PORT TOWNSEND — While many spent the Christmas holiday with family and friends looking forward to the possibility of better times ahead, a 46-year-old homeless man hoped that Port Townsend is the end of a long journey in search of work and a new life.
“I am charmed by this town and the people,” said Shawn Carroll over breakfast Christmas Eve.
“Port Townsend has the culture of Seattle without the urban blight and has intelligent, thoughtful people without the inherent fanaticism that you find in large towns and large groups.”
Carroll is one of the men who has stayed at the Jefferson County Winter Shelter in the American Legion Hall basement at 209 Monroe St., Port Townsend.
The seasonal shelter, which opened the Sunday after Thanksgiving, has been at or near its capacity of 21 people each night, said Deanne McCausland, the Olympic Community Action Program’s program manager for family housing services, on Monday.
She estimated that between 15 and 21 people have stayed at the shelter each night since it opened. The first night it opened, it served 17 people. Most are men, but the shelter has a partitioned-off space for up to three women.
The shelter, which gives single adults meals and a warm place to sleep during winter months, exists through a partnership with OlyCAP, the Community Outreach Association Shelter Team, several churches and other community partners.
Generally open from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. each day, the shelter was open all day Christmas and will be open all day New Year’s Day, this Saturday, said Joyce O’Neal, a founding member of COAST, who volunteered there Christmas Day.
Although some guests of the shelter are seen each season, Carroll is a newcomer.
He said he has walked all over the country. Over the past year, he has seen a lot of small towns.
One year ago, he was working in the pest control industry in Omaha, Neb., when he lost his job and was evicted in what has become a common tale.
He heard about job opportunities in Berlin, N.H., and set out on the 1,500-mile trip on foot and with $2 in his pocket.
Berlin turned out to be a bust, an economically depressed area where there were no jobs, and was not at all welcoming.
“They didn’t drive me to the edge of town, but they pointed me in that direction,” Carroll said.
Since then, Carroll said he has traveled more than 6,000 miles, mostly on foot, down the East Coast, across the Midwest, up to the Dakotas and west to Port Townsend, where he arrived last week.
“I don’t like to hitchhike,” he said. “It’s often a party scene that I don’t like very much.
“Sometimes, people stop and offer rides, but it is usually for a short distance, five or 10 miles.”
He sticks to state highways and avoids interstates for safety and legal reasons.
He said he can comfortably walk 30 miles a day but can do 60, “although it hurts when I go that far.”
Along with a short ride, people most often offer food.
An Indiana woman offered him a 20-pound frozen ham, which he initially declined to take.
“She told me that as I walked along, it would thaw and I could eat a little bit at a time,” he said.
“When I didn’t want to take it with me because it was so heavy, she said she would rest easier if she knew I wasn’t hungry, which really touched me.”
When he arrives in a town, he first seeks out the local shelter. If there is none, he visits the police station to ask where he can stay.
Reaction from police has been mixed, beginning with suspicion but usually ending up with warmth “once they talk to me for a while and see who I really am.”
In some cases, police have set him up in a local hotel.
Ithaca, N.Y., is the only place he has never been able to find a place to stay, so he just kept walking.
Outside of Spokane, Carroll played a role out of the Tom Hanks movie “Castaway,” when he found a discarded UPS package addressed to Dr. Elizabeth Davies, a veterinarian in Colton in southeastern Washington state.
He decided to deliver the package and began heading south and got as far as Pullman, when police offered to take the package the rest of the way.
This was verified by Davies’ assistant Melanie Ostrander.
“There was a package we ordered that hadn’t arrived,” she said.
“We got a call a few weeks later and was told it was found by the side of the road by a man who was walking, and it was returned to us.”
Finding that Berlin was a dead end set Carroll on the purpose of building a new life.
When arriving in a new town, he would first look for services, such as food and shelter, and then would examine job availability, but in most cases didn’t get very far.
“The hard part is trying to find some kind of gainful employment,” he said.
“If an employer finds out you are homeless, they immediately think you are a drug addict or an alcoholic with a recurring substance problem.”
Carroll hopes to find work in Port Townsend but acknowledges that “right after Christmas is the absolute worst time to be looking for a job.”
He said he has patience and faith that something will come along.
“I’m intelligent, I’m hard working, I have absolutely no entanglements or commitments, I’m physically fit and I’m a fast learner,” he said.
“I will find something.”
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
