THE MAILMAN
It’s a Thursday, about 11:00 a.m. at Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Redondo Beach, California. A group of about eighty men and women wait outside of the Fellowship Hall. Inside parishioners have set up about twenty round tables and chairs, prepared racks of clothing, and various other stations providing shoes, personal items such as soap and toothpaste, and a closet filled with canned food.
Other parishioners sit at a table to assist in filling out applications for medical assistance, financial aid, and housing. But these goods and services are not why they wait outside; rather it’s the hot food. Eggs for breakfast, ham and beans for lunch with all the salad you can eat, and donuts for dessert. With the opening of the church doors a community of the homeless enter to be served by the church of Saint Andrew’s.
The city of Redondo Beach is located in the South Bay of Los Angeles County. As a beach community it is one of the upscale neighborhoods in Southern California, a place where gentrification has remodeled most of the small homes built after World War II so, it is almost impossible to find a home for anything less than $750,000.00. Housing prices have driven up rental units as well, so that a typical one-bedroom apartment goes for better than $2,000.00 a month. This reality, amongst others, is why Los Angeles County has more than 58,000 homeless people living on its streets; some in cars, others in tents, and still others have no shelter at all. Redondo Beach, with its temperate weather and long sandy beaches, attracts and retains its fair share of the 58,000.
California boasts the world’s sixth largest economy, and Los Angeles generates the highest gross domestic product of any county in the nation. Homelessness however, remains an intractable problem despite all of the money and attention it receives from the press and politicians. Citizens overwhelmingly voted to tax themselves more than a billion dollars in local measures known as H and HHH, but it has had little impact on the problem. Now the political situation has turned into a “crisis of mental health treatment” and a call by our governor to allow doctors to write “prescriptions for housing” and even involuntary confinement to insure that “they” get the “treatment ‘they’ need.”
What is rarely, if ever, mentioned is that the scourge of homelessness, like so many other societal ills, is often self-inflicted; most commonly through drug addiction and alcoholism. Nowhere is this fact more self evident than in the criminal justice system. Arraignment courts in Los Angeles and throughout our nation are daily filled up with the incarcerated homeless. Defendants arrested for Public Intoxication, Under the Influence, and even misdemeanor Vagrancy, fill the custody boxes of our courtrooms. When I first started my legal career as a Deputy Public Defender, these misdemeanors were taken seriously, some requiring a minimum of ninety days in jail, today they are routinely CTS (credit for time served), as there is no room in the jail for misdemeanor offenders. Even on more serious offenses, including felonies that don’t require a prison sentence, offenders in Los Angeles County do approximately one day for every thirty days they have been sentenced to serve. Over incarceration is symptomatic of the same disease driving homelessness; a societal spiritual crisis that reveals itself in increasing numbers of addicts, criminals, mental health patients, overdoses and suicides.
My quest for the day is not only to witness the success of another small band of Christians living out their calling to care for the least of us, but also to document another example of the cure for what ails us all. I am here to see Michael “The Mailman” Lee. He looks just like all of the other parishioners, about six feet, blue eyes, and a decent head of graying hair for a man sixty-seven years old. His calm demeanor and humble manner serve him well when working with the homeless.
Saint Andrew’s serves as the permanent address for about two hundred homeless residents of Redondo Beach. Having a place to pick up mail is a big deal for someone who doesn’t have a mail box. Letters from relatives, relief checks, health care and government notices, and even responses from potential employers all need a place for the postman to deliver. So, every Tuesday and Thursday Michael gathers all the mail the church has received and distributes it to everyone who shows up at lunch time. If someone doesn’t come for awhile, Michael will go out looking for him. Michael is perfect for the job; not only does he know everyone; he also knows all the places in Redondo Beach where the homeless live. He should; he was one of them off and on for thirty years.
Michael was born and raised in Redondo Beach, but his childhood was not as idyllic as most of his peers. He didn’t meet his true father until he was sixteen, and that meeting only lasted long enough for the man to walk away asking Michael to “never trouble me again.” Rather, he grew up in his mother’s house, who had a parade of men come through when he was young, until she finally married a former police officer, still angry about losing his job over the theft of county owned radios.
