Humanitarian "Joseph's Coat" in Minnesota ~ sad outcome

Joseph's Coat website notice ~ 6/8/2018

Joseph’s Coat will be closed for shopping and donations of goods until further notice. We are committed to reopening as soon as possible. Please consider helping those who depend on our organization by making a financial contribution.

A free store that helps the poor and homeless struggles to get back on its feet after a driver targeted the agency with an automobile attack! In my opinion, this sad report from Minnesota is a harbinger of how America has denigrated our concern for the human condition since Donald Trump has consumed headlines with hate and racist policies. 

An echo in the Pioneer Press by RUBÉN ROSARIO

St. Paul, Minnesota ~ I found Leeland Bourrage walking the pavement the other day, on the lookout for unsuspecting visitors outside Joseph’s Coat.

The triangular-shaped free clothing store at the corner of West Seventh and Bay streets in St. Paul sits boarded up.

At 2 a.m. on June 7, an unknown driver rammed through the storefront at a high rate of speed. The vehicle, believed to be a red or maroon Subaru, traveled a good 30 feet inside the store. The front window, part of the outside wall, a front check-in desk and racks were demolished. Glass and debris were strewn everywhere. A patron at a bar across the street told police the driver took off after rocking the vehicle several times back and forth in order to break free from the wreckage.

“Police told me it might have been going 60,” store director Cheryl Stern said after I found her and longtime volunteer Marilee Miller early this week cleaning, arranging and taking inventory of goods and items that might be salvageable. The irony was not lost on both women that the building’s previous tenant was a car repair shop.

“Maybe it was an idea to turn it into a drive-thru?” Miller quipped.

Stern joined in.

“It was a Subaru. It would make a TV commercial: ‘It can go through a building and still back up and go home,’” she said.

Humor is a good thing to have at times like these. Stern is glad this happened when no one was inside the store, which has been in business 29 years.

And she’s aware how much an impact it will have on the homeless, working poor, and folks on fixed incomes who rely on the store to help make ends meet.

Roughly 300 to 400 people shop for free Mondays and Wednesdays for donated clothing, small household goods, hygiene products, toys and other items. Customers 14 and over submit photo IDs at check-in and are allowed to shop once a week and can haul off a grocery bag full of stuff.

All demographics come through the doors over the years, but immigrant families are the more recent group of customers, Stern said.

“A lot already speak English, they come with their families,” she said.

A St. Paul native from a large German/Irish Catholic family, Stern donated at the store for years and planned to volunteer when she retired as a writer of medical manuals and marketing material. But the 2008 recession wiped out her job, and two unsuccessful years looking for employment in her field compelled her to “come here out of depression.”

She became director in 2010.

“It’s the hardest job I’ve ever done, so demanding,” she said. “We deal with some people who for some reason or other are on the street — addicts, the mentally ill, the homeless — and we also get people who are working hard but making minimum wage.”

She spoke at length about a family with daughters she met while a volunteer in 2008.

“They did not have cell phones and they did not go to shopping stores,” Stern said. “They would go to the malls, look at the styles, and then come here because we do get some nice stuff at times.” Last month, she attended the graduation of one of the daughters from Macalester College.

“Just good hardworking people,” she said.

There have also been lowlights. St. Paul cops are a presence now during shopping days after an enraged customer assaulted several volunteers five years ago. Folks gaming the system almost caused her to regret her decision. She found store customers selling items at consignment stores and other locales.

“I had people lying to my face,” she recounted. “It was an education on humanity. I was becoming so cynical.”

She called someone at Dorothy Day, the downtown staple that provides meals and shelter to the homeless for decades, and asked how they handle it.

Let’s say 100 are gaming you, the man told her, a figure Stern stressed was way too high. “You serve what, 300 to 400 a day? Who helps those other people? You helped them,” he said. “You get to do that. Who gets to do that?”

“That was so wise,” she said. “That has carried me.”

About 135 people are on the volunteer list. They include many retirees but also “the muscle” — a few young men going through recovery who help out with the heavier donations. Students show up to help during the summer months.

I asked her what was the weirdest item anyone ever donated during her time there. She did not hesitate.

It was “this ugly vase, urn thing,” she said moments before showing me a picture of the ugly thing.

Still, they checked to see if it had any value. It was later auctioned off for $250.

“It was a Cajun voodoo thing that they put on graves keep spirits away,” Stern explained. “It was also used by people to store alcohol …”

There was a pair of men’s boots, one of them stuffed with several thousand dollars rolled up in bills. It turned out Stern knew the deceased boot owner, contacted the unsuspecting relatives, and turned the boot with the loot over to them.

The coming days, Stern said, will be filled with cleaning and visits from insurance adjusters and building inspectors. She estimates opening in six weeks. The place relies strictly on public funding and donations. A fund-raiser is planned to help offset the losses.

“It’s a great, giving community around here,” Stern said of the volunteers and the folks who donate.

“There are also a lot of characters who come through here,” she added. One of them is Bourrage, the volunteer sentinel outside the store.

“He’s a neighborhood icon,” she said. “He likes to talk.”

Bourrage, who lives in a room three blocks away, plans to help out as long as need be.

“They help people here,” he told me, pausing to inform another visitor, this time a middle-aged woman with a puzzled look on her face, about the closing.