When night falls and darkness comes down, Peggy Morin goes on the move. 

The 67-year-old grandmother used to try to sleep in the park at night, but it’s too dangerous. At night, if you’re not one of the pack, you become prey.  

Not long ago, somebody stole her pocketbook. There went the last of her Social Security benefits and all of her identification. In a way, Peggy became a non-person. 

Not long after that, she said, she was beaten for no apparent reason. 

“I got whacked in the head with a baseball bat,” she said. “They were out here celebrating some guy’s birthday and this lady just walked over drunk, took my bat and let me have it in the back of the head.” 

That assault resulted in a hospital visit and three staples in her scalp. 

The assailant? The thieves who took her pocketbook, sending her life into further chaos? 

Other homeless men and women who set up their camps in the area around Bonney Park at 284 Main St. Why? Maybe it’s because Peggy is different. She doesn’t drink. She doesn’t do drugs. She has a cordial relationship with the police and nearby store clerks who look after her.

That makes her stand out among the rough and tumble packs of homeless who stay in the area.

“They think I’m a rat,” Peggy said. “They drink in the park, they break the law and they have fights in the Big Apple. Sometimes the Big Apple calls the police and sometimes it’s the people who live next to the park that calls them, but everyone thinks that I’m the rat. They think that because sometimes the police will come by to give me chips or they’ll wave when they go by.” 

She’s a former shoe shop worker, a mother and a grandmother. Why is she out on the streets in the first place? 

You know this story. Not long ago, during the pandemic, Peggy had a little apartment which she paid for with her Social Security benefits. 

But her landlord radically jacked up the rent. The cost of heat and electricity went up. Before long, Peggy couldn’t afford that little apartment on the less-than $1,000 she receives in Social Security.

Out to the streets she went, but only for a short while. Then, she was saved by an old acquaintance. 

“A friend of mine from high school saw me out there,” Peggy said. “He had a little house and he rented that to me.” 

The arrangement didn’t last long. Her old friend died and, what do you know? His sons inherited the house and they had no interest in renting it cheap to some stranger. 

Peggy has been on the streets since. 

NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES

One recent afternoon, Charlene Mann was inside Roopers Beverage and Redemption store in tears. What she had seen just moments earlier had badly shaken her. 

“The clerk noticed and said, ‘are you all right?'” Charlene recalled. “I said, ‘I’m sad. I just met Peggy.” 

The clerk understood at once. 

Charlene had met Peggy, as it happens, while driving down South Main Street near Bonney Park. Charlene stopped at a crosswalk and there was Peggy, struggling to push a cart containing all of her meager possessions across the street. 

“I could see that she was clearly an older woman, petite in stature,” Charlene said. “I find it disgusting. We’re talking about the elderly who have paid their dues, paid into the system. Is there really no help for them?” 

Charlene eventually wandered into the park and made Peggy’s acquaintance. She heard the homeless woman’s story and her sadness turned to outright horror.

“We’re talking about a 67-year-old woman who’s living under a bridge with many people that have a whole other set of problems that are pretty severe,” Charlene said. “There’s a lot of drug addiction and it’s just not safe for her out there.” 

And so, Charlene has been on a mission to help Peggy, taking her grocery shopping or to various state agencies in an attempt to get her identification squared away. 

Anyone who has ever lost a license or birth certificate knows how hard it is navigating the nebulous bureaucracy to get it all back. 

“Try doing that when you’re homeless,” Charlene said. “Try doing that when you can’t leave your spot because someone will come along and take everything you have.” 

Peggy has a food stamps card, for instance, but can’t use it because she doesn’t have identification. She can’t spend hours away from her little camp to pursue getting that identification because doing so might result in the loss of everything she has. 

It’s a hellish kind of Catch-22 that perhaps only someone who is homeless can understand. 

Charlene isn’t the only one who has taken a special interest in Peggy. The clerks at the Big Apple and Roopers have also taken to looking out for her. They’ll let her stay in the store for a while on nights when the weather is bad or when the other homeless folks are harassing her. 

There are several Auburn police officers who will likewise go out of their way to check on her. Two officers in particular, Tyler Barnies and Tim Robinson, pay extra close attention. 

Barnies once paid out of his own pocket so she could pay to request a new birth certificate, Peggy said. Barnies and Robinson will stop by the park to bring her a bag of chips or to just ask after her well-being. The officers also set her up with a caseworker. 

Peggy considers the officers friends. It is both blessing and curse.

“The police really have taken a liking to her and they look out for her,” Charlene said. “They go over a lot of times and check on her. But that has created hazards for her, because the drug addicts across the street think she’s snitching on them. So they beat her up some more. She’s 67 years old and they just beat her up because she’s talking to the police.”

For a time, the officers let Peggy set up camp in the parking garage next to the police station. Then other homeless people started showing up and causing problems, so that tidy arrangement ended. 

She used to sit up all night on the walking bridge connecting Bonney Park to downtown Lewiston, but others started raising hell along the bridge, so that got everybody kicked off. 

Now Peggy mainly stays in the park across the street from the Big Apple, taking naps during the day and staying up all night to protect herself and her possessions. 