At age six Michael stepped into a crosswalk when the driver of a car stopped and signaled him to go ahead. The second car didn’t see him and he hit him straight on. When he regained consciousness, “My left leg was behind my neck.” Taken to the hospital, “they put a cast on it, and sent me home that night. The pain was unbearable, and what was worse, my stepfather tormented me, calling me ‘sissy’ things like that.”
“I was crying all the time, I quit eating, and finally my mom took me to Torrance Memorial. The bones had never been set, and I had a massive infection. I almost died; they kept me there four months.” Michael never fully recovered from the accident. Learning of it, I noticed he walks with a slight limp to this day.
“More than that though, the trauma, the pain, the memory of it is still there, that and the beatings. Most of the time he used a belt, a couple times he gave me a black eye with his fists. My mom, she never got involved, I don’t think she was afraid of him, it just felt like she didn’t care.”
When Michael was eleven, he experienced homelessness for the first time. Tired of all the abuse, “I ran away, lived in a field in the neighborhood for about three weeks until somebody noticed me. I got picked up and sent home. I really got it that time.”
Michael’s problems at home turned into problems at school. Poised and well spoken today, you would never guess he had little more than a sixth-grade education.
“I smoked my first joint at eleven, did acid at fourteen, pills, whatever was on the street. That’s when I quit going to school, ninth grade it was.”
Michael did have one person that loved him, a grandmother in Oklahoma. “We moved around all the time, sometimes I’d just go live with Grandma. I didn’t know anyone in Oklahoma, you know, have any connections, so I pretty much stayed out of trouble when I was with her, knowing somebody cares about you when you’re a kid; makes a big difference.”
When Michael turned sixteen, he moved back in with his mother and stepfather. He was stronger now, big enough to fight back. The beatings stopped. “I thought we were getting along, but when a friend of mine hid some marijuana in the backyard, he must have found it, next thing I know the police raided the house, and I got arrested. He told them I was incorrigible. I did eight months in Juvenile Hall, was a ward of the court from then on.”
In the later part of the 1960’s, criminal street gangs, such as the Crips and the Bloods were just getting started. A phenomenon that originated in the City of Los Angeles, it soon invaded virtually every urban neighborhood in the nation. So much so that a study published by National Youth Gang Survey of Law Enforcement Agencies in 2002 estimated there were 58,000 gang members in the city of Los Angeles, and roughly 26,000 different criminal street gangs boasting 840,500 total members in the United States. These statistics remained roughly the same through the end of 2019.
The insidious methodology of street gangs is not only the claiming of a certain turf or “hood,” but the segregated neighborhoods encouraged racial violence. This wasn’t always the case out on the street, but once gang members got sentenced to jail, prison or juvenile hall, inmates segregated themselves by race. Each racial group, predominantly Blacks, Hispanics and Whites, sought dominance over the others. Sadly, as the rest of the nation strove to become more integrated, our jails, prisons and juvenile halls became hot beds of racism and gang-style violence. At the age of sixteen Michael Lee had to defend himself in one of the first schools to teach gansterism, Los Angeles County Juvenile Hall.
Michael knew how to take care of himself, he knew that when he was challenged, he better not back down. “I just went crazy on the other guy.” The one thing his stepfather had taught him was how to take a punch. “I could take a lickin’, and keep on tickin’.” It didn’t take long for Michael to earn some “respect,” particularly because he stood up for the “little guys,” the kids being bullied by older wards.
The eight months passed slowly for Michael, but it wasn’t all bad. Once he got the rules down and established a reputation, the structure of The Hall had real advantages. Michael had to go to school, and there weren’t any drugs around, so in many ways he prospered. The chaos of his home life, and the random acts of violence he suffered, made The Hall safe by comparison. At least if he had to fight, it would be a fair fight. A couple months before his scheduled release the staff recognized Michael’s progress, “they made me President of The Hall.”
Then he was released back into the environment that got him arrested in the first place. Things at home were worse than ever. His mother and stepfather had split up. Michael soon learned it was because his mother had been having sex with some of his friends who came around looking for him.
