HOPE ON WHEELS

It's rainy, windy, cold and Eric stands at the corner of Sixth Avenue
and Sixth Street in clothing fit for a fair fall day.

Eric, who's in his 20s, has been homeless for more than a month. And
to make matters worse, he's now "using" " likely crack cocaine, which
can be bought in $5 rocks. Somewhere out there on this cold winter
night is Eric's younger brother Patrick, who just turned 16. He has
also been homeless for a month and likely also uses crack.

While Eric shivers, Michael Badior from the local Salvation Army
tries to talk him into entering an emergency shelter for the night.
The shelters in New Westminster are full Thursday night so Badior
offers Eric transit fare tickets to get to a Vancouver shelter and
then come back the next morning.

Badior, one half of the Salvation Army's recently launched Hope on
Wheels team, also wants to find out where Patrick is. But his brother
either doesn't know, or doesn't care.

Badior and partner Ivan Montenegro will spend much of the night
trying to locate Patrick and other homeless individuals in need of
help and hope.

Riding mountain bikes, they pedal through alleys and parks, peer
under bridges and into underground parking lots. They are the
Salvation Army's first-ever bike squad and there are plans to have
others set up around the Lower Mainland. If the pilot project proves
successful in New Westminster, there could also be Hope on Wheel's
programs across Canada and the United States " wherever the
faith-based organization operates.

Badior and Montenegro are oddities to those on the streets. People
seeing them on bikes for the first time wonder if they're part of the
New Westminster police bike squad. But when they break out the hot
chocolate and start asking them if they have a place to sleep that
night, people warm up to them.

When the program started a month ago, the two men found it took a
strong heart to pedal a fully-loaded mountain bike up and down the
hills of New Westminster.

But it takes an even stronger heart to give help and hope to the
homeless, the drug and alcohol addicted, the mentally ill, and those
who have lost their way and live on the streets of New West.

Two days and three nights a week, that's what these two "street
missionaries" try to do.

The idea isn't to push their faith on those they deal with, says
Badior. "You can't eat religion," he explains.

Instead the cycling pair are resource people to the homeless. They
know the phone number of each agency and organization that offers
help to those in need. They'll even make an appointment with that
agency or organization and escort their clients to a meeting the next day.

It sounds simple but the real challenge is getting people to take
that help. When Badior and Montenegro come across Eric again later
that evening, they find out he doesn't want the help they offered.
It's 11 p.m., he's still in New West and it's likely that he sold the
two transit tickets for a few dollars.

It's also likely the money he pocketed will go toward a rock of crack cocaine.

Once bitten, twice shy, said Badior. The two won't be giving tickets
to him again. Not unless they can actually escort him on to the SkyTrain.

But there's also some ongoing success stories out there.

Down at the Garfield Hotel (the Salvation Army's shelter for men),
they meet Simon early Thursday evening. He's bipolar, but it's
difficult to tell that because he's taking his medication. He's had
the mental illness since he was a teenager but has been able to
manage things " even holding down a good-paying job for years.

His life fell apart seven years ago when he was in a severe car
accident. Now he's blind in his right eye, deaf in one ear and has a
curvature of the spine because of several damaged vertebrae. After
the accident he couldn't work and received a disability pay-out for
his injuries. His common-in-law spouse then left him and took most of
the money with her.

But Simon is now on the rebound. He holds down a full-time job in a
woodworking shop and makes $10 an hour. He doesn't make enough to
live on his own, so for now he stays at Stevenson House, another
emergency shelter the Sally Ann operates in New West.

He tried sharing an apartment with others but "got ripped off" by his
roommates. The shelter will do, he says, but he hopes one day to have
a place of his own.

"I want to be a part of society and not a drain on it," says Simon,
who has a photographic memory and a wit as quick as a whip.

Trust is a huge issue with Hope on Wheels, says Badior.

The strategy is simple. First they want people to gain trust in them.
Offering up hot chocolate on a cold, wet and windy night is a great
starting point to gaining that trust, says Badior. Then they have to
get them to trust the message they're giving them and finally trust
themselves to make the decision to help themselves.

Right now the street missionaries are trying to build that trust in
Eric and Patrick, who they didn't find that night, but have dealt
with him before. Neither brother is ready to get off the street now,
and may not until they hit "rock bottom."

Badior uses himself as the "poster boy" for Hope on Wheels. He came
to the Salvation Army after years of living on the street as a drug
addict and a criminal. Montenegro's role is more to offer guidance. A
lawyer by trade and a lay pastor, he's worked in his native El
Salvador helping the poor.

Despite coming from a developing country, Montenegro says he was
shocked when he came across the despair of the homeless in Canada.
"It shocks you," he says. "You don't think it should be like this."

Editor's note: The Salvation Army asked the NewsLeader not to use the
real names of its clients.