PORT ANGELES — First Michael Stuart sang Everett Zentz’s praises. Then he spilled a secret.
“He’s got a heart,” Stuart said of Zentz, the assistant facilitator at Serenity House’s Street Outreach Shelter at 520 E. First St.
By 9:30 p.m. Saturday, the eve of the winter solstice, the SOS had taken 10 people in from the relentless snowstorm.
“The door is always open,” said Zentz, adding that he’d welcome more ¬– even if they arrived in the wee hours of Sunday morning.
Then, “Can I tell them?” asked Stuart, one of the men who’d be sleeping on a slim mattress in the drafty former warehouse.
Zentz shrugged and said, “Go ahead.”
“Sometimes he lets us in a little early,” Stuart said.
The shelter used to open around 8:30 p.m., but as the nights have grown colder, Zentz has started taking in people closer to 7:30 p.m.
He believes in the power of a decent night’s sleep, a warm meal and a little conversation to change a life around.
Zentz says that more than one man has quit drinking in order to stay at the shelter. A couple of the guys, he added, are sober and moving into apartments in Port Angeles.
Zentz and his clients share a mutual respect.
That’s largely because Zentz, though only 33, has already been through his own turnaround.
He came to work at the shelter through court-ordered community service last February.
“At one time, I did a lot of damage to the community,” he began.
Zentz declined to go into detail about that damage, saying only that he has a criminal record.
One signifier of the change he’s gone through in the past year: his first name.
“I was raised in a biker family,” Zentz said. “I grew up all over Washington.
“My birth given name was Reefer.”
He changed to Everett, his father’s name, in honor of the man who was killed in a motor¬cycle accident when Zentz was 5 years old.
More people are calling him Everett these days, though it still sounds a little strange.
“I know what the stray dog feels like when he goes to the pound, and people start calling him by a different name,” Zentz said, laughing.
Yet he’s clearly a man who’s found his place in the world.
“There’s a lot of gratitude” inside the shelter, Zentz said.
He feels it for his work, while the men and women who blow in from long days walking around Port Angeles feel it for this place.
“The guys confide in me. Feeling that, I’m that important,” is what makes this more than a job, Zentz said.
One after another, clients at the shelter Saturday night saw a reporter and stepped forward to talk about Zentz.
“He is the right person to do this job,” said Carolyn Gobel, 57, who stayed at the shelter for four months earlier this year until she found a job in Forks.
She’s now a referral specialist at the Senior Information and Assistance office there. But since she also works at Port Angeles’ Dollar Store on weekends, Gobel decided to stay at the shelter Saturday instead of driving back to the West End amid the prolonged snowstorm.
“This is a godsend,” she said.
Zentz and the volunteers “are always welcoming.”
“These guys don’t judge. They know how it really is,” added Bob Williams, who’s come to the SOS for eight consecutive nights.
He said he’d been living in a trailer, but it was towed away earlier this month; he’d like to find an apartment, and might be able to pay the rent with the small income he receives from disability benefits.
But Williams, at 53, suffers from a chronic neurological disorder that makes his voice and body shake.
“People see him and think he’s a drug addict,” Zentz said. “They don’t want to rent to him.”
During the day, when the temperature didn’t clear, it was 30 degrees and the snow didn’t let up after 3 p.m., Williams said he was “out walking around.”
Working poor
“We do have a few guys who work regular jobs, but they don’t have enough to go rent a place,” Zentz said.
Stuart has been looking for a job in his trade, power sewing, with no luck. He grew up in Spokane and thought he’d try Port Angeles after his sister moved here. But she left, and now he’s thinking of restarting his job search in Bellingham.
Like Williams, “I just kind of walk around,” on these December days. It’s not that bad, Stuart added. “I have wool socks.”
Zentz, along with volunteers such as Alex Wolf — a Peninsula College student who stayed at the SOS until recently — kept the shelter’s front door unlocked all night.
The women sleep in the small, warm room beside the dining area. And since there are always many more men seeking shelter, they place mattresses and sleeping bags on the floor of the larger adjacent room.
It has a heater that’s far too small to fully warm the space, so the men curl up cocoon-like.
“It took the chill off,” Zentz said of the heater, which the SOS acquired a few days ago.
By 9 p.m. Saturday, four men had already crawled into their sleeping bags while two others sat at a table, slowly digging into plates of homemade sloppy joes delivered by a local supporter.
The air is chilly in this room, but the atmosphere peaceful.
Williams, just before going to sleep, summed up the reason.
The staff and volunteers “are compassionate,” he said.
“This is all about providing a safe place where they can come in any time,” Zentz said. “I could have been at this point in my life at any time.”
And last week, the shelter became something else: a warming station where homeless people can come during the day for a cup of decaffeinated coffee, cocoa or bouillon, and maybe watch a movie, play some cards, read or just talk.
Volunteers, donations
Zentz and his fellow Serenity House staffer Mike Svec said that they need volunteers to staff the warming station.
“The more volunteers we can get, the more we can be open,” said Svec, who came into the SOS Saturday night to shine his incandescent smile on the crew.
Svec added that Serenity House also needs donations to cover its coffee-cocoa-paper-goods costs — not big expenses, but they add up, he said.
Cash is best, so the shelters can avert donated mountains of coffee or too much of some other thing.
The warming station continues to need people to bring in food, with plates, and then return the following day to collect the dishes.
Volunteers are also needed to stay overnight at the shelter, Zentz said.
“The job is very simple: Show up at 8:30; we sign [clients] in, and we get them something to eat.”
Zentz, for his part, said he doesn’t think of his staff position as a “job” in the punch-the-clock sense.
“I usually get here at 5 in the morning. I’m scheduled to work six days, but I do this every day,” he said.
He hopes for some kind of arrangement to allow clients to bathe, or at least donations so that they can pay the $3 to shower at the Clallam County YMCA a few blocks away.
“If they had a way to get cleaned up, they might have a better chance at getting a job,” Zentz said.
Yet even in its basic state, the SOS “has helped people get back on their feet,” he said. “Being able to see that happen — that’s the gratitude.”
To find out how to contribute, phone Svec at Serenity House’s Dream Center, 360-452-2883.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
