Vendors
Page 6
Rebekah’s Song
Street Roots • Sept. 21-27, 2018
VENDOR PROFILE
by Sherry Asbury
Though you lie now deep in sleep
Love for you still strongly grows
Remembering a friend who is now gone
Rest well cherished friend in sweet repose
Memories shall keep you with us
Joy will live as our lives travel on
Thinking of you will cheer us
As song birds sing Rebekah’s song
One day our own end shall come
As gray paints our hair in solid shades
We will dream of Heaven’s meadows
And shining folds of lovely glades
When our feet shall cross
the Rainbow Bridge
Where the Savior holds out his grace
We will dance together joyfully
With fleet foot and smiling face
Answers to Page 15 Puzzles
Ibelisse and Doug
BY HELEN HILL
STAFF W R IT E R
A fter a long, sometimes terrifying
/ A journey that seemed endless and full
jL X o f setbacks, Ibelisse Jones-Lynch and
Doug Lynch just got the keys to their own
apartment. Through it all, their strength has
been in each other.
“She’s my angel,” Doug said.
“God has blessed us in so many ways,”
said Ibelisse, resting on the only piece of
furniture in their one-bedroom apartment in
deep southeast Portland: a blanket and foam
, pad on the floor of the living room.
“We are starting off with literally
nothing,” Doug said. “We spent all our
savings to get the bare bones necessities,
toilet paper, a shower curtain, a frying pan
and a pot. We are doing our best to get back
to a decent life and rebuild. We are starting
from square zero and doing it right this
time.”
Back in San Diego, Ibelisse and Doug had
everything. When they met, he was working
for a company cleaning bathrooms in city
parks, then he got a much better job with a
buddy doing construction demolition.
“It was fun tearing buildings apart,” he
said. “I drove a company truck. They paid
for hotels. It was hard work, but it paid.”
Ibelisse said she’d “have everything ready
: . : ‘t ;
PHO TO BY HELEN HILL
for him when he got back home. Clothes, n
laid out, shower, food.”
And then Doug got bit by a spider.
Ibelissefönes-Lyneh and Dang' Lynrh have movedinfo-imaftarfonent in Southeast Portland.
“They think it was a brown recluse or a
black widow,” he said.
His hand swelled up to more than twice
its size. There is still a large scar between
his ring finger and his pinkie.
“It was my day off, and I picked up
something to hand to her, and it squirted at
her. My hand squirted at her, and she said,
‘Oh no, we’re going to the hospital,” Doug
said.
“I’d never seen anything like it,” Ibelisse
recalled. “It was awful. It was eating
through his hand.”
Doug ended up in the hospital, hooked
up to intravenous fluids and antibiotics, for
more than a week. When he got out, he
couldn’t work.
“I had no feeling in my hand. I’d pick up a
hammer, and it would go flying right out of
my hand,” he said.
After their savings were gone, they had
nothing. They stayed with friends until that
became impossible. And Ibelisse wanted out
of San Diego.
“I didn’t want to be around any of the
people he knew,” Ibelisse said. “He was a
different person around them. His
demeanor changed.”
“I was a gangster. That’s all I knew were
gangsters,” Doug said. “My mother was a
psychologist, and my father was in the Navy,
but they were always gone. I was a latchkey
kid living in not the greatest neighborhood.
The biker down the street was my hero.”
“I put my foot down,” Ibelisse said. “I
said it’s either me or your lifestyle.”
Ibelisse knew they both needed to change
their lifestyles. Being without a home
exacerbated their addictions and cycles of
“trouble, pain and punishment,” as Doug
put i t
Ibelisse grew up as an only child, moving
from town to town. Her mother was a stay-
at-home mom, her father was a locksmith.
He died when Ibelisse was 16, and that’s
when she began drinking.
After Doug lost his job, they decided to
go into addiction treatment and recovery
together. They both benefited from the
spiritual aspect of the program.
“She adopted my God as hers,” Doug
said.
Meanwhile, Ibelisse knew they had to
leave San Diego to live a life away from
addiction and crime.
“I wanted to go to Portland,” she said. “I
had lived here years ago, and I’ve always
liked it here. It’s a different feeling here. I’m
a happier person here. I’ve always done
better here.”
They arrived in spring, and their first few
months in Portland were rough. With no
other options, they lived on the streets.
“I felt like a scumbag holding a sign,”
Doug said.
Ibelisse had never known what it was like
to be hungry and cold.
“Once I asked someone if they were
attached to their leftovers. I never thought I
would ask someone that in my life,” she
said, beginning to cry.
Doug continued for her: “She was that
hungry to ask, are you really attached to *
those leftovers you are carrying home? Are
you really going to eat them?” They gave
her the food.
“We used to take showers in Starbucks,
in the bathroom,” Doug said. “Our greatest
benefactors were 7-Elevens because they
would let us cook in their microwaves
without buying something. They’d let us
bring in our food, and they’d say just don’t
make a mess. I think they let us because we
looked clean and respectable. We might
have been homeless, but we did our best to
stay clean.”
Ibelisse added, “We tried really hard not
to look homeless because people treat you
differently. I never realized it before. Once
you get down there and you don’t have a
hand up, it’s nearly impossible to get back
up, and it can happen to anyone.”
A big break came for Ibelisse and Doug
when they found Street Roots.
“This kid on a bike took us over there
and told us to try it out,” Ibelisse said. “And
he said, ‘You know what? You can live doing
th a t It will give you enough for what you
need. Not what you want, but for your
needs. And it has!”
Doug said he didn’t know “how the hell
we would have survived without Street
Roots.”
“Thankfully we don’t drink or get high. We
are almost 18 months clean now. It really
has made a huge difference,” Doug said.
“Thanks to Street Roots we went from
existing to living,” Ibelisse said.
They sell Street Roots on Sundays at the
Grotto and weekday mornings at Oregon
Health & Science University at Moody
Avenue on South Waterfront.
Ibelisse and Doug leaned heavily on
Street Roots’ Rose City Resource to find
their way to services. Their copy is dog
eared and well-marked. Through the
resource guide, they found numbers to call,
housing lists to apply for, clothes, food and
emergency shelter options.
And now they have an apartment
“It’s possible,” Ibelisse said. “The
stepping stones and tools are there. You just
have to use them.”