“That really weirded me out, I just couldn’t live at home anymore. So, I left, but this time nobody cared I was gone. That’s the second time I was homeless, at sixteen. I had a vacant trailer I could sleep in for awhile, but most of the time I just found a spot on the beach.”
Survival wasn’t easy for a homeless sixteen-year-old. Just eating was a daily struggle. “I collected bottles and cans, and I got lucky, I found a market that would leave stale food out for me.”
At eighteen Michael’s uncle in Oklahoma finally tracked him down. “He gave me a job working on his ranch. I stayed there, so I could keep my money. Finally saved enough to buy a car and drive back to Redondo; that was a big mistake. I moved in with some old friends, you know, the guys I used to party with, it went downhill from there.”
His uncle taught him the benefits of hard work, so Michael could pay his share of the rent and cover the cost of his growing addiction. Then he got arrested as an adult, for possession of barbiturates. His stay in L.A. County was short. “I got appointed a real good lawyer, he questioned the probable cause to search me, got the case dismissed.”
“Eventually, I got a job on the line for an aerospace company, and no matter what I did the night before, I managed to show up to work on time.” Michael became one of the millions of functioning addicts and/or alcoholics who manage to hold down a job. Survival remains a priority, but the addiction eventually takes over. “Some people last longer than others, but they all ‘crash and burn’ sooner or later.”
Partying every night and working most days didn’t keep Michael from falling in love. “I met a beautiful girl, she liked to party, but she kept it under control. We got married, had two kids, that’s when she got it together. I thought I had it under control. I loved my family, but I didn’t stop. I tried to hide it. It went along like that alright until I met the ‘meth monster’.”
Methamphetamine swept through the nation in the 1980’s as a cheaper, synthetic substitute for cocaine. A powerful stimulant, the euphoria lasts for hours. Amphetamines were first sold by prescription as “diet pills.” Taken off the market after tens of thousands got addicted, low doses of it were still used in daytime cold remedies. Formulas for extracting the drug from over the counter pills allowed for the creation of “meth labs.” Addicts could create their own methamphetamine and sell the rest on the streets. Eventually, laws were passed removing the precursor for methamphetamine from cold remedies, but the genie was out of the bottle. The Cartels got hold of the formula and set up meth labs across the border. More potent and cheaper to make than cocaine, and more addictive, methamphetamine quickly replaced cocaine as our nation’s most popular street drug.
Witnessing the ravages of methamphetamine addiction has been one of the great sorrows of my life. Other drugs are highly addictive, but no other substance so fundamentally alters the basic character and personality of a long-term user. As an “upper” it makes the user more aggressive, and the euphoria is diabolical. It is chemically induced psychopathy, granting its user the ability to lie, cheat, and steal with impunity. Suppressing the conscience, it leaves behind a narcissistic addict perpetually in search of his next high. Worst of all is the withering pain experienced when brain synapses are no longer stimulated by the drug. Avoiding the terror of withdrawal becomes the user’s sole purpose in life.
“She finally left me. She took the kids, gave me a big kiss that morning, I came home and everything and everybody was gone. That sent me over the edge, all I had left was the drug. I couldn’t get into work anymore; to get rid of the pain, I used more, I think that’s when I started injecting it.”
Michael fell back into the streets and this time he fell harder. He had a punishing drug habit to finance. “I wound up in the San Fernando Valley living behind buildings, vacant lots, anywhere I could get away with sleeping in a cardboard condo. I lived like that for a long time, till I was forty-three years old.”
Michael’s grandmother finally came to the rescue. She managed to find him and send him a plane ticket to Oklahoma. “She still loved me, and I was at the end of my rope. I left all my connections behind, she nursed me through the hell of it all, and I took care of her after that, she was getting pretty old. I managed to keep it together when I lived with her. I stayed sober for three years.”
“When she died, it sent me over the edge, I went out and bought a big bag of dope, started right up again.”
