After the death of several unhoused individuals living in Lower Wacker and the Loop, journalist katie_prout explores how better harm reduction might have prevented these deaths.👇
Here are their stories, via the people who knew and loved them, with some names and identifying details changed for their protection.“Ralph was working so hard, he didn’t have no downtime,” said his friend Dan. Credit: Lloyd DeGrane
According to Dan, Ralph came to Chicago looking for housing and for work sometime around 2016. There were some leads, but ultimately, Ralph lived unhoused until he died. Once in the city, his substance use intensified: “Once you come out here in Chicago, dope can be an easy trap to fall into, especially on the street,” Dan explained. Ralph first knew Dan’s wife, Rhonda. After she died of a blood infection, Dan began sleeping at a spot in the Loop where dope was easy to access.
Dan’s wife Rhonda died of a blood infection precisely because she was terrified to go to the hospital. During our interview and in ensuing phone calls and texts, he remained convinced his best friend died the same way. “These people got blood clots and blood infections. They’re conscious of this for days or weeks, and they’re getting worse and weak,” he told me. “Their bodies are hurting everywhere. They’re throwing up bile and burning up with a fever.
Two deaths, one street, one month apart, and both of the dead were seasoned users who knew to go slow, knew not to use alone. Before the medical examiner’s report came back, the rumors flew, fast as bullets. Was Polo, like Ralph, quietly ill with something other than dope sickness? Was the dope both men used deliberately poisoned? As with Ralph, the medical examiner ruled Polo’s death an accidental polydrug overdose: in his case, despropionyl fentanyl, Benadryl, fentanyl, and heroin.
“It hurts sometimes because I know no matter what, we’re not gonna see each other again, we’re not gonna talk to each other. You can talk, but you’re not gonna get a response,” Arreavis said quietly. He mumbled something else, but the squeal of Metra brakes blotted it out.Arreavis’s best memories of Polo are simple: “Me and him together, looking out for each other, making sure each other ate. Chilling together.” They were each other’s first and best friends.
We smelled the corpse before we could see it. We saw a leg, then an arm, then the body, stiff and swollen. Valerie turned away, crying. I called 911. I hadn’t expected her to cry. She had seen death before, many times. She lived on the streets. Demons tore at her soul. But inside, there was compassion and hard love.
“She loved her fur babies and hoped to have babies of her own one day,” her aunt Cathy Clark-Schramer wrote to me. “Now she is with Jesus, my parents, and my sister. She is with those who love her very much. I like to think of it as they were right by her side and she felt their love, so she went with them.”“She was fearless,” said Brittany’s mom Terrie. Credit: Lloyd DeGrane
This summer, Brittany’s kidneys started failing. Then, Terrie said, in July, Brittany tried to check herself into Rush and vomited for 17 hours in the emergency waiting room before she gave up and left. Two days later, she tried UIC instead. The doctors she saw realized she’d had a brain aneurysm and admitted her.
Brittany’s cause of death is listed as cardiopulmonary arrest , which is when breathing and heart functions. CPA is not a heart attack, though it can be caused by one. Terrie still doesn’t understand why, exactly, her daughter is dead. Ron came up with funny words and sing-song phrases. “He was a fun and caring uncle to my daughter,” his sister Randi wrote to me. Before he was on Lower Wacker, Ron worked for years as a waiter and made friends with the seniors who came in for their Sunday brunch. In good times, Ron and his mother would go on Dunkin’ Donuts runs together. When they first came out to the Loop, Ron had been unhoused before, but Kim had never stayed outside, and she was terrified. Ron made her feel safe.
Addiction regularly shatters families, but there was a period where Ron lived with his sister and his niece and worked with his dad. Ron told Randy about his former hustles, how he survived at the train station, how he taught others new to sleeping outside the necessary scams to survive. And then there was another relapse. “One day, he was standing in front of me, and I’m looking at him like, ‘What’s going on with you?’ And he just said, ‘It’s time for me to go.
on a crate outside of Ron’s tent knew her as Sheila. “Have you seen Carlos?” asked a nurse practitioner from the back of The Night Ministry’s street medicine van, his good-natured face slightly crinkled with concern. “We have like six months of his mail.”Hope kept herself to herself; everyone knew one thing about her, but no one knew the whole.
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