How One Man Rescued a Homeless Couple from the Streets

Episode Transcript
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Intro (00:06):
You're listening to.
There's a Lesson in here,Somewhere, a podcast featuring
compelling conversations withexceptional people.
Whether it's an inspirationalachievement, a hardship overcome
or simply a unique perspective,these are stories we can all
learn from.
Here are your hosts, JamieSerino and Carlos Arcila.

Jamie Serino (00:30):
Hello everyone and welcome.
There's a lesson in heresomewhere.
I'm here today with MinisterTashkovich and he has quite a
story to tell, so thanks forjoining us.
I'm going to do a very briefintroduction of Minister
Taskovich and I'm going to askhim to sort of complete it,
because this is a full life.

(00:51):
This is a person who has done alot and does a lot, from being
in the government in Macedoniato, as we will hear, helping a
homeless couple on the street,taking them off the street, and
that'll be the focus of today'sstory.
We'll hear how he worked withtwo people that were homeless

(01:14):
and helped get them off thestreet, and we'll hear about the
hurdles that he had to overcometo do that.
So, M minister, I'd like toturn it over to you to complete
the background and yourintroduction, and then we can
get into your story.

Minister Tashkovich (01:30):
Great.
Thank you, jamie.
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to see you againand to work with you on this.
I've been fortunate to live in,work in, travel to or through
110 countries and territoriesaround the world.
I've done this principallybecause I was part of the team

(01:52):
from 84 to 88, which built theInternet from Western Europe
Berlin Wall was still up throughthe North American down to
Australia, new Zealand.
I also do a lot of work inelection monitoring.
So I'm on a roster from theState Department, which accounts

(02:13):
me, to the Organization forSecurity and Cooperation in
Europe, which monitors electionsin sort of Eastern European,
central Asian countries,caucasus countries and so on,
and I've given lots of lecturesaround the world and I also at
one point started the WesternUnion Money Transfer Service for

(02:38):
Macedonia, promoted it to thediaspora and traveled all around
the world for that.
So between all these things I'vetraveled a fair amount yeah um
uh, I worked at one point for uhuh cloud schwab at the world
economic forum in geneva, thefamous davos meetings.
Um I also uh with my lategodfather.

(03:00):
We built um godfather, we uhbuilt um uh mts, mobile
telesystems, the uh, now todaythe largest cell phone system in
the former soviet union.
Um, and what else can I say?
I don't know.
I I've just, I've worked allover the place so I can uh.
People approach me and ask mefor help when they run out of

(03:22):
their own resources, and so umI'm.
I help people almost every dayall around the world who have
some kind of a problem and theyjust need to think it through
how to solve it.

Yeah, sounds like it.
You're like a Superman of sorts.

Or a last resort, as the case may be! !
a last resort, as the case maybe! Jamie Serino: or a last
resort.
Well, tell us a little bitabout when you did join the
government in Macedonia and someof the work that
youdid
there.

It's actually a funny story.
I was.
I guess it was around July 4thor so, 2006.
I was aware that there wereparliamentary elections in
Macedonia.
For people who are listeners,who are not familiar with
parliamentary democracies, thewinner the president of the

(04:14):
party that has the most seats ina newly elected parliament
generally has the right given tohim or her from the president
of the country to form agovernment.
If that particular party hasless than half the number of
seats, they have to cobbletogether a coalition government.
We've seen it over the years inplaces like Bulgaria or Belgium

(04:36):
or even Israel, and if theyhave an outright majority, then
they can govern as they please.
So my friend Nikola was thepresident of his party.
They'd been in the oppositionfor the last four years.
He had the election.
I heard he won.
So I gave him a quick phonecall to say hey, congratulations

(04:57):
, I know you're really busy, but30 seconds Congratulations, you
did it.
I told you back in Toronto atour breakfast meeting in 1999
that you get this.
And now here you are.
You know, good on you.
And and that was it.
It was 30 second call.
And then two weeks later Istarted getting around around

(05:22):
from people in diaspora allaround the world, who knew me
because of both the WesternUnion work I did in promoting
Macedonian connectivity thereback in was it 97 or so?
But also my late father hadbeen head of the co-head of the
diaspora.
And so they're like Gligor, whyis your, your, why are you on

(05:47):
the front page of the newspapertoday?
And it says well, I don't know,I don't read the newspapers,
what are you talking about?
And they, there was this umpicture taken of me in front of
a us military tank, um, at a, amilitary base, us military base
up near Seattle, washington,special forces training.

(06:09):
I've gone through with the as aguest of the secretary of
defense and I so he was there.
And then there was a sort ofscreaming above the fold, page
one headline that saidTashkovich imminently to be
named deputy prime minister inthis article.

(06:30):
And I was a bit mystifiedbecause I'd worked in Macedonia
from 92, 2002.
It was now 2006.
And I knew all the journalistsand they knew me and they knew
how to reach me and my emailhadn't changed and my phone
numbers hadn't changed and Iknew that they'd been.
Many of them had been throughtraining sponsored by USAID to

(06:58):
To to do proper journalism,western style, right?
Which means that if you'rewriting a front page article
about somebody, you have to atleast pretend to contact them,
right?
You say we tried to contact MrTashkovich but he wasn't
available or he didn't answerhis phone or whatever or they
did but they knew how to reachme and so it was all very

(07:19):
strange and I kind of laughed itoff and went off to a dinner
with my fraternity brotherswhoever, they made fun of me all
night.
And I kind of laughed it offand went off to a dinner with my
fraternity brothers where theymade fun of me all night, and
this article appeared in one ormore of nine newspapers which
cut across different ethnicitiesand different parts of the
political spectrum for the nextthree weeks.
Wow.

(07:39):
And finally, on August 6th, themorning of August 6th 2006, I
get a phone call from Nicola andhe says Igor, I want to talk to
you about joining my government.
I'm like really no blankSherlock, I had no idea.
That's funny and so.
So then I said look.

(08:01):
So then I said, look, what'sthe salary?
And he said well, I'm sorry, wecan't pay a Western salary.
You have to take what all theministers make, and that would
be 800 euros a month.
I was like that won't pay therent for one week in New York
City.
You have to be better than that, and so we cut a deal where he

(08:27):
would cover the fixed costs ofmy not being here.
Uh, and and off I went.
Uh, oh, except I'm leaving outone, one important story,
because some of your readers whoare um, involved
internationally will wonderabout this.
The first call after I hung upwas not to my mother to say that
I've gotten this, uh, fantasticjob, uh, but but um, to the
Department, to the legal office,because I knew I needed their

(08:47):
blessing as a US citizen to takea job running a foreign country
.
And in fact I was number six inprotocol, after the prime
minister.
There were four deputy primeministers, each representing a
different member of thecoalition government, and I was
first among equals, among allthe other ministers.
Wow, and what happened?

(09:08):
Oh, and I had this phone callwith this guy, this lawyer, and
I explained to him.
I said look, you know youreally should approve this
because I've done so much forthe country and you know I'll do
a great job.
I'm really excited about this.
And he said, oh, in the mostcondescending voice possible.

(09:30):
He said oh, Mr Tashkovich, I'mlooking at a piece of paper on
my desk and this piece of paperis entitled Potentially
Expatriating Acts and there are30 ways you can lose your
citizenship.
Oh, my god, and number one onthat list is taking an oath of

(09:50):
office to a foreign country.
Wow.
And I said yes, sir, I knowthat.
That's why I'm calling you.
And I said, if you can see, onthe wall behind me you can't in
this video, but if you could.
I was talking to the lawyer.
I said you'll see a plaque withan invitation to the opening of

(10:12):
the ribbon cutting ceremony ofthe new embassy and a piece of
the red ribbon, Because I wasthe one who cut the ribbon to
open up the embassy.
I said that's how connected.
I was embassy.
I said that's how connected Iwas.
And for the first couple ofyears no report left that
embassy without my final review,because the people who came

(10:32):
there and knew nothing about thecountry were definitely afraid
of getting it wrong and trustedmy advice as an American citizen
.
So you know, and in all thesereports, if you go back and look
at them, from the 90s, they sayeconomic development will bring
political stability.
So here I am in a position thatthey figured out they needed,
which I can perform and youshould approve it, yeah.

(10:54):
And then he goes to me oh, mrTosca, first you must commit the
potentially expatriating actand then you will decide, wow.
And I was like that sounds likerussian roulette.
I don't like those odds verymuch.
Thank you, goodbye, click.

