The rocky path from skid row to redemption
From the day they pulled him off the pavement, Paul Sigler, a haunted-looking man with striking pale blue eyes, presented a mystery to Carrie Bach’s team. He wasn’t like the rest of the skid row crowd, he insisted.
“I used to be a millionaire,” he muttered. “I fell off the Empire State Building. They just fell off the curb.”
Bach, director of Los Angeles County’s effort to shelter skid row’s 50 most vulnerable homeless, knew that facades were deceptive in a population of wily hustlers and mentally ill dope fiends. One man swore he was the son of an African dictator. Others cultivated a menacing street persona they could switch on and off. Some had used fake names for years. Disguise was survival out here, Bach figured, and she felt lucky if people lifted their masks just enough for a fragmentary glimpse of the faces underneath.
