What Estes Park needs

On Sundays at the Estes Valley Library, I seem to be the magnet for people in need of help.

This is what I'm starting to feel like, although others (none of whom lift a finger, BTW) will swear I'm overdramatizing

I figure when they are reduced to begging for my assistance, they must really be in a bind.  There are plenty of staff people on both floors, and tens of other patrons, and I don't even pretend to humor myself that I have a sympathetic face.  They have likely exhausted all other possibilities by the time they timidly (or occasionally not so timidly, which is a whole different story but still one requiring intervention) approach me.

I'm starting to learn that, at least on weekends, and especially on the Sabbath, Estes Park has essentially zero resources (except the police, for which some of what I'm encountering seems like overkill, and probably makes the people asking for assistance skittish) to aid the recently-arrived homeless, the mentally iffy, or folks (potentially tourists, or in any event passers-through) in some kind of financial bind, for whatever reason.

I am in no way an easy mark, exactly the opposite, but I do have a soft spot for people in distress, because I have traveled often, in many foreign countries where I didn't speak the language or know the inner workings of their bus/train/subway systems, and appreciated help when it was extended.  Some lady in Numabukaro tracked me for what must have been half a mile to return a muffler I had unknowingly dropped shortly after leaving my apartment, and I didn't know the poor winded soul before or since.  Eternal thanks for returning my muffler and restoring my faith in humankind, winded Japanese lady.  Because I'm pretty sure one of your countrymen stole my bike from outside the same station two days earlier.  (But, stealing bikes is kind of a thing in Japan, and I eventually became, let's say, not immune to the activity.)

Weekends in Estes are tough, and the stories I've recently encountered leave me dubious, but it's more an issue of me not really wanting to get that involved in these people's lives, not having the energy to parse their twice-told tales, rather than me not being sympathetic.  The important point, whether they have mental issues or grifting issues or sponging issues or whatever, is not for me to sit there and unpack their baggage, but rather for me to demonstrate (to them and me) how quickly I can get them to a better place, to magically remove the stress (whether it be actual stress or the stress causing them to lie), to have them not be out in the cold in weather for which they are not appropriately dressed, as a simple example, or not be asking strangers if it is acceptable to take coins from the various fountains and wishing wells in town to get enough money to press on to their next destination.

One of my biggest disappointments last winter on a day when the temperature at 8:00 a.m. was a bitter 13 degrees below zero was watching a police volunteer at town hall tell a Hispanic woman of limited means and English fluency that no, the police could not assist her in getting the keys out of her locked car parked four blocks away, but here were the numbers of two locksmiths to call.  It was clear she didn't have a phone (she probably approached me for a phone, which is how I got involved), and she may or may not have had the $60 on hand, or whatever locksmiths charge these days.  At that point it wasn't really a matter of whether or not she should pay for a locksmith.  I just decided, on that gloriously cold day, for the greater good of humankind and to demonstrate not all of Estes Park was efficiently coldheartless, she wasn't going to pay.  But I'm cheap, so it wasn't like I stepped up to give her the money required to hire a locksmith.  I just said, with hand gestures to make it clear, "Hey, hop in my car, let's go get your car unlocked."  Easier said than done, but ultimately, done, through a bit of duplicitousness and the fact that AAA really doesn't delve into exactly whose car they are unlocking.

Estes Park makes accepting challenges like these rather difficult on weekends, especially if the crisis involves an abusive boyfriend or at least the story as presented of an abusive boyfriend/fiance and the need to reach family in Colorado Springs for help, when Crossroads is closed and the various Crisis Networks are on call rather than physically present, and the library has a rule against their phone being used for long-distance telephone calls.

I get that crisis counseling is not part of the library staff's job description, and I'm not saying staff did anything wrong in not calling someone on her behalf.  They were facing the same problem I am describing - Who exactly were they going to call?  But at the point she is approaching patrons asking for help, whether you admit to anything, or are hesitant to assign any "fault", at least admit that, exactly at that point Greenwich Mean Time, the system (as Philip Lynott once sang) has broke down.  I just don't enjoy seeing fellow human beings in distress, whether they flopped themselves on the beach or were hooked by someone who should have known better.

So since this has now happened too often, I went out today and started to educate myself on what actually is available, short of a time-reversal cloak.  Yesterday, I was too cheap to go buy her a burner phone as promised (they are no longer sold at Safeway, where they were often $20 or less, which I would have paid, and instead apparently can only be acquired now at Radio Shack, starting around $50 with zero call time - Maybe Radio Shack could start carrying some cheaper phones as a gesture of kindness, non?) but that was really all that she was requesting, just a way to call family and get some help.  And that would have solved the short term probably in the library, with all the staff standing around fishmouthed.  So after deciding I wasn't that good of a Samaritan, I talked to some other folks in town and was given recommendations to get the police involved, which turned out to be good advice because the Estes Park men in blue are the only ones who are set up to intervene in situations like this (or pretty much any situation that doesn't require immediate transport to the emergency room) on a Sunday.

But I would have preferred a female officer, and I would have preferred two burly, heavily armed males not bust down her motel room door (how she obtained a room is not a mystery, and ultimately shows that, when you arrive on a weekday, there are safety nets available that don't require my intervention), pre-ordained to be as skeptical about her story as I was in presenting it.  One doesn't like being taken in, you know.  I trust they didn't, but I'm sure they can respond if they feel I've been unfair.  I was disappointed to hear today that the people initially entrusted with getting her some help hadn't heard from her for 24 hours.  Again, I just hope if she was being honest about her situation, the police presence didn't scare her away, because if nothing else, she was vulnerable, and the road is long, with many a winding turn.

So here's what the Estes Valley Library immediately needs:  Someone other than me approaching them and donating burner phones and prepaid one hour talk time cards, or the money to purchase same.  Because I floated the idea this afternoon, but because it was me, I'm sure the library director, if the proposal ever makes it to her desk, is going to find all kinds of ways to balk.