(11:16):
And I remember calling around.
I only had two weeks.
I remember calling aroundtrying to figure out how I was
going to get this sorted out.
So I didn't like lose mycitizenship and I got nowhere.
I called, uh, schumer's officein the senate.
No dice, they didn't even callback I.
I called my house, myrepresentative in the house,

(11:38):
carolyn Maloney, but she was theco-chair of the Greek caucus at
a time when Macedon and Greeceweren't talking to each other so
there was no chance of gettingtheir help at all.
And I called her and no onecould help me.
I was completely SOL.
And finally, the day before,maybe two days before I had to

(11:58):
go, I remember that Google hadjust been invented, like just
gone public, right, and therewas quite a few search engines
at the time, you know thingslike Netscape and Capricorn and
other things.
But I was like, all right,let's try this.
So I typed loss of nationality,supreme Court, and clicked go
search whatever.
Google and son of a gun.

(12:20):
There were 10 hits and thefirst hit was a supreme court
case from 1988 and the uh, theoperative part of the case said,
and I quote absent adeclaration of intent by the

(12:42):
person committing theexpatriating act comma the State
Department may decide unquote.
So what that meant was, if Ideclared that I was doing this
and did not intend to lose mycitizenship, they could not
decide otherwise.
And so I wrote this airtightparagraph.

(13:02):
I had looked over by a whitecase immigration lawyer, they
changed one or two words and Iflew to Macedonia.
I went to the US embassy, Iswore my statement in front of
the consular officer, satthrough two days of confirmation
hearings came back, swore somemore documents.
A couple of weeks later theysent me letters saying as long

(13:22):
as I maintained a residence inAmerica, I paid my taxes, voted
you know normal kind of thingsthat prove that you're
functionally an American.
They would approve this.

And so that's what I did, and that was that.
So either you're going to tellme how to like pay all your
unpaid parking tickets, orsomething like that, you know.
I didn't have a car, so thatwas easy.
I thought you were going totell me how to like pay all your
unpaid parking tickets, orsomething like that.
I didn't have a car, so that waseasy.
It's so nice not having a car.
When I was living in an urbanenvironment I didn't own a car,

(13:59):
so I could dive into this.
And there's so much and I heardsome of the story there of the
amazing work that you did forthat country and, like you said,
economic stability bringspolitical stability.
So your story there is a greatone, but we're going to talk
about something else from yourlife that you did, so we'll
quickly kind of just transitioninto that.

(14:22):
So at some point so when you andI reconnected, you began to
tell me about what the work youwere doing with a couple that
was homeless and living on thestreet and not sure where to
begin.
I'll just maybe throw it overto you to you know, maybe how

(14:43):
did you first run into them andwhat got that conversation going
and what was going through yourhead?
Uh, cause, you know we all passhomeless people and you engaged
and you know, and you havequite a story to tell.
So, um, I'll turn it over toyou to see, like where, where's

(15:03):
great.

The beginning was um in 20.
This was a sunny day in early2014 maybe late 20s, no, I think
, probably early 2014 gets alittle fuzzy after a decade, um,
and I came around the cornerdressed in sort of a suit and

(15:24):
bow tie, wearing a heavy blueovercoat.
So maybe it's been on thechilly side, maybe it was in the
forties or fifties or something, but it was sunny.
I remember that and I was.
I'd been to a cozy.
That's a franchise, a sort offresh bread salad soup place
here in Northeast.
I'm not sure if it's nationwideor not.

(15:45):
I'm basically carrying my lunch.
It was midday and I come aroundthe corner of East 57th Street,
madison.
My door to my office buildingwas just 50, 100 feet down the
street.
It wasn't very far at all.
On that corner, the southeastcorner of East 57th and madison,

(16:06):
there was a street homelesscouple, and by street homeless,
just to find that properly, it'speople who don't have a shelter
to go to at night.
Many people who beg on thestreets have a place to go to an
evening in the bed to sleep onof whatever, in whatever
condition it might be, but theyhave one nonetheless.
Nicole and Joseph lived on thestreets, they slept on the

(16:28):
streets, they had no place to go.
And you might ask why?
And the answer is because,although they had a domestic
registered partnership, when youlive on the streets, um, it is
literally impossible to keep anypapers you might have dry, let

(16:49):
alone intact.
Um, and even even I'd giventhem some uh kind of gallon size
, hefty ziploc, ziploc bags orsomething like that, and that
lasted, made them last a littlebit longer, but not much longer
yeah, maybe so, so you, so youregularly saw this couple yes, I
did, okay, um, and I didn'tengage with them, although I

(17:15):
guess at one point my maybe backlike in 2013 or something oops,
we lost you or something, oops,we lost you.
There you are Back in, say,2013,.
I was crossing the street and Ilooked down on the top of

(17:38):
Nicole, who was begging formoney, and I saw that she had a
terrible skin rash on the backof her neck and I knew all she
needed was some bacitracin toclear it up in a week or
something, but she needed to getit.
And I knew all she needed wassome vasotrace and it would
clear it up in a week orsomething, but she needed to get
it and I knew she couldn'tafford it.
So I remember buying it for herand giving it to her and
explaining to her what it wasfor and how to use it and how it
would help this rash she had inher neck.
It was pretty gruesome, and somaybe I'd done one or two things

(18:01):
like that earlier on, but wedidn't have any sort of ongoing
hi, how are you have a great day, kind of right, right, uh.
So I come around the corner.
It's now, you know, maybe three,six months later, after the
faster tracing thing.
And um, uh, it's busy, it's,you know, coming up on high noon
, so a lot of people arecrossing madison and 57th street

(18:23):
.
It's a double length street.
It's, uh, you know, a lot ofpeople, probably even tens of
thousands of people, cross there.
Yeah, over the course of theday, at least before the
pandemic, um and uh, nicole andjoseph were sitting on
overturned white corrugated uspsmail sorting boxes just off off
the intersection.
Uh, joseph was listening to aradio.

(18:45):
Uh, nicole could never sit longfor long because of a back
injury, so she'd always bejumping up and walking around
and stuff like that.
But as I came around the corner, she got up off the box and I
should actually explain,describe her to your listeners.
Um, about 5'1", 5'2" maybe.

About what age would you say?

Oh, I can tell you 37.

Okay.

Reddish hair curly and yeah.
So she came up to me, stoppedme in the middle of the street,
mid-stride, and took her fingerand right up to sort of my
mid-chest, without actuallytouching me.

(19:37):
And she looked up at me and shesaid apropos of nothing, I
don't want your money.
She said, I want your brains.
And I was a bit taken abackbecause I mean, it's a clever
pickup line, but I didn't, Ididn't see that in the future.
Uh and I, I didn't really knowhow to respond.

(20:00):
So there was a pause and thenshe started telling me about all
the indignities she and Josephhad suffered over the many years
she'd been.
They'd been on the street, um,and while she's telling me these
stories, for example, what wasone of them?
She would hope that they wouldearn $2.34 from begging on the

(20:28):
street in order to go to theDuane Reade, which is always a
very overpriced pharmacy here inManhattan, and buy a container
of Kraft macaroni and cheese.
Then go to Starbucks, or theycould get free hot water and
make mac and cheese and eat that.
Or how they would go to thedollar store and get these

(20:53):
alcohol wipes and again go backto Starbucks and clean up in the
Starbucks bathroom, usingalcohol wipes every day and
stuff like this.
So um she, uh.
And so while she's telling methese stories, I could hear the
voice of doris buffett in mymind's eye.

(21:14):
Or?

Intro (21:15):
mind's ear, I guess in my mind's ear uh, doris buffett,
who passed away in 2020.

Uh, she was the older sister of
warrenett and I met her in 2004,quite by accident story I'll
save for another time and she Ihelped give away her money
between 2004 and 2008.
And she always reminded me theend of every phone conversation.

(21:43):
She used to call me by mynickname, which is letter g in
double quotes.
She'd be like now g.
She says don't forget, I givehand ups, not handouts.
Right, she's very important toher, um.
And so here was this woman infront of me, as I later learned,
age 37, literally asking for ahandout, specifically, not a

(22:05):
handout, and I didn't really seehow I could turn her down.

And so this was months after you gave her the
bacitracin.
Yes, so you gave her thebacitracin and she didn't
question that.
You just said here you betterput this on your neck Right, and
you didn't have any exchange.
No.
And months later she came upthis on your neck Right and you
didn't have any exchange no.
Once later she came up to me.

