I grew up in a medium sized factory town, the son of a "shop rat", who was the son of an immigrant "shop rat". Despite being a good student, at one time in my life, I too was on my way to becoming a "shop rat".

I have done pretty good during the last 11-12 years, working myself into a good paying white-color job, but I still consider myself a bit "street". What that means is, I try real hard to relate to other people, I try to regularly remember where I have been in life, socially and economically. I worry about the poor, the uneducated, the homeless - the discards of society. I drive through the poor parts of town, dress "down" on my days off and occasionally stop in at a party store in a run down part of town where, demographically, my clean-shaven, white face does not fit in. Not because I look for trouble (I have never been seriously bothered on these excursions) or because I want to pat myself on the back for "coming up"; I just want to remind myself how "the other half" lives.

I can face that earlier in life I sold drugs, worked as "day labor" next to winos and crazies, hitchhiked across a large swath of the United States and was a "slum-lord" (or so my tenants claimed when I evicted them) in one of those areas where cockroaches, rats, hookers and barred storefronts are as common as SUVs in my suburban neighborhood.

The call came late one evening,"Hi, you don't know me, my name is Betty, and I was asked to call you. "She" said you were the only one who might help her, the only one who would come." "She" was right, and four days later, as I slipped back into my grungiest looking work clothes on a frosty November night in 1998, I wondered why I was going back into Detroit, the hell hole down the road, the self-proclaimed" Murder Capital of the Midwest".......

"She" had been beaten up badly, gang raped by some homeless men, and her shoes thrown on top of a building. Wearing only a filthy t-shirt and sweat pants, she had hidden inside an abandoned house for a day, or two, maybe three; hard to get an accurate answer out of some people.

When she finally came out, she made a bee-line for the warehouse where Betty worked: Betty took her smoking breaks outside, and usually found it hard to turn down a request from the tiny, homeless, panhandler woman, who only wanted a cigarette or some change and called herself "Nicole".

Over the years our phone contacts had been sporadic, and increasingly far between. First months, then years. Every time I asked her WHY she didn't go to a shelter, didn't stop drinking just for that night (common rule at homeless shelters), I got the same answer, "I just can't deal with reality."

"Should I try to find your mom or your brother?"

"No, they don't care"

The remaining bits of her family had blown off across country, lost to her, and she had spiraled in toward the worst part of this suburban area, so different from the cute middle-class house her parents had lived in when I first met her.

This time when I asked my usual question, about finding her mom, the answer was yes. Betty explained to me that "Nicole" couldn't stay at her house, that the only reason she brought her home was because her daughter was on the street, addicted to crack cocain. She hoped that someone would help her daughter in kind, a good karma transference of sort. I told them I would try to find her mom and hung up.

I found her mom a the next day, using a combination of pay-as-you-go databases I have access to at work, and immediately recognized the heavy Hispanic accent, "Hay-low".

"Son-a-ma-beech" she croaked," you must be calling me about Nancy, you bastard".

I explained the nasty details and we agreed that if I could find Nicole/Nancy again, that I would call her and she would pay for a plane ticket to Tampa, where the family now resided.

It took three days, three days that I took off from work for a "family emergency"(a lie), three days where I didn't shave, loaded up my pockets each day with change, and told my wife,"I'm sorry, its just something I've got to do".

She told me she understood, but to please be careful. I'd park my car in a different parking structure and then hit the streets, trying to look "street", asking every one of the wino's, crazies, and homeless who would talk to me, if they knew "Nicole". Lots of them seemed to know of her, they told me she had a "bridge family"( a group of people who live together under an overpass), but they didn't know which "bridge". Betty looked also, on her day off, and found "Nicole" sleeping behind the bushes in front of a Burger King. That's when I got the second call, to take "Nicole" to the airport: Betty would accompany us, as "she" didn't know I was providing the ride.

Betty lived in a "bad" part of town: bars on the windows, and the girl on the corner gave me a long look, and then a slow, wide mouth yawn (a come on for oral sex, for pay of course). Betty let me in to a modest, but clean interior and whispered to me, " I've been letting her drink from a gallon of cheap wine, just to keep her here".

"Does she have her glasses ?" I asked.

"Hell no" she replied.

"Good, just tell her I'm a friend of yours 'John' and hopefully she won't figure it out."

She didn't, and so, with the two of us coaxing her with promises that, "you'll be alright honey, you're going home to your momma", we got her into my van. We let her bring a bottle, I let her chain-smoke and drop ashes all over, Anything to get her to the airport. Mercifully (I prayed feverishly during the drive), we made it to the airport.

At the airport things went south: her flight was bumped and we were looking at a three hour wait. So we sat, and people stared: a white, Ray Romano look-a-like; a trim, elderly black woman; and a tiny, matted hair, hispanic woman with that red/brown burnt skin, of the chronically alcoholic street person.. At one point "she" said to Betty," your friend is so nice, he looks a lot like my ex-husband." Then she started crying about how she'd never see her babies again. Me, I had to excuse myself to do my own crying, alone in a bathroom stall.

Eventually the time came, we convinced the captain that she wouldn't bother the other passengers, she hugged us goodbye and cried,"I'm going home to see my momma", over and over.

We watched the "big bird" carry her off into the sky, finally disappearing. I caught my reflection as Betty and I left the airport, I didn't look much like "Nicole's" ex-husband; a big piece of that man died back in "Murder City".

After word from the author: According to the experts, 4 times as many people die from the affects of alcohol, then all other drugs combined. It permeates every race, religion and social class. Every year, tens of thousands of people walk away from their families, friends, children and jobs due to substance abuse. I know: Nicole(Nancy) was my first wife, mother of my two sons(20,16). She walked away from "reality" in 1988, and hasn't seen her children since 1991.

After two months in Florida, she asked her mother to put her back on a bus, to return to Detroit, and her "friends". She has not been heard from since.

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