For years, as he huddled through long nights under bridges and in tents pitched in patches of urban wilderness all over Colorado Springs, Calvin Muzzy warmed himself with malt liquor and fantasies about a different life — a life he’d once had and intended to again.
In the dream, he and his best friend, Pete Hill, would have an apartment, a refuge from the bitter winters, blistering summers and flying fists of other homeless people, high on drink or drugs and wanting to fight or steal their few belongings. They’d sleep not on beds of scavenged cardboard but soft mattresses, behind doors with locks, just steps from a private bathroom with a shower and a kitchen filled with enough food to share.
Calvin wouldn’t have to fly a sign – “Homeless veteran” – begging for handouts at street corners. He’d be clean and sober, with a regular job, able to provide for his girlfriend, Lisa, who was new to the streets and dangerously naive, and for Pete, who suffered from a number of health problems, including epileptic seizures. Everyone would be “safe and happy.”
In September 2014, Calvin and Pete were the focus of a first-person Gazette piece by former staff writer Cary Vogrin, who spent a year getting to know the two men and working with local police to help get them off the streets. The questions she hoped they could answer were ones that might shed light on the forces contributing to chronic homelessness in the Springs. Most importantly, were Calvin and Pete ready and willing to change?
Calvin told her yes. He and Pete both were 47 and “too old” to continue surviving like this.
They were going to stop drinking. Again. For good.
“That’s easy,” Calvin told Vogrin. “I can do that. So can Pete.”
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