She remembered me.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, and probably saw me coming to and
fro.
I mean, I wasn't in the officeevery day, I was in the office
maybe one to three times a week,but they were always there.
They lived there, yeah, on thecorner.
So live there, yeah, on thecorner.
So yeah, uh, so uh.
I took nicole off to one sidebecause there were lots of
people trying.
We were like literally right inthe middle of sidewalk trying

(22:52):
to kind of zip by.
And I try to think quickly whatcould I ask someone with an
eighth grade education?
How could nicole have skin inthe game if I were to get her
off the street, if I were tohelp her with her request?
Right, cause it's got apartnership, yep, and I, I, I, I

(23:17):
thought quickly and I came upwith two ideas the and.
So I said Nicole, if you dothese two things, I'll get
anything you need.
She said, sure, what's that?
And I said number one you mustnever lie to me.
And that was important becauseI was aware that people who were

(23:40):
street homeless lied with someregularity.
So I said if I ever catch youin the lie, we're done.
You must never lie to me, thereare no second chances.
She said I can do that.
And the second thing I said wasyou must promptly return all
text messages or phone callswhen I reach out to you.

(24:01):
And I thought for someone withan education that was easier
both things easy to comprehendreach out to you and I thought
for someone with education thatwas these are both things easy
to comprehend and easy to do,okay, and so you and I talked a

(24:21):
little bit about this and Iimmediately asked okay, so she
had a cell phone.
Yes, if they look closely at allthe additions on their cell
phone bill, I think it's roughlya dollar charge.
It goes to some kind ofuniversal service fund and with
that money you're basicallysubsidizing smartphone usage by

(24:44):
people who are homeless, amongprobably other things.

But for sure that.
So a homeless person can go.
Where would they go?
They can get a free cell phone,Correct?

So here in Manhattan we have something
called the Human ResourcesAdministration and they have HRA
job centers and they're allacross the five boroughs and you
go to any one of those umusually closest to where you
live um, and outside of thatthere's some guy with a fold-up
table giving out cell phonesagainst your hra.

Picture id okay, all right, all right, so so
after you had that sort of allright.

Here are your two conditions.
How did she respond?
She's in full agreement.
But subsequently, perhaps laterthat afternoon, otherwise it
was next day I kind of kneeleddown to speak to joseph and he
said to me, mr g, he said you'rewasting your time.
I am 28 years old.

(25:54):
My mother died when she was 32.
I have no intention ofoutliving my mother.
And I said come on, jose, don'ttalk like that.
You've got your whole lifeahead of you.
We'll get you back, you know,back into being a productive
member of society and you'll goon to do great things.

(26:16):
And I tried to encourage himand he was optimistic by and
large for the most part, but hewas held back by his um
development issues, and by thatI mean well, I think what I have
to explain here is that, um, Ididn't realize this at the time,

(26:39):
but early on I escorted them toa meeting with a psychologist
that was assigned to them by HRA.
They had to go and I was presentduring the meeting when the
psychologist was talking aboutvarious and sundry items,

(26:59):
nothing particularly.
I didn't pick up anything inparticular.
But when it was over theywaited outside and I went in to
see the psychologist and shesaid I have been doing this work
or you know, 20 or 30 years.
She said I have never seen acouple more codependent than the

(27:20):
colon Josephph, and I didn'teven know what that meant.
Uh, so much and I didn't knowwhat she was looking for.
I didn't understand it in thecontext, but fast forward, uh,
sometime later perhaps it wastwo years later or so um, let me

(27:41):
think of.
The story was j and Nicole werecoming back to the shelter I'd
arranged for them in the Bronx,um, and they were attacked.
It was it's a dangerous part,bronx is very dangerous Um, and
there was a big slice onJoseph's arm, the knife.
Yeah, nicole was very, verygood at first aid.

(28:07):
She always had a bottle ofhydrogen peroxide not far away
from her and she got Joseph allbandaged up and they went to
sleep back in the shelter roomand at 4.30 in the morning some
police officers with theirbadges obscured knocked on the

(28:28):
door and arrested Nicole for asubway jumping infraction from
six years earlier, because whathappened was as a result of
getting them quote into thesystem and getting them a
shelter room.
Eventually all the computersstarted whirring and comparing

(28:49):
notes and stuff like that andthey realized there was an
outstanding warrant for herarrest over a $2 subway.

Yeah, they were getting into the system Right.
So to rewind a little bit nowyou're sort of making this
agreement with nicole and now inyour mind are you also saying,
all right, well, I'm also kindof making this agreement with
joseph, right, are you right?
Right, so, and then she agrees.

(29:15):
So then you're like all right,I'm gonna, I'm gonna help these
two people.
Um, I don't know if you had thecomplete plan in your mind yet
or you were just oh no, no idea.

Yeah, I mean I said step by step.
I said I'm fortunate enough tobe well educated with two
degrees.
I said the system can't be thatdifficult to figure out.
I get that you might not beable to figure out new education
, but with two college degrees Iwould certainly hope I can
figure out and guide them right,so?

so what was your first step then?

oh, getting them shelter, getting
them off the streets, right.
And they said they'd been tothe intake center.
It's over on uh east, roughlyeast 30th street and first
avenue, maybe the east of firstavenue, uh, just north of
Bellevue.
They'd been turned away eightor nine times because they

(30:15):
couldn't prove that they had aregistered domestic partnership.
It wasn't enough to have anaffidavit, it wasn't enough to
make a sworn statement, itwasn't enough to have an
affidavit, it wasn't enough tomake a sworn statement, it
wasn't enough to you know shedidn't hit her ring or anything.
I mean, they just they,according to the rules, unless
you can prove that you have youeither married, you have a
registered domestic partnership,you were separated and put into

(30:38):
you know male shelter andfemale shelter and they wanted
to be together.

So later, as I say , and they wanted to be together
.
So, later, as I say, I'm sorry,but their will to want to be
together was greater than theirneed for shelter.
Because they could, becausethey were codependent yeah,
because they were so not becauseI understood what that meant
until much later.

I was yeah , yeah no, that that's.

That's really, really powerful.
Um so and this also goes backto the paperwork thing you were
talking about so if they wouldhave just had paperwork about
being married or a domesticpartnership, then it would have
been fine.
It would have been easy, right?

So they didn't have that.
Right, I took Nicole and wetook Subway downtown and went to
City Hall and found the placethat issues the certificates and
asked for theirs and theyprinted it right up on the

(31:36):
printer.
Took, literally, it was veryfast, yeah.
Then they said that will be $15.
And she took cash out of herpocket oh, I'm sorry, we don't
accept cash.
And I said you know well, she'shomeless, she lives on the
street, she needs us to get intohomeless shelter.
How do you do this?

(31:57):
You don't accept cash.
Oh, we take credit cards.
I'm like, well, yeah, but thepeople who need this don't have
credit cards.
Yeah, right, and if they did,there's no money left in their
account years later, right, Imean, so it's not realistic,
yeah.
And so he directed me to someunderground office in some other
building a few blocks away thatwould take her cash, give her a

(32:19):
chip, show she paid it, bringthe chip back to him and then
she'd get the certificate.
But I mean, it requirespatience and diligence and
follow through and all that.
And when you, when you're, whenyour only concern is what I'm
going to eat in several hours,that's a.
That's a big bridge to cross.

Yeah, I know that's.
The thing is that it does soundsimple, but yet there are these
hurdles, right?
but you even call themmicroaggressions, if you wanted
to yeah, yeah, and it's almostlike joseph heller kind of this
labyrinth making you go throughthis uh, byzantine kind of kind

(33:01):
of structure.
Um, but to for us know, Iappreciate that you're saying
those things like for us it'slike, oh, just go down to city
hall, just do this, just do that.
It's tough to put yourself inthe mindset of someone who is
homeless and maybe someone whomaybe, if there is a disability
there or something, and so okay,so you accomplished this for

(33:23):
them.
They had their certificate, sothen you were able to bring it
back and show them this is amarried couple.

