Mike Hammond may be the most thankful man you’ll ever meet.
Hammond is not homeless. But he was homeless for 17 years, and he still lives among the homeless. Six years after finding a job and home, he can still be found most every day among the ragtag community of homeless that live around the Redondo Beach pier and Veteran’s Park areas. These are the people, he says, who saw his worth as a human being when few others did. “These are my friends,” he says. “I will always come here. The homeless are some of best people in the world.”
Hammond was the recipient of what he describes as a miracle. Six years ago, he saw an ad in a local newspaper for a personal assistant. At the time he was sleeping in a garage in Gardena, at the house of a friend. His friend had rented a car for a day and Hammond, on a whim, asked him to drive to Redondo Beach. He showed up for his job interview with a beard that reached down to his belly and the weathering of two hard decades on his face. The person offering the job, a writer, told him she’d hired a family member, and he assumed that was the end of it. But what unfolded in the next few months changed his life. The writer, the author of 17 books, not only hired him but gave him a room in her house.
Now Hammond, who is 61, has reconnected with his three daughters and 13 grandchildren and, he says proudly, his newly born great-granddaughter. “It’s been a wonderful life, I must say,” Hammond says.
Among his homeless friends, Hammond tries to offer himself as an example: stay kind, keep hope, help yourself and allow yourself to be helped, and good things may happen.
– Mark McDermott
In his own words
Don’t get so downtrodden you think there is no hope. This was a miracle waiting to happen, you know? It was just an ad in the Daily Breeze; I answered the ad, I got turned down. I wasn’t disillusioned by it at all, because I expected to get turned down. I mean, who is going to hire Charles Manson, somebody who looks like that guy, right? So I just took it with a grain of salt. And a month later – I even forgot – my friend Danny goes, “Well, Mike, you know that job?” I’m thinking, “Job, what job? What are you talking about?” “The job you went and applied for.”
I said, “Well, yeah.”
“They said that you are hired, that you have the job.’ And at first I thought, well, he’s kidding – he’s trying to blow my mind. So I remembered how to get there, I took the bus all the way from Gardena, I believe it was, because I was living in his garage, and knocked on the door and they handed me the keys and said you live here now, boom. Just like that. So that was truly a miracle. Truly not expected….
I live right here in Redondo with my two bosses. They took me in off the street. I didn’t even have a bank account, I didn’t have a driver’s license. I got all that. It was just like a miracle. It’s like being made into a movie star overnight. We are going to put you in the spotlight. Now here I am. I got a job, I got food, I got a nice bedroom and a house to live in, just all of sudden. But I am the one who made it happen. If I hadn’t seen that ad… They changed my whole life by them hiring me and putting me to work. It changed everything. It just made me, even though I was a good person to begin with, it made me a lot more humble to things. Like, wow. It’s just such a mindblower. So I just try to be nice in return, on account of that nice act that was done to me. I try to be nice to everybody I come across, because you just never know.
[On how his homelessness began] Oh my gosh, just horrendous…On drugs and homeless. Not a good thing. It started when my mother passed away — I worked in the oil fields at Chevron for years, but then I got a divorce….It is just so complicated. I got custody of my three daughters, I started to raise them, and then things went bad physically. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease. So I could no longer really really hold a job at Chevron. I applied for disability and Social Security and all that stuff. I was in my late 30s when I was diagnosed. Everything just kind of spiraled. Just like that, I was homeless. It happened so fast, and when you are not thinking right to begin with — and I was always, always loaded, I was always on some kind of drugs…I mean I am talking serious drug problems and drinking problems. I don’t remember; it’s pretty darned cloudy, some of those areas. So it’s a lot of things went on real fast. [The worst part of homelessness is…] They act like you are not there. ‘Hi, good morning!’ I didn’t see any earplugs, so I know he is not listening to the radio. I know I speak English loud and clear. You know, when they won’t even look at you, they just look at the ground, what is really going on? People are losing touch. People need that human touch. All these machines, you do all this kind of crap. Please. They are just losing it….When the people just walk by and act like you are not there, that has got to be the worst. Especially when you know you have worked hard, you have raised your own kids, you went through marriage, you went through divorce, you did all these things as a single human being in your life. And then to say hello to somebody and they act like you are just not there, like you just don’t count, because you don’t have a job, or your don’t have a house, or you don’t own a car, whatever.It doesn’t do any good to go around with a chip on your shoulder hating everything just because your life is screwed up. You’ve got to get out and make it happen and knock on doors and talk to people and go through all those rejections. Because you only get stronger. And the more you are rejected — at least with me — the more people told me no, or turned their heads, the more determined I became to do something for me because they are certainly not going to do it. You’ve got to pull yourself up. You have to make it happen. And dreams, and miracles, do happen. I am an example of a miracle. I had ten dollars to my name living on a friend’s garage, on dope, alcohol, and everything else…
You just have to be good to other people, because it does come back. I get it back every day, just by some smile. Somebody comes up, “Hey Mike!” I know they are my friends – there is honesty in all this, all these homeless….they are not such bad people. That guy over there [he points] was a troublemaker one time and he’s turned his life around; he works on a boat and lives up here. He changed his life around. It works. It takes you to do it. Nobody else is going to do it. You might have to get psychological help or whatever it takes, but it’s all out there. You just have to go get it. You’ve got to open your mouth. You’ve got to say something. “Hey, I need help. I need to get off of these drugs, or whatever.”
See, the people that hired me, they had to see something…..I just want people to realize that there is nothing that is so impossible that you can’t do it. But if you are saying, ‘I just can’t, I just can’t…’ Well, then you won’t. So just get up and do something.
[On remaining part of the homeless community] I am kind of a mentor kind of guy. I have a blast out here, I really do. I don’t try to convey a message. But I do try to set an example and like my fellow man. And try not to walk around with a brick on my shoulder. Just try to be nice.These are all my friends, everybody here. And I live here, you know. The camaraderie, the brotherhood, the friendship…Even though most of them are alcoholics, and they’ve got big, big, major problems going on, either with their way of thinking or family problems or whatever it might be – they are still human beings, regardless of all that. And every one of them are just great people. They have just got a human condition, whether it’s alcoholism, or drugs, or mental, or whatever, it’s part of the human condition. Not everyone is perfect. Maybe Jesus, that is it. But as far as human beings, they are going to make a lot of mistakes. There are a lot of things going on in a human being’s life, and it’s not all roses.
