Street Roots • Aprii 14-20, 2017
News
Page 7
P H O T O BY JOE G L O D E
‘You can’t do it alone’
BY JANE SALISBU RY
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
oseph Park, a slender man with a gray
brush cut and an expressive face, talks
with his hands and leans forward to make
sure his listener is engaged. His life is a
study in extremes. We met to talk about
that life, and how he,
very recently, moved
out of chronic
homelessness into his
own apartment near
Providence Park
stadium.
Joseph grew up in a
large Mormon family of
J
JOSEPH PARK
It’s been a long journey
from salesman o f the
year to struggling with
addiction, but faith and
friends helped Joseph
L good
ake City-H
e had a
life, he says, until
sixth grade. His mother
Park overcome
—¿“I“ “
and stepfather, the only
dad he’d known, were
divorced then, which
was unusual for a Mormon family.
Divorce was not the only difficulty in
Joseph’s young life. His mother was part
Native American and had dark skin: “People
did not see her as white. We were poor, and
struggling as a family, even though my dad
worked. I didn’t know money or success. I
didn’t learn that part of the world.”
After the divorce, Joseph says, “Things
went crazy. I had been a straight-A student.
But we three oldest, the children of my
(birth) father who had been in prison, went
with my mom. The other five went with my
stepdad.
“Mom became a bartender; we three
oldest became juvenile delinquents. I ended
up in the Utah reform school for burglary
for six months. There we were told that 80
percent of us would end up in prison as
adults.
A series
o f stories about
people who have
experienced homelessness,
and fou n d their way home
“When I got out, I moved to Oregon with
my mom, after a short time of living with
my birth father, who had gotten out of
prison. He was a scary, mean man, and my
mom took me back. She had a new man by
then.
“We lived in the Albany-Lebanon area. I
was 1 5 .1 was spending a lot of time on the
streets, trying to pretend I was older than I
was. I was “Disco Danny,” wearing a leather
jacket with the collar up and all that. I didn’t
fit in rural Oregon.
“At 16,1 left home. I was working. I got
all kinds of different jobs, managed a car
wash, but I wanted to make more money. I
finally got a job at Oregon Metallurgical at
19 years old, and stayed there for 10 years.
But I got antsy.”
Joseph wanted to be in business, and was
eager for success. He learned about
different kinds of multi-level marketing,
some closer to pyramid schemes, and about
selling, which became his great passion.
So he quit his job at Oregon Metallurgical
at 29, cashed out his shares, and went into
business, recruiting and training for a
company that procured customers for U.S.
Sprint. He became the district director, with
an office at the Galleria, training large
groups in salesmanship and how to get
customers.
Joseph was doing well, but not well
enough to keep up with his expenses, which
had risen to match his increasing income.
He studied “neurolinguistics” and started
offering sales training, based on his studies,
to companies large and small. But he only
did that for about a year. He was perennially
restless, always looking for the next thing.
One of the best opportunities for a good
salesman was selling siding and cabinet
refacing for Sears. Joseph convinced Sears
to hire him, though he had little experience,
and very soon, he was outpacing seasoned
salesmen. “I was in heaven, best job I’ve
ever had. I was working for a reputable
company, but really working for myself.”
At 32, not so many years after his time in
reform school in Utah, Joseph was named
the Salesman of the Year for his department
at Sears. Thinking about that time, Joseph
said, “The average person who grew up the
way I did wasn’t supposed to make it. I was
supposed to be in prison. I didn’t have the
regular American life. Reform school,
strikes against me...I had to pull myself up
by my own bootstraps.”
But his life was not an unbroken series of
successes. Up until 1992, he was what he
calls an “upstanding taxpaying citizen.” He
was making $10,000 a month. “I didn’t know
what to do with all this money. Up to that
point, I hadn’t bought anything but a car.”
Joseph met and fell in love with a woman,
who was, he discovered, an addict. “I had
never done much more than smoke a little
See FINDING HOME, page 10