Right, and so that maybe that night or the
next day I made a private tripover to the intake center and I
said look, here's the situation.
You've turned them away eightor nine times.
You can't do it this time.
We have all the documents youneed.
We went through the list.
I was like, just do it quickly.
Please show them the systemactually works when they follow

(33:51):
the rules right.
And the next morning I saidokay, guys, next morning, this
is it we're gonna do.
It also was the morning uh, thepope visited manhattan and he
was taking his Popemobile up toMadison Avenue, right by where
they were to go into CentralPark, and the police, which

(34:14):
doesn't have the ability to movepeople with squatters' rights
even on city streets, asked them.
Very nicely, they moved todifferent corners so that they
could provide security to thePopemobile and they went down to
56th Street, just a block or soaway, and they had been
spending the last couple of dayskind of sorting through their
belongings and figuring out whatto take, what not to take and

(34:35):
what to throw away, which ismost of it.
And we were ready to go andjust at that juncture I saw a
brand new London style yellowcab and I hailed, the cab Pulls
up in front of me and Nicole andJoseph opened up the cab doors

(34:56):
and sit inside.
The driver is fit to be tied,fit to be tied.
And I said to him don't worry,number one, I'm paying.
Number two, they're clean.
And number three, three, I'mgoing with them.
And so we drove across town tothe intake center and went
through security and and and gotthem uh, actually, what they

(35:19):
had once their documents werevetted, they had to go to
jamaica, queens, where there wasa three-week wait period until
they got into a shelter room forcouples, basically.

Okay, and where was the shelter located?

The shelter room was in the
mid-Bronx around West 181stStreet or so, on Broadway Again
a dangerous part of the Bronx.

Yeah, okay, so they're waiting out there three
weeks.
They're on the street andyou're interacting.
No, no.

They were in a temporary shelter room out
in.
Jamaica oh okay, okay, gotchaIn the back of the street, but
then they went up.
They were assigned up to uh,the monks okay.

So I mean, at that point, you know that's sort of
like it could be the end of thestory, right, like you got this
homeless couple off the street,right, right, and it's, uh, I
guess it's like, well, you know,could that if there were more
people like you, then maybethere'd be less homeless people,
right, that if everyone wasassigned a homeless person or

(36:30):
homeless, you know like, goahead and do these steps and get
them off the street, right?
So you know that's it's amazingthat you did all that and went
through all that uh to to getthem off the street, but then
the story continues.
It does.

So listeners have to keep in mind a
couple of things.
Number one, the codependency.
Number two, they were both onmethadone, which meant that
seven o'clock every morning theyhad to get methadone, yeah.
And number three, theireducation levels roughly eight,
maybe early ninth grade, um anduh, the fact that now they were

(37:13):
in the system a lot of things intheir past were creeping up on
them and you had somebody todefend them.
Um.
And there's just generalbureaucratic let's call it
malfeasance, where benefits getcut or dropped for no apparent
reason assistance in your debitcard, you know, on a fixed day

(37:44):
every month and plan on havingthat money to live on and to eat
from, and stuff like that.
It's a real problem.
And so a number of times Ithink around six or seven times
or so I had to go to the NewYork state office of what's
called fair, fair assistance,fair hearings, something like

(38:07):
that.
It's a website and it basicallydials back and freezes the
situation of the recipient towhere they were and it gives a
direct order to the agency thatcut their benefits or whatever,
and says no, it goes back towhere it is effective

(38:29):
immediately and we're going tohave a hearing and talk about
this.
Hearings were always inBrooklyn, so I made, whatever it
was, six, seven trips toBrooklyn where I defended them
in a hearing.

Okay, as like a character witness kind of thing
as a advocate okay, gotcha I'mnot a lawyer now so just to just
to go back, you know, to sortof address, like to not gloss
over this so these two peoplethat had substance abuse issues

(39:05):
then, yeah, and so they were.
They were on methadone as aresult of that and um, and so
they were trying to kick, kicktheir habit, right um?

and they had, I mean methadone was
keeping them sedated there.
There wasn't any interest indoing drugs right?
They, okay, started atsomething like 260 units a day.
They were down to 60 when I metthem, so they made significant
progress.
But the doctors at the clinicwere afraid to lower any more
until they had the stablehousing situation.

(39:41):
So that was really important togive them that so they could
lower it more.

Yep, and so do you know?
Actually, we should haveprobably explored this right in
the very beginning.
Do you know why they werehomeless to begin with?

Yes, in Nicole's case, from the time she
was like what year was that?
Early teenage years, let's say13 or 14, an older sister gave
her drugs to try.
She got hooked and she did havesome mental health issues as

(40:25):
well.
Um, and her mother tried tocommit her a number of times.
Uh, didn't succeed.
And then there was uh, or maybeshe was there for a month or
two at a time or whatever, butcame home.
And then there was an issuewith her father dying from
potassium overdose.
And there was the issue ofjoseph himself, who the family

(40:47):
did not approve.
I thought he was a badinfluence and basically said
it's either the family or joseph, take your pick, wow.
And so, um, she chose joseph,um, but she would go to the park
, cross the street from herfamily home and watch her kids

(41:09):
going to and from the school busevery day.
Oh, so she had children At thatpoint she had two.
By the time I met her, she hadfour.

Oh, wow, okay, so she was a mother.
Wow, okay, yeah.
So so this is the thing with.
You know, the issue ofhomelessness is that it's never
simple, right?
There's no, never.
You, you have all these factorsat play.
Um, you know, her childhoodexperiences drug use.
Then the codependence withjoseph um, okay, yeah, so thanks

(41:43):
for filling in that thosedetails.
Um, okay, and they were tryingtogether to stop using drugs.
They were on methadone and atthe point at which you began
helping them, they were sort ofmaybe you could say on this
upswing of like, we want toimprove our lives well, she more

(42:03):
than he, but he, he lived witha perpetual fear that she would
get better and he wouldn't, andshe would leave him behind.

Yeah, there was, there.
Was that, that was there.
Was that interaction takingplace?
To the point where, when shewas sleeping, he would take her
cell phone and send me textmessages oh wow, right Trying to
convince me that they were good.
Now they didn't need my helpanymore.
Thank you very much.

Yeah, wow.

Right, wow .
And so it was tied in with astory I was telling before.
So why don't I just come backto that?
Yeah, so Joseph had his handsliced, nicole patched up, they
went to bed early in the morningthe police came to arrest
Nicole, but there was a scuffleagain because they were

(42:50):
codependent and so Joseph foughtwith the police.
His badges were covered so hedidn't know who was there All
over this $2 fine at 4.30 in themorning.
It was just obscenelyridiculous to spend that kind of
manpower.
And that evening also, josephhad messaged me from Nicole's

(43:12):
phone saying exactly what I justsaid before that hey, they have
a place now, they're happy,they're good.
Thank you very much, have agood life.
And it felt very dismissive andI was a bit surprised.
But I was like OK, if that'swhat you want, but I'm
disappointed, there's so muchmore we could do.
Yeah, and so then around ninethirty in the morning I get a

(43:34):
call from Joseph.
He tells me what happened thenight before, absent the fact
that he used his wife's cellphone, and he's very worried
about her because of course shedidn't get her methadone and
needed to get that, and she'safraid that she'll be in some
holding cell don't have hermethadone, which it's pretty

(43:56):
important to have on a regularbasis.
And so at one point in the callhe says my arm is bleeding.
I'm like why is your arm beingjoseph?
He says well, because when theyfought with the police officers
, advantage came off and itdamaged the wound and it's been
bleeding.
They said for god's sakes, gogo run it under some cold water.

(44:18):
You have a sink, you know?
10 feet ahead of you, he said.
He said no, he said that'snicole's job.
Oh, my god, right.
And that was when I understoodwhat codependency was.
Sure, yeah, um.
But then I spent six hours,about like six hours it was four

(44:39):
, it was many hours certainlytrying to find the call, calling
every police station, everyholding facility, every
courtroom to make sure that theygot her her methadone, because
I was afraid that she would gointo withdrawal if she didn't
have the methadone.
Um, and along the way I found a, a, one of the legal aid

(45:03):
services it was called legal aideven, I don't remember exactly
how in one of the courtroomsthat confirmed that her case was
in their court, and explaineverything to the person.
They said no problem, we'll gether off, just the process.
And so they enter the courtroomwith Nicole and the officer.
And the officer says you know,we picked up Nicole for jumping

(45:25):
a turnstile six years ago andnot completing her mandatory
neighborhood.
Yeah, community service forjumping Community service
Exactly right.
Service for thank you communityservice exactly right, um.
And the lawyer you know madethe right statement and got her

(45:47):
off and nicole was very grateful.
She said oh my god, who are you?
How did you do this?
Thank you so much.
And and the lawyer said don'tthank me, thank mr g.
That's great, he wouldn't havebeen there otherwise.
So then she thought I was likeon a different plane sure.

