Daunted by the throngs of more than 600 homeless people and 700 volunteers, 16-year-old Epiphany Flores and her family nearly gave up at the Project Homeless Connect services fair.
But one of the project’s supervisors caught them at the door.
Did they have housing? Food stamps? Did they need medical attention? Diapers? What about the baby and toddler? How about some lunch?
Then Jamie Van Leeuwen, project director of Denver’s Road Home and one of the leaders of Project Homeless Connect, learned that Flores’ mother, Danza Simpson, was HIV- positive. It had been two months since she had access to the cocktail of medications that hinders full-blown AIDS.
Van Leeuwen steered the little group back inside the Department of Human Services on Saturday and led them through a gantlet that left the family exhausted but with a place to live, transportation, arrangements for Epiphany’s mother to resume medical treatment, food, diapers and a medical exam.
“We got done in one hour what it can take a month to do,” Van Leeuwen said Saturday.
This was Denver’s third Project Homeless Connect fair. More than 700 volunteers worked with the homeless one-on-one, sorted through paperwork and arranged follow-up supervision.
People who walked in empty- handed and hungry received bagels, burritos, pizza and sandwiches, along with voucher checks that will allow them to get the birth certificates essential for basic services. Volunteers helped them write and polish résumés.
“I like to see things done right,” a homeless man told one volunteer, who nodded and typed “detail-oriented” on the man’s resume.
By midafternoon Saturday, when the Comcast-sponsored Project Homeless Connect wound down, 400 people had housing assistance, 200 held vouchers for birth certificates, 120 people found jobs or job interviews, 110 got legal help, and 115 received direct medical care.
Danza Simpson, the HIV- positive mother of Epiphany Flores, was among them and is exactly the sort of person Van Leeuwen wants most to reach.
“You listen to stories like hers and, my God, you wonder, how do they survive every day?” he said.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