His first brush with the law in Oklahoma was for a joint of marijuana, a felony for which he got probation. He was now on law enforcement’s radar, so when his name was offered up by a snitch, they knew who they were looking for. “I had an eighth of an ounce of meth hidden in my gas tank. It makes you paranoid, the more you use it; so, I started carrying a gun. I had a nine-millimeter in the car, so, when I drove into a road block I never had a chance. They pulled me out of the car, took me to the ground, handcuffed, boot on my face, I watched them go right to it. Opened the gas tank, pulled out the dope, tore up my car, found the gun on the front seat.”
Michael bailed out and got a lawyer. Possession of drugs with a gun while on probation, he was looking at five years in prison. “It didn’t matter, as soon as I got out, I started right up again.”
Michael decided it was time to go to the source, so he made a trip over the border. “I went to South Padre Island, coming back I put the dope up under the hood, where there was a lot of grease and oil, dogs can’t smell it there.” He made it over the border but when he got home the place was torn apart and everything of value was gone. “I let some young guys stay there, they were growing pot in the backyard, when the cops showed up, they said the plants were mine. They put a warrant out for my arrest.”
Michael got his shotgun and went looking for his former tenants. When he caught up to them, seeing the gun, “…they really freaked out. Instead of giving me my stuff back they called the cops. Driving away I chucked the gun into a field, when they pulled me over, I said I never had a gun. They let me go, but they went back and found the gun.”
Michael now had two warrants for his arrest, one for cultivation, the other for assault with a firearm, and a probation violation on his drug conviction. “I was desperate, I knew it was just a matter of time before they caught up with me. I wasn’t gettin’ out this time, I knew I’d be sent up state.”
Michael carried a necklace with a small wooden cross on it, he hung it from his rear-view mirror. The terror of his current circumstances, enhanced by the pain of withdrawal, overtook him. “That’s when I reached up and grabbed that cross in my hands and prayed; ‘Father God, lead me somewhere else; where I can help myself and others.’”
“God answered my prayers, because that’s when I got arrested. I crossed into Texas with dope under the hood and seven grand in my pocket. A dog hit on my truck and they tore it apart until they found it. Some ‘good old boy’ Texas Ranger sat me down and told me if I donated the money to the police league, they wouldn’t charge me. I took the deal, but he didn’t let me go, they took me back to Oklahoma.”
When Michael got to court his lawyer told him he was looking at thirty years. He got him a deal for ten, but the assault with a deadly weapon charge was a “violent felony” that required him to serve eighty-five percent of his time, Michael would have to serve at least eight and a half years.
Convicted of a violent crime Michael was sent to Cimarron, a high security prison. “It was all ganged up, Hispanic gangs, Crips, Bloods, and United Aryan Brotherhood (UAB), they ran the place. I tried to stay out of it, but they get around to everybody sooner or later. I was walking the line below, and I looked up and saw some Crips smokin’ crack in their cell, and they saw me. Next day two of ‘em beat me to a pulp. Wanted to make sure I wouldn’t snitch ‘em off.”
“I spent some time in the infirmary, doctor took a look at me because I was pretty beat up. The good news was I would recover from my injuries, but only if I lived long enough. He told me I had an enlarged heart from all the meth, ‘you probably won’t last ninety days.’ I knew it was true, my legs were so swollen, I could feel my heart failing. Somehow I got better though; prayer saved my life.”
In virtually every prison in the United States there are Christians who regularly visit and disciple prisoners. Prison Fellowship and Awana Lifeline are national ministries that provide moral and spiritual training to inmates, but there are also countless local ministries and individuals who bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ behind prison walls. But for the saints living out Christ’s command in Matthew 25:32-46 to provide for “the
least of these” by visiting the prisoner the same as “you did it for me,” prisoners might be denied the cure for the disease that ails them. Our forefathers understood this as the root of the term “penitentiary” comes from the Christian discipline of doing “penitence.” Penitence being “the state of having regret for doing something wrong.” Unfortunately, no better stated, disastrously, Supreme Court decisions on the First Amendments’ alleged “separation of church and state” have caused wardens to exclude religious moral training from any inmate services. This policy is largely responsible for recidivism rates that hover around sixty percent. Societal frustration with this failure and the resulting violent crime rates have led to decades of “tough on crime” laws and a criminal justice system based on retribution. *
However, the situation is far from hopeless, as the saints doing prison ministry and their converts will tell you. One of those converts is Michael Lee. “There was one man, Tom was his name, he was a very successful business man, ‘the millionaire’ we called him, he came to Cimarron every week to lead a Bible study. All the Christian guys went to his Bible study, and church on Sunday. With everything going on in my life, I fell in with them. When the UAB came around and wanted to know what I wanted to do about those black guys beating me up, I told ‘em nothing. I said, ‘I’ve already forgiven them.’ They were amazed. I think I might have stopped a race riot telling them that.”