Well, it's also just amazing when, like you,
hear about these types ofstories, you know, because I
think people are very like sortof flipping and they don't, they
don't a lot, you know, there'ssome people that don't quite
understand, you know they mightjudge the person for that one
specific thing or that onespecific moment.
But, like, take like someonelike you, like you jumped the

(46:26):
turnstile all the time, right,never.
But let's just say you did, andthen you got caught for it,
right, then your situation wouldnot have ended up like her
situation, right.
So there's like a thisfragility to their lives because
one little thing falls out ofplace and then the whole thing

(46:49):
collapses, you know, and and itall snowballs.
And so I think you know when,when people you know kind of
roll their eyes or dismiss, youknow a person like her and it's
oh well, of course, or blah,blah, blah.
You know it all, it all kind ofhas some background to it.
You know a person like her inthis oh well, of course, blah,
blah, blah.
You know it all.
It all kind of has somebackground to it, you know, and
you know.
So it's amazing, you were thereand you're always there trying

(47:10):
to, trying to keep them on track.

Right, because the social worker in the
facility met with them, I thinkweekly for half an hour, an
hour just going over their caseand what they had to accomplish
that week or goals they had toaccomplish over the two years.
They were allowed to stay there, right.
And so I worked with them to dothat, because the social worker
had the entire building and hehad no time or interest in

(47:33):
spending a minute more than his40 hours a week, right.
So we tried to work on on thesethings, but among them we were
getting Nicole dentures.
She had no teeth.
They were kicked out of hermouth overnight when she was
sleeping on the subway onewinter and a door opened up and

(47:54):
fell in a crack, kind of thing.
Oh my God.
And for security, because shewas, she was so short.
You know those old-fashionedrazor blades her father might
have used.
Yeah, she kept an old-fashionedrazor blade inside her gums she
could take out and cut somebodywith if they ever tried to.

(48:16):
Yeah, um, but how she kept thatblade in there and how she ate,
food and drank, and all thatwithout swallowing it.
I mean it was just incredible.
When I saw her First of all, Ididn't realize she didn't have
teeth for the longest time.
Then I felt guilty for nothaving noticed, but she'd done
such a great job at covering itup and, plus, she was shorter
than me, so the angle wasn'tright.

(48:37):
You know that I I was reallystunned and then, once I
realized what the issue was, Itried to find a place to get
free dentures.
It's very hard now.
Granted, I was traveling, I hadother work and things and I
wasn't there all the time,whatever, but it took me a year
to find a place to give her freedentures.

(48:57):
Wow, because all the state andfederal programs that were
involved with this were eitherfully booked or they had a
three-year backlog, or whateverit was.
But I couldn't get any lovefrom various state and federal
programs.
Finally, I found the adultdental unit at Bellevue Hospital
, which would accept theMedicaid that she had to get her

(49:19):
free dentures.
Wow, and she did do that,except the Medicaid that she had
to get her free dentures.
Wow, and she did do that.

Yeah, well, that that must've been a game changer
for her.
It was.
She could smile yeah, Holy,amazing, right, so so then.
So Joseph and Nicole werereunited after the court
situation.
And then what happened?

wow.
Well, um, I was blogging aboutthis on facebook and if anybody
any of your um listeners want totry to locate it, it's hashtag
n-i-k-o-l-e.
It's a fairly unique spellingfor nicole on facebook.
There are one or two other hits, but most of them, uh, revolve
around my stories of nicole andwhat we did, where we went

(50:08):
shopping, where we did things,and so on, um, but among them,
uh, um, what I want to say isthat, because of this blogging
which they authorized me to dobecause they wanted people to
understand how difficult it wasand they were hoping to be an
example of change A lot ofpeople sent money and I guess it

(50:36):
was because they didn't trustpeople that they met in the
street to give them money.
But they trusted me.
They knew I wasn't going tospend it on vodka and so they
sent me money.
I received thousands of dollarsfor their credit, unsolicited.
I didn't ask for anything.
People read the stories andsaid, my gosh, I can actually

(50:57):
contribute to someone gettingbetter and I know that people
will spend the money wisely.
That's great, it was reallygreat it was.
It was brought to your smiles.
It was so incredible because itwas all unsolicited, wow, and
it came from many people 30, 30,40 people, something like that.
Uh, and so when they got theshelter room, I was able to take

(51:24):
them to a place on 125th street, um, and get them, you know,
pillows and pillowcases andsheets and blankets and you know
all fresh stuff um, someclothing, whatever.
Now, they were very resourcefulgetting clothing to fit them.
Now, they were very resourcefulgetting clothing to fit them,
but they were worthy of a fewnew pieces too.

Yeah, that's great .
Okay, so people can read theblog on your Facebook page.
Is that what you said?

Yeah, if you're on Facebook, hashtag
Nicole the other places there'sa mediumcom account for kind of
long.
All together, indignity.

Fourth world movement atd fourth world um,
and then they could search thereas well okay, yeah, and then
what I what I could do is Icould put that stuff into the
show notes for this um yeah,great, I think I sent it to you
earlier in our chat.
Yeah yeah, so we can link tothat.
Um, so through all this, youknow, do you have any thoughts

(52:31):
like?
I also want to really give youcredit because you've in your
life solved big, huge problems,like big picture problems, right
.
Like being a minister in thegovernment, you're solving
problems for millions of people,but then you dove down deep to

(52:53):
solve a problem for two people,right, and that's that's really
amazing that you know just sortof the difference between that
and you know the the way yourmind works.
I think that's really amazingthat you know just sort of the
difference between that and youknow the way your mind works.
I think that's I give you a lotof credit for that.

Could I segue there for a moment?
Of course, yeah, I want to tellyou, tell one story about the
time in Macedonia, which is sortof good example of what you
were describing.
So I was in my actually, it wasactually before I was even
confirmed, in the week before Iwas confirmed as minister by
parliament.
Um, this man knocks on my door.

(53:30):
It was a temporary office I wasusing in the party headquarters
.
I was not a member of the party, I was a technocrat.
I thought that was veryimportant in order to get the
work done that I needed to do,to have both sides supporting me
, not not just one side, right,because it was very divisive,
like we see today in our country, here in America.
And he says to me my name isProfessor Vlach Ocengovsky, I am

(53:56):
going to become the head of LM,which is a state-owned
electrical generation facility,mostly with coal but also some
waterworks and stuff.
And he said you have a bigproblem, mr Minister.
I said what's that?

(54:16):
He said well, you can't attractnew businesses to Macedonia
except shop here, assembly lines, factories, whatever, if we
can't keep the lights on.
And I was like you're right.
And so that began a three hourunscheduled meeting for how we
were going to solve this problem, which I very much took, took

(54:39):
in mind.
And shortly after I started,maybe, maybe, see, see, it was
August, september, october,september, maybe October,
actually October of 2006, a mancomes to my office.
He was a senior advisor to thechairman of an engineering firm,

(54:59):
had maybe 30-some-od oddfacilities across the country
that did different types ofengineering, but this one in
kitchevo, in the mountains inwestern macedonia, was
specifically tasked with makingthe high voltage line, uh bars,
the uh the stands that the wiresran on.

(55:22):
And he said Mr Minister, you'rethe only person who can help us.
And I said that's quite anopening sentence.
Why am I the only person whocan help you?
He said because you're atechnocrat and everyone else
takes sides.
I said okay, tell me more.
He said well, we have this,this factory.
We have to produce these highvoltage poles, right?

(55:48):
Uh, because we need electricity, as you know, in this country
very badly.
It was still on, it wasn't?
We weren't having outages, butthat was going to happen in 2008
.
It's now, you know, a year anda half away, but it's definitely
going to happen as electricityuse continues to increase.
And he said ever since theelection, the people from the

(56:12):
two political parties arefighting on work time in the
factory.
Fistfights, ambulances oh wow,I mean hospital visits.
They're not getting any workdone.
It's really a problem.
I need you to come and talk tome.
So Kichevo is like an hour,maybe hour and a half away from

(56:33):
Skopje.
Ministers are usually very busy.
They don't travel that far awayfrom the capital, but I agreed
to go and we were one morningand we were traveling up the
mountain road and it's verysteep.
You're going over thesemountain roads and we got to the
factory and there was a tvcamera that came with us as well

(56:56):
and when the announcement wasmade that the minister was here
to visit the factory, everythingcalmed down very quickly and we
spent a few hours talking bothsides back and forth.
It was all on on camera and Isaid, and I was mediating, right

(57:18):
.
And I said, look guys, here's,here's the.
They were all guys, right.
I said here's really the.
The issue.
He said you go home at night,right, you turn on light switch,
your wife's made you dinner.
Maybe turn on tv, see the news,maybe turn on the radio, but
you turn it on, you expect thelights to go on, you expect the

(57:40):
power to turn on, you expect tobe able to see the image on your
screen.
This is, you know, before mostpeople had cell phones and you
don't think twice about how thathappens.
Yeah, but you have a missioncritical task here, because this
country is going to be short ofelectricity within a year and

(58:02):
every high voltage pole that youmake is critical to solving
that problem and anticipating it.
And so I'd really appreciate it, if you're looking for jobs for
your relatives, for yourfriends, your neighbors, if you
kind of put this to one side andget the job done, because
without it we're going to be ina much worse position than we

(58:25):
are today.

