Helping her head home

It was at the end of July, during the Dog Days of Summer, last year when the topic of Malta’s lone homeless person, very new to the area, became a popular topic on a Facebook page dedicated to things to complain about. But instead of complaining about this new visitor, people wondered what her story was and how she could be helped.

Enter Jerry Lytle, Deputy Sheriff at the Phillips County Sheriff’s Office. Lytle was one of the 200 people to see the post about the woman and he decided to put his investigation skills to work. About a month later, Deputy Lytle posted an update to the “complain about” site with the new news.

“She was actually a missing person out of California,” Deputy Lytle said. “She gave us a false name to begin with so she was hard to track down, but eventually someone talked with her and got her real name.”

In the meantime, the Malta visitor, named Karen, was seen around town during the day sitting outside local establishments and at nights it was reported that she was sleeping in the bathrooms at Veteran’s Memorial and Trafton Parks and the Amtrak station. Deputy Lytle said that he talked with several of Karen’s relatives, scattered throughout the country, but none seemed much interested in returning his calls.

“She is relatively harmless,” Deputy Lytle said. “It just seems like she likes the homeless lifestyle and doesn’t like living indoors.”

Phillips County community members started to take notice of Karen and understand her plight. She received help in obtaining benefits for food and got helped moving into an apartment (though she didn’t stay there long because she preferred the great outdoors.) But as the summer was growing to a close, Deputy Lytle and the rest of Karen’s new friends started to worry that once fall hit, sleeping outside would be much less desirable and once winter arrived, sleeping outside would not be an option.

“We got ahold of adult protective services and there wasn’t much they could do for her,” deputy Lyle said. “I called up Gina Simanton and got a train ticket for (Karen) and told Susan Green, make sure she gets on the train.”

Deputy Lytle was finally able to find a member of Karen’s family that was willing to help. He bought her a one-way ticket to Florida so we could get her down there for the winter.”

One of the establishments Karen liked to sit in front of was the Mint Bar (at least when the sun was shining.) People at the Mint , befriended Karen during her Malta stay and learned more about her (which assisted Deputy Lytle in finding her Florida relative.) Once the folks at the Mint learned that Deputy Lytle had paid for Karen’s train ticket out of his own pocket, donations started pouring in at the bar.

“They reimbursed me for the ticket and had enough extra money to send her home with gift cards so she could eat on the trip home,” Lytle said.

Green (charged with insuring Karen made her train trip) met Karen at the Mint Bar and was one of the 20 or so people who took an interest in Karen and wanted to help her get home. A group of people assisted Karen to the Amtrak train station in November – Karen took up residence at a local motel when it got too cold out – and saw that she got aboard. It was a few days later that Green posted that Karen had finally made it home. Since then, Green has talked to Karen once a week to see how she is doing.

“Today I called her so we could add more minutes to her phone,” Green said last Thursday. Green added that the donations of cash for Green didn’t stop with the train ticket and the day before, two more $20 bills were dropped off to help pay for the minutes on Karen’s cell phone.

“She is good through March,” Green said of the cellphone. “She is doing well and, in fact, said she wants to come back and visit all of us and is aiming for the spring, before the mosquitoes show up, but after the cold. She is very appreciative of everything that was done for her.”