Eugene weekly., June 30, 2011, Page 12, Image 12

AID ON THE ASPHALT
Hitting the Street with CAHOOTS
S
chizophrenics waking up in parking lots bloody
and disoriented, suicidal college women
threatening to jump, junkies in bathroom
stalls, half-dead, face-down — this is a side
of Eugene witnessed by people who choose to
look after the city in ways most don’t or won’t.
Men and women working in the shadow of
their better-known cohorts, Eugene’s fi re and
police departments, CAHOOTS fi lls a niche
somewhere between counseling and emergency medical
care — it helps people.
The need is there every day, and so is CAHOOTS.
CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The
Streets) is a rare and life-saving service that functions as
an arm of Eugene’s White Bird Clinic. A mobile crisis
intervention team linked to the city of Eugene’s public
safety system, CAHOOTS operates seven days a week
from 11 am to 3 am, responding to non-criminal crises
such as intoxication, substance abuse, mental illness, street
disputes and the like. The service is free to its clients and
paid for by the city.
CAHOOTS administrative representative David Zeiss
of White Bird Clinic says funding for the teams “breaks
down to $520,000 for this upcoming fi scal year,” with
money coming directly from the Eugene Police Department
(EPD) budget — the vans and the gas are paid for by the
city. Zeiss says the $520,000 is an adequate amount of
money for CAHOOTS, and that it recently acquired a new
van as well as a few more workers.
The approximately 15 working members of CAHOOTS
are trained in crisis intervention and/or are EMT certifi ed
(a great many of the staff hold both accreditations, and
more). They are paired together in one of two vans that
roam everywhere within the city limits. CAHOOTS is sent
out by non-emergency dispatchers, who work side-by-side
with 911 dispatchers.
I was granted the privilege of riding along with two
teams of these professionals who (in my opinion) deserve
12 JUNE 30, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
PHOTO BY TODD COOPER
JOSE ALVAREZ AND
NILES STUART-POPE
ATTENDING TO A
CAHOOTS CLIENT
IN THE VAN
B y D a n t e Z u ñ i g a -W e s t
to be knighted or sainted or whatever it is we do to legit
heroes. Nonchalant in their super-heroism, they sip coffee
and crack jokes like they’re cruising to the grocery store —
that is, until a call comes in.
SCANNER-HEADS & THE DAILY GRIND
The radio crackles to life with the voice of a dispatcher,
and CAHOOTS worker Niles Stuart-Pope seizes the
handset with an urgency that betrays her previous calm. A
homeless man with a nasty knee injury requires assistance.
The team is dispatched to medically assess and then, if
need be, ferry him to Sacred Heart Medical Center.
CAHOOTS aid worker Jose Alvarez, an 18-year veteran
of the White Bird Clinic social services, turns around in his
seat and hands me a pair of purple latex gloves. “Put these
on man. Blood and poop and puke are a routine part of this
job,” he says. I wait for a smile that never comes. He isn’t
kidding. There is little chance that I myself will come in
direct contact with such fl uids, but the team has learned to
be prepared for anything, and they want me to be safe. I
feel safe — sort of.
The CAHOOTS duo homes in on the injured man’s
location and we arrive on the scene within minutes of
the call. His leg is grossly misshapen and he accepts the
examination and the ride with gratitude. This is a very
mild CAHOOTS run, nothing like some of the grisly calls
the teams get, which can involve anything from suicide
intervention to child abuse to dead bodies. One two-person
CAHOOTS team can receive upwards of 17 calls per shift.
Most striking about the CAHOOTS workers is the
candor with which they address their “clients.” They
know those they help by fi rst name. They can identify the
shopping carts of the city’s homeless on sight — Oh, is that
Susan’s cart? No, that’s Laurie’s; see the blue tarp and how
organized it is?
Many of the people CAHOOTS assists are unable
to advocate for themselves, due to mental illness and/or
severe intoxication. Clients may forget that they’ve been
helped by the same CAHOOTS workers before, but the
aid workers haven’t forgotten — they know the stories and
histories behind the faces they encounter.
If you took away the uniforms, the latex gloves and the
big-ass white van full of medical equipment, you might
mistake these initial interactions as those of concerned
friends looking after their buddies, who may have forgotten
the last time their friends came around to help out. Such
memory lapses can lead to altercations.
“Sometimes, we go on a call and get out to help
someone, but their friends may think we are there to take
that person someplace unpleasant,” Alvarez says, recalling
times he was surrounded by less than friendly friends of a
client he’d come to help. “Luckily we have enough street
cred to make up for that type of thing.”
Alvarez goes on to tell me that on many such occasions,
former CAHOOTS clients have intervened on his behalf
and neutralized almost-hostile situations. “We must be
doing something right,” he adds.
CODE 3 & OTHER URGENCIES
Not all CAHOOTS encounters go smoothly. Given the
often marginal or unstable state of their clientele, situations
can get pretty sketch. When violence becomes a legitimate
threat to the safety of a CAHOOTS team, they call in
for police coverage with “Code 3,” meaning the need is
immediate.
CAHOOTS works closely with EPD, facilitating
crisis-intervention training for the department and often
taking on calls the police are not professionally qualifi ed
to handle. “Cops didn’t sign up to be counselors,” says
Alvarez. A mutual respect exists between the two agencies.
This bond appears to be honored most when CAHOOTS
calls for police assistance with the added Code 3 request
of expediency. Stuart-Pope recalls the last time she went
out on a call that turned hostile. The team radioed in with
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