While she’s out there, huddled in the cold, wary of the strangers around her, Peggy reflects on better times — times when even a single woman could get by with a modest income.

“I raised a daughter by myself and worked in the shoe shops,” she said. “It was great. It was easy back then.”

It’s not so easy now. Her daughter has five children but moving in with her family has never been an option.

“They’re all busy with their lives,” Peggy said. “They don’t have room in their house for me.”

And so for now, at least, the street is her home, or more accurately, a grassy spot next to a big tree in a sprawling field. It’s a system that works OK, unless the weather is bad.

“Last night she had to sleep under a bridge because it was pouring out,” Charlene said. “A woman this age should not be on the streets, cold, scared and alone.”

PEGGY’S BUCKET LIST

Peggy’ little encampment is set up next to a stout tree in Bonney Park, just down the field from the building that houses Community Little Theater.  

The camp itself is rather impressive. She has set her cart, heaped high with trash bags full of various items she needs to get through her days, up against trees to protect it from weather. 

Peggy, who suffers from arthritis and pinched nerves, hunkers down huddled up close to her cart. All things considered, her sleeping system is rather ingenious. 

“I’ve got a piece of foam that someone was going to throw out,” she said. “I’ve got this sleeping bag that somebody had out here and I gave them ten dollars for it. It’s from L.L. Bean. It’s all quilted on the outside. It’s nice and warm.” 

She also has “a whole lot of tarps” to protect her loot from the elements on rainy days. If the rain really comes down hard, she’ll retreat to the tunnel beneath South Main Street, but only if it’s daytime. 

During the night, it’s too dangerous down there. 

A small woman with flowing white hair, Peggy said although she has been robbed twice, beaten and regularly harassed by other homeless people, she has made friends in that community. 

“There are some good people out here,” she said. “They don’t all drink or do drugs.” 

One of those friends is a 41-year-old named Rich, somewhat new to the homeless encampment next to Bonney Park. 

Rich said whenever he moves into a new area, he is careful to study his fellow camp inhabitants. 

“Whenever I’m coming into an area and I see people,” he said, “I need to know who they are. I need to know if I’m safe or in danger.” 

Rich sees how Peggy is targeted so he looks out for her. If she needs to run off to use the bathroom or run an errand, he’ll watch her cart. Sometimes he goes to the store for her to get food or cigarettes, when she can afford them. 

Mostly Rich tries to keep her morale up. Recently he had her come up with a bucket list of things she wants to do. 

On that list: Get off the streets. One hour in a bathtub with a locked door and a candle burning. A hot air balloon ride. Stop being a beggar. Move to Vermont and live in peace. 

Charlene, for one, appreciates Rich. She appreciates anyone who looks out for Peggy and who recognizes that a woman of advanced age can’t always fend for herself. 

Charlene, a former Citizen of the Year in the town of Mexico, works on the “Peggy problem” almost full time. In spite of all she does for the homeless woman, she’s often wracked by guilt. 

Could she be doing more? 

“The other night, it was freezing cold out and I was just horrified for Peggy,” Charlene said. “I don’t want to open the paper and see that something terrible has happened to her, to be honest with you. I hope it comes together for her. I’ll do anything I can to make it work because just doing nothing isn’t going to work. And I think that’s what a lot of people feel. They’ll ride by someone like her and think, ‘Oh, I wish I could help, but I don’t know what to do. It’s beyond me.’ It doesn’t mean they don’t care. It’s just: where do you begin?” 

To that end, Charlene has put a little money in a Venmo account — she first had to teach herself to use Venmo, which she’d never heard of — so Peggy can access funds when she needs to. The Venmo account is presently in Charlene’s name. Once Peggy has her identification issue sorted out, Charlene said, she can take over the account. 

The Venmo account is PeggyHousingFund1 and Charlene is hoping people who want to help will donate money to it. To donate requires a Venmo account. 

Meanwhile, Charlene does what she can and enlists the aid of others to help. Her husband, Michael, for instance, will stand guard over Peggy’s things while his wife takes her on errands. 

If these were simpler times, or even if Peggy had become homeless five years earlier, it would be much easier to get her housed somewhere. The drastic rise in rent and house prices have resulted in a situation where more and more people are just one crisis away from becoming homeless themselves.

In a time when even much younger, fully employed folks are struggling to keep roofs over their heads, getting Peggy set up some place with four walls and a bed might be an uphill battle, but Charlene is committed to the cause. This is a woman who has dedicated her whole life to community building and fundraising, youth enrichment and creative endeavors in the arts.  

Charlene is optimistic and says there are reasons for hope. By working with Peggy’s caseworker, for one thing, Charlene learned that Peggy is on a list for housing when it becomes available.

“She has a minimal income and is more than capable of caring for herself,” Charlene said, “but as we know, there is a housing crisis and it may be some time before she can be placed into elderly housing. “We are all hoping to try to get her into a hotel that rents monthly with the help of her caseworker so that she is not on the street as the cold comes in and winter is here.” 

Peggy may be new to the homeless game, but by now, she knows the drill. 

You hope for the best, expect the worst and do everything you can to survive in the meantime. 

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