ARTICLES

Feed Them and Run Them Out the Door

SISTER WINNIE PREACHES, ST. VINCENT DE PAUL DOES NOT

By Tom Barbarie

The ground floor of the green, two-story building on the corner of 16th and Island Avenues used to be a saloon. The second floor was a, well, a type of hotel.

"It was all full of prostitutes and it was terrible," says Sister Winnie, who is quick to point out that she is not Catholic and not a nun.

Sister Winnie (real name Winnifred M. Smith) is a grandmother who has for almost a half-century spread her religious beliefs and food around San Diego's skid row. Now the green building -- a few short blocks from St. Vincent de Paul Village, the booming Catholic facility for the poor -- houses God's Extended Hand Mission, where she says 150 to 300 meals a day are served to the people who find their way to her as they wander through the fog of destitution, drugs, hunger, and despair that pervades the neighborhood.

"Upstairs from the main mission," she says, "I have about seven little apartments. I have about nine or 10 workers that I have taken off of the streets, people who've gotten their lives straightened out. Some have been with me 10 years; some have been with me three or four years."

One of them is Richard (pronounced rih-SHARD) Daniels, 41. In 1995, Daniels found himself in San Diego with some serious problems, not the least of which was a crack cocaine habit and a taste for methamphetamine. He came south from his native Los Angeles, hoping that the change in setting would arrest his downward slide. "But you always take your problems with you," he says.

"This place is a blessing, not only to me because I'm here, but...whether [the homeless] like the preaching or not, there're not many places in San Diego to eat. This is one of the places you can come and eat. Over at St. Vincent's, they hold more people and they don't go through the preaching process...they just feed them and run them out the door. We try to serve the whole man, physically and spiritually. We try to give counsel where we can; we give clothing where we can."

For two years, Daniels has lived above the mission, where he shares in the preaching, counseling, and distribution of meals. His room is small, but clean. A portable television set and a computer vie for space with bed and dresser. He intends, he says, to be ordained and devote his life to spreading the Gospel. ("She would do it. Sister Winnie. She's a pastor.") He sits in one of the green plastic chairs arranged in rows in the empty room which serves both as sanctuary and dining room and discusses his life on drugs and in doorways.

As for St. Vincent de Paul Village, "Don't let the name fool you; it's more a social agency than it is a religious organization," he says. "I went through that program myself when I was out there. I still have a certificate where I went through the 'Challenge to Change' program over at St. Vincent de Paul -- and after I graduated from the Challenge to Change program, I didn't change."

He laughs. "Because it's psychological tricks, let me tell you. I'm not knocking the program, don't misunderstand me....What I'm saying is this, that they say, 'You get up in the morning, you look in the mirror, you say "I love myself, and today is going to be a good day and I'm going to make it."'

"So I say, okay, I'm looking good today, I'm well-dressed, I'm well-groomed, nobody's going to say 'no.' Then I go out there and 12 people say 'no.' Takes the wind right out of your sails.

"Here, I'm not depending on how I feel as to whether I have a good day or not. The Lord already knows what's going to happen, where it's going to happen, and how it's going to happen. It's not predicated on whether you say 'no' to me."

Dan DiCarlo, a spokesman for St. Vincent de Paul Village, says his organization is "an equal opportunity agency, both in our employment practices as well as in the way we treat our clientele." He adds, "We like to respect one's spirituality and religious background, so, no, we do not have any sort of forced program. Everyone is welcome to come and receive services."

But what about people like Richard Daniels who slip through the cracks and are evangelized through other means than the Catholic Church? "I think if you look at the example of Jesus Christ...he never requires that you do something in order to receive his love or service," Daniels replies. "So we have the same kind of philosophy at St. Vincent's, where anybody is welcome."

A full-time chaplain -- a nun -- is available at St. Vincent's along with a part-time chaplain, and on Sundays, Protestant services are available as well as Masses.

Sister Winnie is not affiliated with any organized religion. She has run God's Extended Hand Mission since her own recovery from alcoholism around 1950. At first she had the help of her husband, a plumber, the father of her two children. But he lost interest in her work and eventually the two were divorced. She says she devoted her life to her work to such an extent that even when her children were living at home, they would spend Christmas Day with her at the mission. She was ordained years ago, she says, by a Pentecostal church with headquarters in Kansas.

In her services, she preaches morality as she sees it. On homosexuality, she says, "God hates the sin, but loves the sinner." Abortion, she says, is justifiable in certain circumstances. "If [a pregnancy] is impairing the mother's health...and now that you've got all the drugs going on and that they're all into drugs, what chance does that child have? A child is brought into the world a drug addict...an alcoholic as well. That's a hard subject. I try not to get into it, but when they ask me, yes, I will tell them [abortion is sometimes okay]."

She continues: "We teach the Bible as the Bible is, not our interpretation of it -- or anybody else's interpretation of it. We teach it as it is. There's just too much deviation from what the Word of God says."

Services at the mission feature altar calls after the preaching. "Every service, it gives them the opportunity to repent of their sins and to accept the Lord."

Last year, Sister Winnie says, the state of California cut off the surplus food she had been receiving because she requires those who eat to attend the religious services that precede the two daily meals.

"The government said, 'You feed them first, then you preach,' and I said, 'If you feed those street people something before you have a service, you wouldn't have anybody sticking around, because some of them come specifically for the food.' And now we have those that come specifically for the service, because we have a Bible study on Monday afternoon and they come for that and there's no food served, only coffee."

Who informed her of the cutoff? "A woman from Sacramento -- but there was a man from the Food Bank. There was about four of them, I guess." Any names? "No...I don't pay much attention to it. I just told them no...I put God first, then the food second.

"(We're funded) strictly by donations. We all live a life of faith...I haven't had a salary in the whole time I've been there; none of our workers are salaried."

Bill Schmidt, program manager for the California Emergency Food Assistance Program in Sacramento, explains the regulations governing distribution of food to organizations such as God's Extended Hand Mission: "The federal government in this program...has a set of guidelines...that say that none of this food can have any conditions attached to it before it is consumed. And that can be as this organization requires, that a particular religious service be attended in order to receive the food."

Those guidelines, he adds, would also forbid organizations such as political groups from requiring people to listen to a presentation before receiving food.

"The message is clear," Schmidt says. "Any requirement, a string attached to this food...is prohibited.

"We're not talking about a prayer before the meal -- we're talking about something that's much more involved than that."