Shopping Carts

Behold the shopping cart, the humble receptacle of convenience for your average supermarket customer. But for a homeless person like Margaret Laverne Mitchell, the woman killed by an LAPD officer during a confrontation as she pushed her cart, the wiry, modern-day beast of burden is really a system of life support.

They carry bags of groceries, sure, but shopping carts are far more versatile. They serve as a portable suitcase for transients, a go-cart for children, a laundry hamper for apartment dwellers and a barbecue pit for beachgoers. The humble carts are so popular that grocers spend millions of dollars annually trying to keep wayward carts on their property.

Authorities are on the prowl for avocado thieves, most of them narcotics users hauling the fruit away in shopping carts. Ventura County Sheriff's Dets. Mike Horne and Eric Nelson are known as the avocado cops. "We take it seriously. We're dedicated to it. When a guy comes up to us and says, 'I just lost half of my income,' that's serious," said Horne. In 1997, growers lost $609,000 to thieves taking away various kinds of crops, farm and irrigation equipment and chemicals.

Jeff Dietrich's point that giving shopping carts to street people keeps them visible to a community that would rather ignore them is absurd (Commentary, Aug. 4). Why not use the money spent on shopping carts to build a place in my neighborhood to house our brothers and sisters on the street--53rd Street and Hooper Avenue? Catholic Worker's answer to homelessness is as helpful as the new cathedral is to the church in L.A. What is the Catholic Church about these days? We have virtual armies of homeless people who roam the streets lifting whatever is not cemented down--chains don't work anymore!

The caller was outraged. "It is criminally irresponsible and a pernicious waste of money to give shopping carts to the homeless," he said, "and I intend to hold you personally responsible if one of your carts is used in a theft from my business." It's OK for Catholic Worker, a lay Catholic organization that provides services to the poor, to run a free soup kitchen.

Robert Hosey grinned with pride Monday as he showed off the spanking new shopping cart he received in exchange for a battered old one. "This one's a Cadillac," the 60-year-old homeless man said as he filled the new cart with his bedroll and crushed aluminum beer cans. "I love it." Hosey received one of the first of 100 carts bought by homeless activists and distributed on downtown's skid row in response to police confiscation of store-owned carts.