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*From 2014 to 2017 I lead a foundation (Serving California) that worked with Prison Fellowship, World Impact and Awana Lifeline to provide inmates a three-and-a-half-year course of study, equivalent to a Bachelors Degree in Christian Theology, known as The Urban Ministry Institute (TUMI). We followed some three hundred inmates in California prisons who participated in the classes and then paroled out of prison. Our recidivism statistic for TUMI participants was six percent.
The one place that racial segregation is not enforced by prison gangs is where Christians meet. Church on Sunday in prison is perhaps the most integrated service in the nation. “Even the worst of the worst have a right to save their own soul.” This gangster
ethic is what allows sincere Christians to break down the racism enforced everywhere else in prison.
I have been blessed to be a parishioner in many a prison church, and I can tell you that there is no joy quite like singing Amazing Grace with two or three hundred prisoners. Best of all is a baptism. There are no baptismals, so creative alternatives, usually a trash bin filled to the brim with water, serve the purpose. This is how Michael was baptized. “When I got baptized it was awesome. I truly felt ‘born again.’ Everyone was clapping and rejoicing, still brings tears to my eyes. I promised God right then, no more drugs, alcohol, smoking; nothing.”
Michael did his time, and it would be dishonest to say it was easy. The dangers and temptations of prison life still came looking for him, but he kept his promise to God. “One time I came back to my cell, and my cellie had an ounce of cocaine laid out on his desk. He told me, ‘take whatever you want,’ but something in me had changed, I looked at that mountain of dope, it just disgusted me. I wanted nothing to do with it.”
Finally, the day came, after nine years Michael was released. He had managed to save nine hundred dollars working inside the prison. When he first started, he got paid fifteen dollars a month. Due to cuts in Oklahoma’s Corrections budget, he was making five dollars a month at the end. “When I got out, they gave me a check for $900.00 and a bus ticket to Los Angeles.” Nine hundred dollars isn’t much anywhere, but in Los Angeles it’s not even first months’ rent. About twenty-five percent of all parolees join the ranks of the homeless. No education, no job training, and being a convicted felon is hard to overcome when you’re looking for a job. Being in his early sixties didn’t help either. Michael no longer did drugs or engaged in a criminal lifestyle, but he struggled to find a place to live. “I stayed in my cousin’s backyard, he had a tiny trailer I could use when it rained, but a lot of the time I just slept on the ground. I used his hose to ‘shower,’ wash clothes, that sort of thing.”
This time Michael didn’t let his circumstances bring him down. He had a new mission in life. “I decided I wanted to help others like me. I made daily excursions into homeless camps, bringing them food, personal items, that sort of thing. One of the places I’d go was Harbor Memorial Hospital in Torrance. A lot of homeless folks were coming in and out of there, so it was a place where I could help out. That’s where I met Miriam.”
Miriam Rounds had enjoyed a long and successful career in the corporate world, but then the recession of 2008 hit, and she was laid off. Rather than grieve her own misfortune, Miriam decided to spend her time helping others worse off than herself. She got involved with Harbor Interfaith, a non-profit that works with local city and county agencies to find housing for the homeless.
Working together Miriam and Michael became friends. Learning of Michael’s conversion, she invited him to go to church with her. “I had some bad experiences with church people when I was a kid; I didn’t want to go, but Miriam stayed on me about it so I showed up on Sunday, that’s when I met Pastor Pete. I told him I didn’t think I’d be back ‘cause of my issues.” He said, “Well, let’s talk about that.”
