A new pathway out of homelessness

At their second meeting, in mid-April, Dave showed Christina how to track household expenses on a spreadsheet. Mark gave Joe the name of a friend who had a warehouse job available. The job was Joe's. All he had to do was call.

He didn't.

"It's been excuse after excuse after excuse," Mark fumed in early June.

In the spring, Joe said he would start work after the children settled into their new schools. Then, he thought he should stay home while they were on summer vacation. He told Dave and Mark that he had his resume out. But he went fishing a lot.

As the weeks dragged on, no one seemed motivated to set up the third mentoring session. Dave and Mark could tell from brief phone calls with Joe that the Maestas family was struggling.

The starter switch in their '87 GMC van had died. The crankshaft was broken on their other car, an Oldsmobile with more than 100,000 miles. Grocery bills were up because the neighborhood school had not yet started serving free summer meals. The couple had missed part of a rent payment, though they caught up a few weeks later.

Dave wanted to help; how easy would it be for him to lend Joe $100 to fix the van? "But then it becomes something else and something else, and that defeats the point of teaching them to become self-reliant," he said. Instead of offering Joe cash, he gave the boys baseball gloves and the girls a few board games.

Mark was far less sympathetic. During his stretch of unemployment, he'd worked two, three, four part-time jobs to keep his family afloat. Joe's laid-back attitude annoyed him.

"He's a really likable, good-hearted guy, but it's like, what are you doing, dude?" Mark said. "It's like they don't want to get ahead."

He tried to remind himself that he was there to serve the family, not to impose his values on them.

"When you're a Type A person like I am, it's frustrating, but I can't nag Joe," Mark said. "I can't judge him. It's not my life. All I can do is try to help him."

Changing minds

Through the summer, as they struggled to keep their frustration in check, Mark and Dave watched the Maestases closely over several meetings. They saw a family that worked.

Joe brushed the snarls out of Angel's thick brown hair. He took Corie fishing, and when she caught an 18-inch trout, he brought it back to show Christina.