Yeah.

And that was really compelling to them
and I'm proud to say they neverfought again and they got the
job done.
That's great Building this highvoltage power line in Bulgaria.

Yeah, that's great and that's you know that
uniting them under that mission,you know, got them to put the
differences aside.
Also, reminding people howimportant their jobs are, you
know, is key, I think, toleadership, so that's that's
great story.
So, knowing you, know yourexperience, having had this

(59:02):
experience, like what, what areyour thoughts just on
homelessness and the problem ofhomelessness?
Obviously a massive question,but you have such a unique
perspective on it, having gonethrough what you went through,
and and and helped the way youdid, you know what, what's the

(59:23):
way you did, you know what,what's, what's your perspective
on it and as much as you know,you could sort of summarize that
you know and it's not to pointfingers or blame anyone or
whatever but, like you know what, what are your thoughts on the
issue of homelessness in America?

Well, I mean, it's, it's's, it's an
extremely difficult task, right?
Because I now understand thatthe secret to solving this
problem is providing housing insome way shape or form.
And once you have a stableplace you can live, then
everything else stems from there.

(01:00:00):
And after joseph died, I wasable to get nicole into a shared
apartment uh, two bedroom, onebath with another woman who had
mental illness issues, but shewas high, functioning as well.
And uh, and from there, nicolefound herself a part-time job

(01:00:22):
and I helped her get a volunteerposition and she was actually
literally making money thatshe'd have to pay taxes on.

Jamie Serino (01:00:30):
Wow, that was a huge success in my book yeah,
well, so we we didn't talk about, so joseph passed away, um, and
so of course then in some waysthen that codependency, uh, so
nicole was able to kind of moveon from that not really.

Minister Tashkovich (01:00:51):
It was very very very very tough for
her I could imagine um, shespoke often of taking her own
life, spoke often of taking heron life.
But we would meet Sundayafternoons for two or three
hours.
I helped her discover green teaand she loved the feeling he

(01:01:12):
had in her brain and really wokeher up and got her to engage
and stuff like that.
And so we would speak and talkabout her the week past and what
she needed to do and how to getthings done, where to go and
how to ask for things and stufflike that.
So I was, I was reallyproviding, you know, extensive
counseling services face to faceon sunday, usually saturday or

(01:01:35):
sunday afternoons, and then wewere in touch, uh, at least once
a day, if not twice a day ormore, by text or phone call.
And in fact, after Joseph died,she called me early every
morning when she went to get hermedicine.
I'm up early, so it was around7 am or so and she'd say hi, mr

(01:01:56):
G, it's Nicole, have a great day.
It was a very fast call and itused to annoy me at first
because I didn't know why shewas doing it, but much later
understood it was a um, an uh,an acclamation, a, a affirmation

(01:02:16):
, an affirmation of life call,thank you, an affirmation of
life call saying I'm alive todayit's going to be a great day
yeah, due to have one too, um,so she took every day very
seriously yeah.

Well, she probably also just in a way felt it was
like a gift, um, so how didjoseph die?

so, um, as years went on, joseph was, you
know, became 31, uh, andremembering what he had said
when I first met him, that hismother died at the age of 32 and
he wouldn't, didn't want tolive past that, uh, his birthday
was march 2nd and march 3rd, uh, and he, um, uh, in that, let's

(01:03:08):
say five months beforehand, hedeliberately went downhill.
He would sell money off themonthly credit not credit card,
but the monthly credits that hegot from the government to
people who would sell him drugs.
So he'd take the drugs inexchange for buying food for

(01:03:29):
them.
Right, he'd beg, borrow, stealother money to take more drugs.
Oh, but I forgot to mention so.
Actually he was, but as part ofhis grand plan he got himself
kicked off the methadone program.
And I remember going 8.30 am, 8am one morning we went down to

(01:03:55):
an appeal program down by BethIsrael Hospital, down near Union
Square, by Beth Israel Hospital, down near Union Square, and I
remember the lady who was themanager.
She was in charge.
She was no one's fool, reallytough, but she was also very
heavy.
And at one point Joseph said toher you know, you're really fat

(01:04:19):
, have you thought about losingweight?
And I'm like Joseph, that'sreally self-defeating.
You might want to apologize,because I was in the room.
I was mortified, self-defeating, right.
And so, of course, he did notwin his appeal.
And they have a protocol forscaling people off methadone

(01:04:47):
very quickly.
I don't think it's that healthy, but for whatever reason, it's
approved.
Between the lack of themethadone and his desire to kill
himself, by the time he was 32,he started taking drugs and

(01:05:07):
drinking alcohol without limitVodka, cheap vodka, usually.
And the situation got worse andworse, so much so that Nicole
asked me to give him some of thecash that I was keeping as a
bank in my office filing cabinet.
Draw.
And I asked her, I talked itthrough with her, I went through

(01:05:30):
why this shouldn't happen.
It's your money.
You're the one who basicallymade it and raised it.
You know whether it was fromthe street or from your job or
whatever, whether it was fromthe street or from your job or
whatever.
And, uh, I've always made yousign paperwork when you wanted
to take it out, so that therewas a clear record, yeah, and so
on.
But she insisted, and so one dayI remember meeting joseph with

(01:05:53):
a lot of money maybe it was 400or something, um, in cash, um,
and he met me at my subway stopand I passed it through him to
him through the uh bars.
I make him side of the thingand he took it off.
He went, but his eyes wereblood shy, he was haggard and
gone um and he was killinghimself.

There was no question about it yeah, was
nicole using then because he wasno.
No, all right.

She was really determined to get her
life.
There was some alcohol use hereand there.
Right Over the course of nearlyfour years I probably took the
alcohol detox five times or so.
Oh, wow, okay.
It's typically a three to fiveday program.
It works really well until youbackslide.
Yeah, right, well but, theywould be cleaned for weeks after

(01:06:50):
coming off that program.
Yeah, the problem, of course, isthere's not enough alcohol
detox beds in manhattan.
I doubt situation has changedin the last six years.
Um, and it's hard to get a, geta room, get a bed.
Yeah, you can show up, waitoutside the door and wait until
noon and then be turned away andhave to do it over the next day

(01:07:10):
.
There's no, there are noappointments, there's no website
you can check.
It's all show up.
You show up and you wait andyou hope that it becomes
available.

Wow, yeah, and this is so the again like the
tying together there of thehomeless issue with addiction,
um, and the strength of thataddiction, I mean, with recovery
there is usually relapse andthen you know, like, what people
will say is, ask anyone thatsmokes cigarettes how many times

(01:07:41):
it took to quit smokingcigarettes, and that can help
you understand you know othertypes of addiction.
But yeah, he couldn't in theend, he couldn't kind of get
away from it.

But he didn't want to.
He didn't want to.
He literally wanted to killhimself before he turned 32.
And he succeeded and finally,around valentine's day, february
14th, he was at 2017.
Nicole called me in a panic onemorning uh, that joseph was
bleeding through all hisorifices.

(01:08:14):
Oh my god.
Uh, that happens to people whodon't know when the liver stops
functioning, because the livercreates clotting factor which
keeps your blood inside yourbody.
Absent clotting factor, uh,every opening is a source of
blood loss.
Wow, um, so pretty gross, right, um?

(01:08:35):
So she called the ambulance.
I told her take him to acertain hospital because I want
him to make sure he got goodmedical care.
The hospitals in the Bronx havevarying medical care and
standards and, for whateverreason, she wasn't successful
and the ambulance took him toNorth Bronx Central Hospital,

(01:08:59):
something like that.
And so I raced up there on thesubway way up on the border of
Rochester County and got him,with a nurse's help, to sign a
healthcare proxy, naming me andNicole as healthcare proxies.

