WE WERE ON the sixth hole at Tokatee Golf Club, a par-five with water right, when Brad Bills offered me the job.
“We need a dishwasher at Hosea (Youth Services),” he said.
“What’s it pay?”
“Nothing.”
At the time, I had too much on my plate. But a year later, I couldn’t resist. I signed a short-term contract: four dinner shifts with an option for more.
It was a rare opportunity to see a perspective I rarely see—the 16- to 24-year-old young people for whom this place is their daily port in a life-on-the-streets storm.
Hosea, which operates in the basement of Grace Fellowship Church at 8th and Monroe, puts up kids at Everyone Village and three other locations, but most who stop here for food and clothes sleep outside, wherever they can.
Food, clothing, laundry, nap room, counseling, guitar lessons, crafts—Hosea does what it can to help kids tread some water with hopes that they’ll soon learn to swim. Last year, more than 620 different kids availed themselves of Hosea’s services, about 50 in an average day.
More than a decade ago, I spent time at Hosea for a Register-Guard front-page story. Time has dulled the memory, but I’ll never forget words from one of Hosea’s clients, a young woman whom I had asked how she wound up on the streets.
“At age 12,” she said, “I realized I could do a better job raising myself than my parents could.”
Not much has changed since that night, which is to say Hosea’s paid staff and volunteers remain beacons of empathy and support for these kids and the young people comprise a collage of hope and despair.
“What surprised me most when I arrived here five years ago is realizing that this lifestyle is not a chosen thing,” said Bills, 64 but with the sweet golf swing of someone half his age. “These kids are born into horrific situations and weren’t raised with many options. Before the streets, they lived lives of depravity. You can hear it in their stories and see it on their eyes.”
Kids hooked by age 10 on drugs supplied by their parents. Kids trading sex for drugs. Kids who had little chance of escaping the cycle of abuse.