“I thought I could escape by saying I might come by sometime, but instead he said, ‘let’s talk right now.’ He got my whole life story and before long he was asking me if I’d give my testimony at church, it made me real nervous, but I did it.”
Miriam kept after Michael about finding permanent housing. “I told her I was doing fine; she should take care of someone who needed it more than me. She wore me down though, eventually I agreed to an apartment I could afford in a subsidized housing complex. Most everyone living there had been homeless, it was a mad house. Needles in the hallway, people partying all night long; the guy in the room next to me would play his electric guitar ‘til three or four in the morning. I couldn’t sleep, so I finally took a box of food over to him and told him, ‘I’ve never called the police on no one, but this has got to stop.’ He took the food and things got better with him, but I couldn’t live there, not and stay sober.”
“Then the Lord really smiled on me, I found a little house in Lomita that took subsidized housing. I can’t believe how nice it is, and how happy I am now. I had no idea life could be this good.”
Having represented countless drug addicts and alcoholics in my time, what still amazes me is the ability of the human body, mind and spirit to recover once sobriety is achieved. Michael’s calm demeanor, capable intellect, and caring spirit are a prime example. His addiction ran rampant for almost forty years causing all of the usual destruction. Yet, if you were to meet him for the first time today, you would never suspect the pain of his past. He retains some of the physical scars of the car accident, and his liver is permanently damaged, but he is of sound mind and joyful spirit. What is still more amazing, even miraculous, Michael carries no grudges and he has no regrets. “If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. This is how I met Jesus, and that’s sacred. All I want to do now is help others get to where I am.”
This is the last thing Michael tells me before his attention is drawn to the opening of the Fellowship Hall doors. His mission in life comes into focus as they enter the room in polite appreciation. They are a diverse cross section of the community – old, young, and in-between – men and women of every racial mix. Most everyone is dressed in the casual attire of a beach community; having left their worldly possessions at the door you wouldn’t know they are living on the streets. A few stand out as more at-risk than others, an elderly man in a wheelchair, a woman wearing a floor length coat who stands apart quietly muttering to herself, and a young man with long sun-bleached hair and scraggly beard, who displays the agitated demeanor of someone under the influence. All in all, though, there is a sense of community, they know each other, many are friends, and they are happy to be here.
I sit with Michael at a table stacked with mail in a far corner of the room. A line forms, Michael checks in with each of his charges before letting them move on. Next to us Deacon Kathy Pinkerton assists with applications for government housing. She patiently interviews the applicant and fills it out in perfect handwriting. From across the room I hear greeting calls of “Pastor Pete.” In his early thirties, Pastor Pete looks too young to be the “Senior” Pastor of Saint Andrew’s. However, standing six foot three with light brown hair and clear blue eyes, his physical stature nicely compensates for his youthful appearance. He smiles broadly enjoying the enthusiastic welcome. When he speaks his voice carries throughout the room, he has mastered the skill of projection. I see Michael wink at me out of the corner of his eye. “The devotional today comes from Psalms 123 and 124. ‘Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us, for we have endured much contempt. We have endured much ridicule from the proud, much contempt from the arrogant.’”
As he preaches, I lean back in my chair to discreetly wipe the moisture from my eyes. I tell myself its his passion for the down-trodden that touches me so, but of course its more than that; perhaps I am a little too proud.
He continues, “Praise be to the Lord… we have escaped like a bird out of the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, the maker of Heaven and Earth.” A strong “Amen” is offered by the parishioners of what Pastor Pete calls his second church. “Alright, I’ll say a blessing for the food and then we’ll get started.”
As he says grace, I open my eyes to check on his congregation, I see no one who has not bowed his head or clasped her hands in prayer. It seems almost surreal to me. I can hardly believe that preacher saying the prayer is my son, the Reverend Peter Remington Dunn. Michael smiles at me warmly and picks up a large stack of envelopes. He will spend the next hour making his rounds delivering the mail, and helping out others less fortunate than himself.