What’s Wrong With This Picture?

It's a dangerous position for Samples, exposing him to extreme moments of joy and pain. Anything could happen at any time. Anyone could disappear. Looking around James and Carl's makeshift camp, you notice that this is their graveyard as well. There are no bodies, but painted on one of the bridge's cement supports is an ad hoc tombstone: "Skeet--Rest in Peace--Amen Brother."

James stands in front of the memorial as he says his goodbyes. "I'm not gonna be around here much longer," he says, casting his eyes around the only home he knows. He has 59 tickets from the city for panhandling and being drunk in public. He knows he's moving on soon, one way or another. Maybe to jail. Maybe to another bridge, another camp. Or maybe on the wall next to Skeet. You never know where you'll end up when you start falling. You might even end up back at the top, helping everyone else up.

"If you asked me two years ago, I wouldn't have been able to pick this in a multiple choice of two as one of my options," Samples says. "I wouldn't have."

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Five thousand people. Actually, 5,181. That's how many in Dallas County are homeless, according to the census taken by the Greater Dallas Homeless Alliance on January 21, 2003. Odds are, the real total is at least double that number. It's hard to imagine they found every homeless person; they looked for just seven hours.

Whatever the magic number is, everyone seems to have a theory on how to reduce it. It's impossible to get anyone who's connected with the homeless on the phone without hearing a 15-minute discourse on what the city should do with the $3 million in bond money it has earmarked for a new homeless shelter, which was approved in a May 3 election. Where they should put it, what kind of services it should have, who should run it.

Talk to Herschel Weisfeld, who runs the Sara Ellen & Samuel Weisfeld Center and spent several years on Ron Kirk's homeless task force, and you'll get one answer. Call up Judith Anne Sturrock, executive vice president of the nonprofit A Friend Indeed Foundation and chairwoman of the site selection committee for the city's homeless shelter, and you'll get another one. Same goes with Central Dallas Ministries' Larry James, the Day Resource Center's James Waghorn, just about anyone who has anything to do with homeless people in Dallas.

They don't agree on much, except one point: the importance of Hal Samples. A former homeless man who looks like an artist and talks like a car salesman can bridge more gaps than just about anyone else involved in the cause. He's comfortable in either world, whether he's taking meetings with restaurant mogul Phil Romano or taking a new sleeping bag to a friend. They all speak with a parent's pride when talking about Samples and his efforts, because to them, this is proof that the time and energy they've spent hasn't been wasted.

"Anytime a person who has experienced homelessness...comes back to the community, it's a tremendous help, because it's like learning a foreign language," says Waghorn of the city-run Day Resource Center. The center is just around the corner from City Hall and provides showers and computer access for the homeless, among other things. "You know how to speak that foreign language; you know how to understand the tribulations that these people are going through. So you're just a motivation to them."

"I just admire that young man," A Friend Indeed's Sturrock says. "I mean, I am so glad that he's in my life...I had a group of pastors on a Monday meeting, and when he got up and spoke, I got back up, and I said, 'Do I even need to be up here?' because he pulled at your heartstrings."

That's because Samples' story at once suggests the city's current system for helping the homeless can work, but for only a lucky few.

When Samples hit the streets, for example, he says he needed more than just a place to sleep. He needed full rehabilitation. But he'd made too much money as a salesman at Prestige Ford to qualify as an indigent, so the state wouldn't provide care for him. His aunt and uncle went online to try to find a solution. And there it was, at www.houseofisaiah.org, the House of Isaiah, a Christian ranch for men in Mabank, an hour outside of Dallas. Isaiah Robertson, a former All-Pro linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams and Buffalo Bills, started the ranch in 1989 as a place to kick drug and alcohol addiction and rehabilitate the "whole man"--mind, body and spirit.

"[Robertson] would have me go dig, like, solid septic tanks, and then he'd come out there and say, 'Man, I didn't tell you to put it right there. I told you to put it right there," Samples says. "It's 4 in the morning with a flashlight and shit everywhere.

"That was my new high, that place," he says. "Because it would provide endorphins. Not knowing what was gonna happen the next night. Somebody's gonna fall through the ceiling as they're pulling a Bender from Breakfast Club going to the meds cabinet. Picking up the anti-psychotics instead of the Valiums he was looking for and carping out in my wing."