Chris Orloski set up his small, wooden table outside the St. Francis Center in downtown Denver. A crowd quickly assembled.
“You like this one?” he asked a man.
“Does that one fit?” he asked another.
In less than 3 minutes, his supply of watches was gone. “When we get some more donations, we’ll be back with more,” he told an obviously disappointed woman.
Orloski doesn’t charge for the watches, and he expects nothing from the homeless men and women in return. He said he wants them to care about time again. He wants them to feel like he did when he received a watch while living on the streets of Tampa, Fla.
“Time being homeless is like time spent in purgatory,” he explained. “It really is formidable. It really is difficult trying to get out of that pit.”
So two months ago, Orloski started a nonprofit called On Time for Recovery.
The organization hands out watches to members of Colorado’s homeless community. Orloski said he hopes to give out a thousand this year. So far, he has given out more than 120.
“I slept on cardboard boxes and clothing I had with me. I used my backpack as a pillow,” he said, recalling the 18 months he spent on the streets. “I would climb into garbage bins to find discarded boxes that still had pizza in them.”
Barry Hurd told Orloski he would put his watch to good use right away. The shelters open at certain hours, and he knows lunch is provided at 10:30 a.m. just down the street from St. Francis.
More importantly, Hurd has a pair of job interviews later in the week that he can’t afford to miss. Hurd said that keeping track of time is a way to get himself off of the streets.
“I always have certain places I need to be on time, and without a watch it’s kind of like I’m lost,” he said.
Orloski is realistic about the power of his program. It’s not going to get hundreds of people off the streets tomorrow. But his own experience tells him that on the streets, he felt adrift.
“I remember feeling helpless and hopeless a lot,” he said.
This program, he said, gives people some help and some hope. It also gives them an incentive to have a say in their future.
For more on the program visit: www.ontime4recovery.cwahi.net
