numbers of his brothers' in Texas but one was the wrong number and the other had been disconnected.



As I was getting ready to leave I asked the nurse his prognosis and because of HIPA laws she could not tell me. We asked Juan for permission and he signed a release form. Luckily he was of sound mind when he did so.



Before I left I said a silent blessing on him and left the nurse my business card and cell phone number. On Sunday, November 18, the nurse from the hospital called and said he had slipped into a coma. I went the next morning and walked in to see Juan hooked up to about five machines and looking nothing how he looked 4 days before. I stayed for a little while, went to work, retuned after work and stayed by his side holding his hand and talking to him. I am not sure that he heard anything of what I said to him but I told him not to be afaid and his time here in this world was done and to stop the fight, there was no need for struggling anymore. His kidneys, liver, lungs were shutting down and his brain wouldn't stop seizing. I left the hospital after a few hours with the anticipation of returning the next morning to be with him but I recieved a phone call that same night that Juan had passed....May he rest in peace.



Another lost with no one to claim him.......I did and I have to say it was an incredible journey!