A familiar sound rouses me from a peaceful slumber.
My one-year-old niece is whimpering across the room, half-awake and frustrated at having burrowed herself into the corner of her crib while sleepcrawling. This happens once or twice a night, so I instinctively reach for my iPhone and check the time, careful to minimize the bright light in the darkness.
It's 5:50am on Saturday, May 21st. For many, it's officially Beautiful Day, but not me. I'd been up past midnight, unable to shut down after an "almost-too-fun-to-be-legal" time at the SuperDance for SuperHeroes.
My alarm is set to go off in a half-hour. I tiptoe to my niece's bedside and gently slide her into the middle of the mattress, place the pacifier back in her mouth and return to bed. This has become rare as she's grown but it's still somewhat routine, just common enough for me to know it works every time.
Except this one.
As I pull the covers on and lay my head on the pillow, she sits up and begins talking to me. She's fully awake two hours before normal and showing no signs of returning to dreamland. I pick her up and whisper to her, desperately pulling all the tricks from my uncle bag in the hopes my brother and sister-in-law will be able to keep sleeping after I leave to meet the Beautiful Day leadership team for breakfast.
My niece is determined to stay awake. The extra thirty minutes of sleep I hoped for disappears quickly. Finally, at 6:20, I give up and lay her back down. I've got barely enough time to get dressed and get on the road. I stop and open my laptop to post one last reminder on Facebook about the little ways to help spread the word about our community service efforts using social media.
The phone rings -- it's Jon Talbert. "Hey, have you left yet?"
"Nope. Will be in a minute."
"Can I get a ride?"
It's 6:26am and all I can think about is the proclamation the last one to arrive for breakfast at Holder's on Saratoga Avenue had to buy Starbucks at the morning break. I hop in a borrowed car and speed over to the Talbert residence, arriving fifteen minutes later to find the leader of Beautiful Day bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
"I woke up at five. I was wide awake. Couldn't get back to sleep." I nod in agreement, though I'd been up for entirely different reasons.
The excitement of the day has energized both of us. As we pull onto Highway 85, the discussion pinballs between events we've seen -- InnVision and the SuperDance -- and the route for the Beautiful Day Command Vehicle to maximize our visits to ongoing projects.
It's almost 7:00am when we join up with the rest of the team. Amazingly, it's only been a few hours since we parted and yet it seems like days. We laugh over breakfast, fueling up for a full day criss-crossing San Jose, intent on visiting as many sites as possible to witness the culmination of months of planning.
An hour later, we pile out of a borrowed Ford Expedition at Pueblo de Dios Lutheran Church. We are greeted by some two dozen volunteers being briefed about the locations they'll be working in as part of the Clean Mile project. Councilman Pete Constant has shown up to offer his support as the groups load up with rakes and trash bags before breaking out into neighborhoods. I smile to myself, taking a moment to marinate in the realization this is the first trickle in a flood of compassion spreading throughout the city.
Next, we make a short trip to Washington Elementary, passing volunteers pulling weeds and picking up garbage. As I walk up to the school parking lot at the intersection of Oak and State Streets, I am moving purposefully alongside a man in a hurry. He has a question: "Can we clear city property?"
A woman who lives nearby has bushes in her front yard and "bad people throw bad things into them" to avoid the police. Being that she's alone, she wants to eliminate any possibility of her home becoming a hot spot in this troubled neighborhood. The answer is simple:
"Take them out." Multiple city officials trust the judgment of Beautiful Day volunteers and, if an issue arises, they are comfortable someone in a "Let it Shine" shirt would make a decision to benefit residents and action can be taken quickly. To cement this fact, I listen as Khoa Nguyen (pronounced "KWAH"), Mayor Chuck Reed's policy advisor, describes meeting with the US Attorney General the day before -- and mentioning Beautiful Day.
I shake my head. This is bigger than I thought.
As we load up again and move towards Camp Coyote. As we roll towards the first of two sites, our driver sheepishly reveals her recent discovery it's a homeless encampment. Knowing the Awakening Alviso project would have a sports camp for local children, she assumed this was the same. Laughter fills the SUV.
Twenty minutes later, reality has set in. We stride along the trails, bumping into a group from Breath of Life Ministries. This handful of people walks through the various locations along Coyote Creek every Saturday, building relationships with the homeless and delivering necessities. We talk for a few moments and exchange information. Kerry is the kind of person we must connect with Housing 1000, a project designed to get the most vulnerable of Santa Clara County's 7,000 homeless into permanent housing within the next two years.
This is my second trip to the area and the scene is vastly different than the first. Law enforcement came through just a week ago. I am stunned as Harry from County Health Services and Donovan, a resident, describe the process. Sadness creeps in as I look on the remains of a Buddhist shrine one resident had erected. The touches I remember from the month before, the carpet and seating -- those things that made it home -- have been swept away. Lives taken for granted, but meaningful nonetheless, have been disrupted.
It feels unfair to leave such squalor for the air-conditioned comfort of the Command Vehicle, but there is still much to see. Having made it to three projects by 10:30am, we are now pointed towards the largest of them all -- Alviso.
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