Homeless in Hackensack: The gift of hope (part two)

While she has plenty of detractors, Robin Reilly of Hackensack, N.J. has hundreds of supporters. Many of them are homeless, obvious, who have followed her around for years, and they know that wherever she is, their chances of getting food, guidance and a sense of morality have improved.

Reilly can accommodate, too, because she understands the importance of being politically savvy. That’s comes from her experience working with local hospitals and serving in the health care industry, where she learned that being a bull-in-the-china shop doesn’t necessarily phase the bureaucrats.

That’s why she invited city officials (none of them came) to join her during a service at the First Reformed Church on Court Street, just days before the Oct. 23 opening, to remember about 70 people who died since Reilly left her job as an interior designer at medical facilities to become a full-time advocate for the homeless..

At the event, Reilly faced about 75 other homeless advocates and people without a home – many of them mentally ill or substance abusers, nearly all of whom refused care at the county homeless shelters. They raised their hands during an invocation, hushed their mumbling voices and waited for Reilly to speak.

"Welcome my friends, your prayers have been answered," she told them. "We are one again."

Church members beamed as Reilly declared that the new site at the 300-year-old church will give the homeless a place to eat a snack and get regular health checkups.

"We are trying to help those in need," Ted Kallinikos, a church elder, told The Record of Bergen County, N.J. "We're trying to do what's right for the community

It will be open only from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday; and no one will be allowed to sleep there (wink, wink, Reilly says). But it will be a 5-hour respite for the homeless who have been sleeping in abandoned lots and buildings, and in vacant lots with overgrown weeds on 10-degree days, and find themselves at Hackensack University Medical Center with their toes ready to fall off because of frostbite.

The Rev. Tim Eppolito, the pastor of Faith Reformed Church in Lodi, a sister church, said the decision to provide space was easy – without fear or remorse that they, too, may have joined the hit list that Reilly believes some Hackensack officials and police officers have conjured up and plans to use against friends of Reilly whenever necessary.

"As a non-profit organization, we minister to those who are less fortunate," Eppolito told The Record of Bergen County, N.J., who recited passages from Jeremiah in the Bible about "seeking the prosperity of the city."

For Reilly, smoothness is a rare commodity – especially when you’ve been bounced around as many times as she has. But the church ceremony was exactly what dreamed of as she fussed over paper napkins and place settings two weeks earlier. It was solemn, it was sweet, and it was successful. There was a solemn service where people tossed roses into the Hackensack River in honor of the homeless who have died.

And it was capped by Reilly recalling those who died, as well as their nicknames and clothing attire.

Later, she remembered 2001, when she shared a moment with Jerry Flanagan, a homeless person who died soon after she packed things up in her office at the Salvation Army in Hackensack. She was moving out after using the spot for the summer, and once again planned to take her homeless advocacy directly to the streets.

In that location, at the Salvation Army at 89 State St., she operated out of a 12-by-20-foot office and provided assistance to more than 1,100 homeless and poor people. She attracted the same of legion of followers who came to cry on her shoulder or sleep on a couch, back when she was an administrator at Peter’s Place and before she was fired from there, for a few hours to sober up. In just a few months, she referred hundreds of clients to hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and employers.

"I'm not working for anyone right now. I'm working for God," Reilly said at the time as she packed furniture, a sewing machine, and cans of food. Several homeless people watched, and they hugged her when she grew misty-eyed.

That time, the departure was amicable. Seven months earlier, she was fired by Peter's Place, a privately run, 25-bed shelter at Christ Episcopal Church on State Street. Reilly, who co-founded the shelter in the mid-1990s, attributed her departure to a policy dispute.

Reilly and Stephen Lyle, the commanding officer of the Salvation Army's Hackensack facility, said the two had a mutual agreement that she could use the office only on a temporary basis. But Lyle said the charitable agency needed the space for its fall programs. "Hopefully, she can find another place," he said at the time.

Already, Reilly had a plan. She would walk the streets and railroads and meet with homeless people at the Johnson Library on Main Street. She'd carry her cell phone in case she has to get assistance for them. The one thing Reilly wouldn’t do, she said, was quit.

