So obviously the library doesn't read my stuff

Mark - Just a more formal follow-up to our informal conversation.  I don't know if Laura passed on my request to you, or if I made it clear enough during our friendly discussion.

It is clear, from my cursory research of the available "safety nets" available for the stranded/homeless/troubled/abused who find themselves in Estes Park on weekends, particularly on Sunday, that everything pretty much aid-wise or shoulder to cry on-wise has to be funneled through the police.  

That is just the way it is, and in some cases, the police may be the best equipped to handle whatever it is that these individuals are in need of.  But with the two most recent cases where I've been approached in the library for help (again, I am not saying that staff wasn't doing all they could, but at the point individuals are approaching patrons, they apparently don't think they are getting the help they need, or think the only possibility of help can come from sympathetic "ordinary folks" rather than library staff), it is clear the police will likely just make these individuals even more skittish. 

Again, I am not attempting to be an apologist or bleeding heart for people who in some 
cases are professional scam artist and are likely trying to game the system, but I felt particularly bad when, in follow-up with the Estes Valley Crisis Advocates, the individual last Sunday with the (admittedly well-rehearsed) story of a boyfriend abusing her had not been heard from since, after I got the police involved to see if someone could provide her with a telephone to make a long distance call, because I had no other choice (and other patrons probably sensed the difficulty of providing a phone to someone they didn't know, to make a call to someone that may have been potentially violent or abusive, especially where their number would then be displayed on his screen).  This I see as a potential failure of the system (especially if she was being honest, or as honest as she could be with strangers, perhaps she was a criminal and needed to be rousted from town, but that would not be information available to me or to the library without access to background checks, it's just a matter of hearing their story and making an on-the-spot decision).

 

Since I am generally looking for more solution-based approaches, I think, if the library's pay phone doesn't have the ability to make long distance calls with quarters (I don't know if phone cards even exist anymore), I have no problem donating one or more no-contract "burner" phones and 1-hour time cards to the library to solve what seems to be a simple problem.  I recognize that the library may not want to handle these issues, but as the sole downtown "non-judgmental" or "forced to assist in some limited way by the nature of their mission statement" center for these situations open on weekends (besides the police), sometimes all you need to do to solve the problem short-term is just provide what these folks are asking for on an emergency "one-time only" ad hoc basis.  If this individual last Sunday began to make additional demands after being provided with one long-distance telephone call of 10-15 minutes duration, then it would become immediately clear that she had other issues way outside the purview of anyone's ability to help besides a professional, and at that point I wouldn't feel a bit bad about staff suggesting the only solution was for her to leave, and get assistance from Crisis Advocates or the police (and on weekends, Crisis Advocates calls are funneled through the police).  

If there were people out there looking to scam the library for free long-distance phone calls, and word got around among the hobo community that the Estes Valley Library was an easy mark on Sundays and the phones got stolen and the cards used up within a month, you could write it off to "at least we tried".

Tracfone currently sells these models for $5 each