It is difficult to really know how it all started, Shay Kelley says, adamant that it wasn’t so much losing her job, then her apartment and having her Ford Taurus stolen all in a couple of months before landing on the streets homeless.
That, she says, happens all the time and to anyone.
It could have been that shouting match with God in the woods last spring, she says. That was an exasperating, fear- soaked period when she couch-surfed nightly, skateboarding back and forth from a job waitressing.
“Please, God,” she finally screamed that night, “just tell me what to do!”
She was raised a Baptist, but didn’t consider herself very religious. But she was angry at God. Why was he putting her through this?
She had done all the right things: graduated Southern Illinois University with a major in photojournalism and a minor in sociology; gotten a job at a marketing firm in Jackson, Miss. It wasn’t her fault the company died less than two years after she was hired.
God, she said, told her to grab a pen and paper and sit down.
“I would tell anyone now,” she says, “that if they are going to demand anything from God to be careful of what they ask for.”
Kelley is 24 years old. She had just finished helping serve lunch at Senior Support Services on East 18th Avenue, the latest stop on what she calls her Project 5 0/50.
It is what she wrote down that night last April: Go to all 50 states in 50 consecutive weeks, feeding and helping the poor and homeless.
She has traveled to 15 states since New Years in a blue and white 1994 Ford F-150 pickup, one with 186,000 miles on it, which she bought last August and has named “Bubba.”
She sleeps in Bubba every night, along with Zuzu, a black border collie/Labrador mix she’s had since she was 13.
In the mornings, she goes door to door asking for canned goods, part of her plan to collect 200 cans a week, which she donates to food pantries. She then volunteers to work at shelters, taking pictures and collecting stories as she travels.
It took six months of waitressing and planning to buy Bubba and start the journey, she said. She built a website, , where she provides updates and seeks donations.
“The money is used only for gasoline and my cellphone,” she says. She eats at the shelters where she works.
“I am living my dream. It is an adventure every day. Everywhere I go, I meet people who teach me lessons, who inspire me. This is about doing the greater good.”
She was headed to Boulder, and later to Colorado Springs to do work before heading to Kansas. Every Monday she crosses a state line.
According to her plan, she will end her journey at her mother’s home in tiny Mackinaw, Ill., by the second week of December.
As I leave the center, Shay Kelley heads for a large group of seniors finishing their lunch. She sits, chats and laughs with them.
“This is such a learning experience for me,” she says smiling. “I cannot imagine a different life right now.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