(01:09:20):
Somehow, his father wasinformed who he had been
somewhat estranged from.
He was already there by thetime I got there and he insisted
on being made the third healthcare proxy, but we didn't really
do much about that and duringoh and so after that, he was

(01:09:43):
placed into a medically inducedcoma in the ICU, in a separate
isolation ward.
So you had to go into the ICU,identify yourself to be
registered, then scrub up and gointo a separate room, had
cameras Right, and so he was amedically induced coma.
That was to say thatvalentine's day, um, yeah, for,

(01:10:07):
like you know, a little over twoweeks, and after about, and oh,
I remember going into thesocial worker, a nice man from
nigeria who was very religious,and I said you know, he doesn't
intend to live past 32.
He turns 32 in 17 days from nowor so, and I think we need to

(01:10:30):
talk about what happens afterthis.
No, no, let the doctors dotheir thing.
We can talk about that later ifit comes to that, but let's
remain optimistic.
He said, and, but that was hisreligion speaking.
I recognized that and I I said,okay, um, but I put in place a
plan b with a, a, a funeral homethat took care of indigent

(01:10:54):
customers, um, so that I hadthat in case I needed it.
Yeah, and I spoke every day toto the ICU, who reported that,
ultimately, that they had triedtwo different forms of, or maybe
even three of, antibiotics, butthey weren't working.
There was no change in hiscondition and he was still in a

(01:11:15):
coma.
And I said you know from myresearch, of the five
antibiotics you could be usingto fix liver failure, I actually
think that who you haven'ttried are the ones that have the
highest degree of success, sowhy don't you try those?
And they agreed and they startedto work.
Wow, they were overjoyed.
The doctors and nurses wereoverjoyed.

(01:11:35):
He was getting stronger everyday and they thought that they
could take him out of the coma.
All his vitals were gettingstronger, things were healing.
It was really a miracle.
His birthday came and went Ithink it was March 2nd, still in
a coma.
I think it was a Thursday.

(01:11:57):
And on March 4th I got this callfrom Nicole screaming to the
phone that Joseph had died tothat hospital.
And so I raced up there to takecare of things.
And Joseph's brother andbrother's girlfriend was also

(01:12:20):
there.
Joseph's brother was in even aworse mess than Joseph was.
It was immediately alive.
Don't quite know how he did it,but perhaps you know, think of a
cockroach.
I mean, the man had.
No, there was no redeemingcharacter for this man
whatsoever.
Wow and um, and it took me along time to figure out that.

(01:12:48):
What must have happened?
Oh, I know, wait, so, so, so.
We didn't know how joseph diedand it didn't make sense.
I couldn't figure it out, rightand uh.
Finally and I had anotherproblem too, right, nicole was
in a couple shelter and youcould be absent from a couple

(01:13:08):
shelter for up to one monthbefore losing your shelter room
to someone waiting, for example,in Jamaica Queens for room to
open up, right.
And so I said to Nicole, I saidunder no circumstances can you
let on.
Joseph has died.
You have to use the rest ofthis month you have available to

(01:13:28):
you to figure what we're goingto do and worry how you're going
to survive, because otherwiseyou'll lose room immediately,
yeah, and you'll have to gothrough the process all over
again because they don't have away of just moving you into
female housing, right, right,and there's a whole separate
intake system for this right.
And so she kept up the charadefor a bit.

(01:13:51):
And so I'll just stop thatstory for a moment and come back
to joseph.
So after like a week, five days,something, the, the um, the
nursing home, picks up joseph oneast to bring some east 87th
street.
That friday, next day, the nextday, I go with jose, with

(01:14:15):
nicole, to sign the paperwork.
She has to sign it, she's thenext to ken, but I read
everything through to make sureit's all safe to sign, um, and
we, we figure out what we'regoing to do.
We decided that she decided tocremate him and we tried to
figure out what to do.

(01:14:35):
I get a call on Monday morning.
We're doing paperwork on Friday.
Saturday morning goes by.
Monday morning left 9 o'clockin the morning.
I get a call from MarieMunchinsky.
Marie was the director of thefuneral home.
Super nice lady, superconfident, extraordinary
experience.
Been doing this for like 30years.
And she says to me, mr G, shesaid I have bad news and I'm

(01:15:05):
like bad news.
What does that mean?
When the funeral home directorcalls you after a weekend and
says you have bad news, I saidorder my options.
I said he got up and walked out.
Yeah, there was a fire, youlost a chrissy.
I'm confused.

(01:15:29):
I don't know what you're goingto say next.

Yeah.

And she said to me well, in order to get
permission to do a cremation, awhole bunch of city agencies
have to sign off on our requestelectronically.
Huh, and one of them was themedical examiner who had, uh,
thanks to the network availablethrough the health and hospitals

(01:15:58):
corporation here in new yorkcity, was able, from the comfort
of their office, to look at hisurinalysis and blood work.
That was done because he'd beenin a coma, right, everything
was all wired up.
Yeah, he wasn't moving right,but all the stuff was measured
on a daily basis, or maybe twicedaily, for all I know.

(01:16:21):
And she said to me they refusedto sign off on the cremation
request because there was a highdosage of cocaine in his urine.
Whoa, and I said that's notpossible.
He was comatose, what are youtalking about, right?
And so she said well, they'vejust taken away his body to do

(01:16:42):
an autopsy.
Wow, and I said let me get thisstraight the city cares about
him more dead than alive,because that's a pretty
expensive process and she waslike gaining a potential crime,
right, and so, anyway, theydidn't take action.

(01:17:09):
but it was clear that there wasonly one person who could have
done it, and that was hisbrother, who was keeping his
younger brother's death wish.

Wow, that took a turn, man.
One thing I thought to ask youhadn't talked too much about the
family until that point and I'mwondering, over the four-year
period, had you had interactionwith either Nicole's or Joseph's

(01:17:43):
family?
Just thought to ask this now.

Only Joseph's father when we signed
the health care proxy and then Imet with him twice afterph died
to give him paperwork andpictures okay, but previously
over the whole four years thoughzero.
Joseph's family, okay, withnicole's family, I was able to
arrange um a rendezvous with hertwo youngest sons.

(01:18:10):
I think they might have beentwins, I don't.
I don't remember now, um, buther two, two youngest sons, and
they had a very awkward meetinguh on east 96th street in
lexington with the um husband,uh, um the father, the father of
the children, right, okay?

(01:18:32):
so he had custody of thechildren right for like 10
minutes or something like thatand we took a few photographs
and then that was it but.
But at least she got to seethem.
Interesting, but for them itwas very traumatizing, you can
imagine yeah, yeah, I couldimagine.
They were like you know, 10, 12years old or something like
that yeah, so all right.

(01:18:54):
So then and then, in the fewmonths before she died, I was
able to reconnect her with herfirstborn child, her oldest son,
who was living in Queens, andthey had a number of I don't

(01:19:16):
know three, four, five meetings.
Wow, okay, coffee, to just sortof ask questions.

How old was he?

24, 25.

Okay.

Interesting um 24, 25, okay, interesting.
Um, he's an accountant, youknow, living in ohio, okay, uh.
And then the daughter uh was upat uh union college.
It's connected.
She was a senior and I wastrying to set up something
called Miracle Messages.
It's run by a friend of minewhich helps the street homeless

(01:20:02):
reconnect with family through anintermediary.
It's a great program.
If any of your listeners arelooking for him to support,
Miracle Messages is a greatprogram.
If any of your listeners arelooking for him to support,
Miracle Messages is a wonderfulprogram that helps connect
street homeless with family inhopes that they can bring them
in basically.

Wow, yeah, that's amazing.

But Nicole was impatient and she texted
her daughter directly and thatdidn't go well.
They never saw each other.

All right, her daughter directly, and that
didn't go well.
They never saw each other.
Uh, so all right.

So there was never any action taken about
joseph, even though there wascocaine in the system and all
right, and you didn't push, Imean, you just um, you know, I
mean you know, you just, um, youknow I could have, you know,
filed some kind of a lawsuit onbehalf of the estate or
something.
I suppose I'm not sure whatwhat standing I would have had.

(01:21:00):
I mean, I guess I could haveproven the standing I'm not
really sure.
Um, it was tempting to do thatto win some kind of a settlement
that might be used to improvethe street homeless, yeah, yeah
uh, I didn't pursue it yeah andmaybe there's I even know the
actual limitations.
Maybe they are not, maybe Icould do it tomorrow, but uh,

(01:21:22):
the point was is that they hadcameras on the guy.
It's obvious that they couldhave figured out who did it.

