Police Officer’s Act of Kindness Changed a Man’s Life After 30 Years of Homelessness

A life of living on the streets is a harsh existence where kindness and compassion are often lacking and in short supply. The Bay Area of California has been hit hard by the homeless epidemic and is home to the third-largest homeless population in the United States. 

Often times, these people living on the streets are ignored by society and forced to beg for food or a little bit of money just to get by on. Mick Myers was one of those downtrodden individuals, but an encounter with a police officer would soon send him and the officer on a path that would change both of their lives for the better. 

30 years on the streets

Thirty years is a long time and for three decades, Mick Myers had been living on the streets. Without friends or family, Mick had nobody to turn to for help and he would hope to get by from panhandling and playing his guitar on the streets. He’d belt out “Sweet Home Alabama” and other songs, but he was usually ignored. “Most of the people just hurry by and don’t even give me a glance,” he told a local news station

Mick wasn’t always homeless, of course, but his life was tough from the very beginning.

The early years of Mick’s life

When Mick was just a small baby, he was adopted by a family in San Leandro, California. Even though his adoptive mother loved and doted on him, he never developed much of a bond with his other siblings.

Even though Mick was loved by his mother, the rest of the family didn’t share the same affection for Mick. Understandably, this was hard for him and he often spent time alone in his room, isolated and feeling lonely and left out. This isolation would sadly become a theme for most of Mick’s life and times would become even worse for him as an adult.

Mick was without a connection to his past

Eventually, as Mick got older he felt more isolated and drifted away from the friends he had in high school. Because he never had much of a bond with his siblings, Mick had nobody to turn to once his mother passed away. To complicate matters even further, Mick didn’t learn that he was adopted until he was 16 and even then there was little that his adoptive parents could tell him about his biological mother. He simply didn’t have any connection to who he was.

Alone and adrift in confusion

After Mick’s adoptive parents passed, his siblings essentially cut off their contact with Mick and turned away from him. Without a solid support system, Mick set out into the world to look for work and eventually picked up work as a truck driver. It was a steady paycheck, but hardly provided much in the way of the socialization that Mick desperately needed. Life on the road was a lonely one and it would, unfortunately, get even worse.

A lost job kickstarts a downward spiral

It’s all too easy for society to blame homelessness on drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, or simply a lack of motivation. Those factors can play a part in many cases, but just as often a person’s situation is more complicated and there are numerous factors at play that have left them destitute. 

For Mick, with only a high school education and no family or friends to help him out, the little money he had from truck driving didn’t go far when he lost his job. He soon found himself homeless “living a life as alone as a person could possibly be.” That would be his life for nearly 30 years before things took an upturn.

Mick was just one of 28,000 homeless people on the street

Mick would set up his cardboard sign, and take out his guitar to sing for some spare change, but it never amounted to much. Sometimes he’d get a hot meal at one of the Bay Area’s homeless shelters, but with over 28,000 homeless people in the area, there was only so much the shelters could provide. Eventually, a policeman who routinely told Mick to stop panhandling would do something that altered Mick’s life forever. 

A panhandling citation kicks off an emotional journey

Alameda Deputy Sheriff Jacob Swalwell was used to seeing Mick around the area and regularly told him to move it along when he spotted him panhandling. It didn’t normally do much good and within a day or so Mick would be back out on the street. It’ not that he was trying to be a public nuisance, but it was all he could do to survive. Swalwell eventually decided to issue Mick a citation. “I had given him so many warnings,” recalled Swalwell. That’s when Mick told him something that sent him into action. 

“Why don’t you have any ID?”

When the deputy sheriff spotted Mick panhandling near a busy a dangerous freeway he was prepared to issue him a ticket. “So I walked up to him and asked for his ID and he told me he didn’t have any ID,” Swalwell said before adding “And I said, “Why don’t you have any ID?” 

That’s when the 67-year-old former truck driver and the 33-year-old officer began talking and Mick told him about his life. Swalwell eventually learned just how destitute Mick was and wanted to help.