Reilly was an interior designer who decorated medical facilities. Back then, she dabbled in homeless causes, and she was so moved by the people she met that she gave up her lucrative career to become a full-time advocate. When she worked at the Hackensack University Medical Center, she had an opportunity to see the problem, for the first time, up close.

She saw people with missing toes and thumbs hauled in on stretches quivering after spending the night in below freezing temperatures. She saw them arrive with no one standing by them as they were hauled off the ambulances or wheeled in on wheelchairs.

"I realized that I didn't want to pick out desks for doctors to make them feel better. I realized this was a lot more important," she once said. "It's an unglamorous job, but it's the most rewarding job of my life."

It was then that Reilly sought opportunities to help. But she didn’t want to just, as was suggested by hospital staff, “stuff envelopes.”

“I said, ‘No, I want to be out with the people,’” Reilly said.

As she packed the last of her boxes and bid her followers goodbye at the Salvation Army in 2001, for instance – just months before she would settle in at her State Street location –Reilly's followers crowded her office. Her desk was already gone, which freed up some room for people to sit. One man, Darryl, fiddled with a computer that he helped put together so Reilly could compile statistics. He also played harmonica, getting other clients to stomp their feet as he played away.

That summer alone, she collected more than $3,000 in donations from businesses, civic organizations, and schools, she said. But that money was all spent to buy medication and provide transportation for her clients.

"It's the kind of job where you get to be exhausted, but you say, 'Damn it, I've helped somebody,'" Reilly said at the time. "You look in the mirror and feel good at night."

After she left, Reilly said, she traveled to 178th Street in Manhattan to persuade a former client to give up prostitution. She did not succeed, but Reilly gave the woman a meal before she left. Since then, Reilly said, she has returned there and assisted other former clients whom she worries are "dying" on the Manhattan streets.

Some stayed; others followed her to State Street, and helped drag the ratty old couch with them that people sat on at Peter’s Place and the Salvation Army so they could “rest” at the State Street storefront. Hey, when you’ve been up three straight nights, afraid to fall asleep in the cold, what do you do?

Reilly called the State Street place a boutique store, and there was a collection of old lamps, lights and furniture that people dropped off, with price tags attached to them. She even had an employee to help out. But within months after the place opened, the boutiques never moved.

The cops started to notice, and began questioning her motives. Still there was plenty of “wink-winking” going on, she said. She had an ally in Hackensack Mayor John “Jack” Zisa, who saw her efforts as the one effective way to keep homeless off-the-streets. He looked the other way until he decided not to run in 2005; from there, things went downhill.

"She is one of the most sincere, if not the most sincere, homeless advocate I've ever met in my life," Zisa once said. "She works endless hours helping people."

Then, Reilly said, she was willing to "fight to the death" to protect the homeless. It was the same kind of relentlessness that contributed to her departure from Peter's Place: She said she let a woman sleep on a bench at the facility even though she was ordered not to.

Now the relentlessness is back as she opens her place at the church. City officials may protest, but she’s hoping to find another ally again – before the cops and the code enforcement officials wake up again and give her hell.

That’s fine, she says. She’s in the business of extending lives, even if it’s just for another month, another week or another day.

One such life was a woman named Jacquie. She’s been to jail 30 times, but she’s better known for her scratchy, high-pitched voice, and her habit of going into dining places, eating a meal, and not being able to pay. She’s lived in dumpsters near the Bergen County Courthouse, where she was once raped.

Jacquie has schizophrenia, and she’s been in-and-out of psychiatric hospitals. She does well for a period of time before she finds herself back on the street again, left to fend for herself.

“That’s when she seeks me out,” Reilly said.

Two weeks before Reilly’s new place opened, Jacquie popped in at the First Reformed Church. Reilly was stunned; how did she even know about this place, Reilly thought. But Jacquie was always clever, and she has a habit of popping up out of nowhere.

Jacquie handed Reilly a card. “I love you,” it said. Reilly’s face quickly turned from shock to tearful glee. She’s literally pulled Jacquie out of those dumpsters. To get a card like this, she said, made it all seem worth it.

“They moved me in with a mission and that’s a miracle,” she said.