Right, right, man, that is amazing.
So then, switching back over toNicole, so you said when she
died, so how did that happen?
That was really heavy.

I had been away on a trip.
It was like April 3rd 2018.
Nicole called me that morningand she was just full of beans,
just so full of life, so excited, and she wanted to give me
something, something I needed,some piece of paper I wanted or

(01:22:10):
something.
I don't remember what it was,but she came to my apartment
complex.
I was warned early on never lether into my apartment.
So we never did.
We always met upstairs, but thatparticular day I met her on the
27th floor at my elevator bankand the door opened up and she

(01:22:36):
looked like a million bucks,unbelievable, pulled together,
full of life, joyous, happy in away I'd never seen her before.
And she explained it to apsychologist, adjusted her
medications and she was feelingterrific, right, optimist,

(01:22:58):
everything, um.
And that was the last time Isaw her alive.
And later on we kind of piecedtogether what happened.
Again, it's a much longer story.
I'm shortening it for the sakeof the show, but basically, she

(01:23:19):
had always had a sense ofwariness and caution previously
and this medication took thataway.
And this medication took thataway and she befriended two
street homeless men who wereliving on the street near where

(01:23:42):
she had her apartment.
And that must have been, youknow a cold late march, early
april morning and she took theminside so they wouldn't freeze
to death outside.
And this went on for a coupleof nights, much to the chagrin
of the roommate who then had toleave for some kind of surgery
on her foot.
So Nicole was alone with thesemen and PS long story they

(01:24:03):
killed her and stole the TV andwhatever.
Horrible.
But it was because of themedication change.

Yeah, so she wasn't her usual self.

She wasn't suspicious, she wasn't worried,
she wasn't cautious.
She only felt guilty that shehad this warm, heated apartment
and these guys outside in thecold.

That's terrible.
Sorry to hear that so this isso.

So the way I found out was going back to
what I said earlier.
She called me every morning andthat sunday morning was a
beautiful april morning,absolutely picture perfect
gorgeous blue sky, a few cloudsfloating around and they called
income and I thought, oh well,maybe she went to the laundromat

(01:24:56):
.
I made all kinds of excuses forwhy they called income and then
I forgot about it because I wasbusy and around four or five
o'clock, um, someone I reachedout to earlier, um said have you
heard from Nicole?
I said no, I haven't.
Then I tried again and I startedto get worried, but it's

(01:25:17):
nothing I could really dobecause the person assigned to
her from the sheltering agencydidn't work weekends and I
wanted to, you know, have apolice do welfare check, but
that would have involvedbreaking down the door and it
wasn't my apartment or hers, shewas, you know.
Basically it was a lonerapartment, so to speak, and I

(01:25:41):
didn't feel I could take thatstep and I said if she's dead,
nothing's going to change if wewait till monday, but it's going
to be a long, a long way towait, but I I got the guy on the
phone first thing mondaymorning.
He wouldn't have normally goneup their offices were down by
battery park.
He wouldn't have gone up to themid bronx until the afternoon
or evening to see his clientsand said you have to go up right

(01:26:01):
away.
He dumped her.
So that was about 12 30 in theafternoon so that was about 12
30 in the afternoon.

Yeah, so it's a, it's a sad ending to you know,
this, this sort of beautifuldeed that you did, uh, and it
doesn't have this sort of liketie a bow on it.
Picture perfect ending, youknow.

No, no.
And and I should just add toyour listenership she had gotten
that because of stable housingwhich she'd been in.
Now, for how long has she beenin there?
Maybe I guess it was July, sofrom July to April, um, she um

(01:26:53):
had gotten her method introduced.
She was actually down to twounits a day, uh, which was low
enough for them to trust her totake home several days and
supply at a time.
And the day she was found shewas scheduled to get off
methadone completely.
Wow.

(01:27:13):
To get the doctor's signature,yeah.
And that same day, or maybe thenext day, she was scheduled to
start taking private classes toget her GED.
Oh, wow, yeah.

So she was really trying to keep on track.
It's a shame yeah.

But I was able, with the help of my friend
Margo, to get the Archbishop ofSt Patrick's Cathedral to do a
service for her in the?
Uh, the north part of thecathedral, uh, and when I
advertised it on facebook, 70 ofmy friends showed up.

(01:28:01):
Wow, there are so many peoplewho are so vested in her success
.
Yeah, they took out time fromtheir day at lunchtime to come
to her memorial service.

Yeah, that's really sweet.
Well, I mean, you certainlyimproved.
You know years of her life, youknow, and you know.
Of course you know I won't asklike was it all worth it or
whatnot, but like what.

It was definitely worth it yeah.

How do you feel about like in the end, how do
you feel about what you did,even though the ending, you know
, wasn't what we would want itto be.
You know how do you feel aboutit?

to be.
You know how do you feel aboutit.
Well, I know that she'd neverbeen happy in her life than
having someone to help guide her, to get things done, to allow
her to re-enter society.
Um, so I and I've had, I hadher thanks every day.
We met, yeah, um, but it was atough road, it's a tough road
yeah I found myselfintellectually challenged on

(01:29:15):
many occasions and I said tomyself there has to be a
solution.
But for god's sakes, I can'tfigure out with two ivy league
degrees.
I wonder if the people withaspa educ to figure this out.
And the answer is they don't,they don't.
And so at one point, while shewas still alive, I got a meeting

(01:29:35):
with an assistant commissionerin charge of homeless activities
there was more than one andwent through a long laundry list
of changes they needed to maketo their system to make it
accessible yeah, people, andwhat are we?

I don't think we have time to go through all that
, but what are one or two thingsthere that you talked about
with?

I don't remember I'd have to get back to
on that, sorry, okay, no,that's that's.

That's, that's all good Cause, you know it just
goes back to my question.
You know I asked earlier, likea person, your perspective and
your experiences.
Now you probably have quite alot to say about what we could
do to improve the situation,cause I mean it's, it's terribly
complex.
I mean it's, it's a problemthat's been going on for

(01:30:33):
centuries and no one has figuredit out.
Maybe I should ask you do yousee a country out there that
maybe has it figured out betterthan we do?

Oh, I think so For sure.
The richer countries, uh,norway, sweden, probably
switzerland, I had to guess yeah, off top my head yeah but
they're socialists, right?
I mean, there is a differenceyeah, yeah, um, yeah it's.

It's a complex problem for society.
I mean, not all right.
Well, um, is there anythingelse that you'd want to add?
You know about the story orabout you know your
participation, your decisionsabout homelessness?

well, only that um again, that they had
authorized the colon just wouldauthorize me to share their
story far and wide, and in doingso I'm making slow progress
towards a movie.
But we have a treatmentprepared and we have to get a

(01:31:47):
script together and we have toget financing together and all
this.
I'm certainly, if any of yourlisteners are interested,
guarantee there are a lot moretwists and turns than you've
heard today.
Yeah, and we think it would bevery compelling actually.

It is.
It is a compelling story, andthere's so much to learn in all
the twists and turns, that's forsure.

So there's that, and also, I think what
people on the street really wantis someone to listen, and even
if you can't help, bend down onyour knee and listen to them for
five or ten minutes, and if youcan buy them a meal from a
local place, do that too yeah,yeah, all right, I guess I would

(01:32:39):
so.
Just to end, so, just to clarifyor to restate when you're
street homeless, all you careabout is the next meal.
You're not writing resumes.
You're not getting figuring outwho, where you can get a
business suit from.
You're not applying for jobs.
You only care getting figuringout who, where you can get a
business suit from.
You're not applying for jobs.
You only care what happens thenext couple of hours.
Your world shrinks Right.

Incredibly Right the idea of, yeah, short and
medium term and long term goals.
You know, I think that's Outthe window.
Yeah, that's another thing thatpeople have to remember.
You know, when everyone justsays, oh, just do this or just
do that, and it's like you said,their world has to shrink.
You're just looking for yournext meal, or where are you

(01:33:18):
going to go if it rains orsomething.
And, yeah, there's definitely,you know, a perspective there
that everyone has to just keepin mind.
You know a perspective therethat everyone has to just keep
in mind.
All right, M minister, it waswonderful to talk to you again.

(01:33:40):
It's a powerful story and Iappreciate that.
You, you know you shared itwith us.
I appreciate what you did and Iappreciate everything that you
shared with us and, andeverybody, thanks for listening
or watching and, um, you knowwe'll see you next time.

Thank you very much thank you, jamie, and
thank you for helping to keepalive their memory.
I appreciate it, my pleasure.

Thank you Bye.

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