‘Cosmic connection’ made at King County’s community resources exchange

Walking into the “community resources exchange” at CenturyLink Field Wednesday, it appeared as if there was one single mass of people. But upon closer inspection, you could see what makes this event work: the pairs.

More than 1,000 people dealing with homelessness showed up to the United Way event, with volunteers and guests matched up for the day.

One such pair, Kevin Henderson and volunteer Jennifer Merriwether, waited by the mobile dental clinic, immersed in conversation.

“We have found that we have this weird cosmic connection of understanding,” Merriwether said. “That we both have these same ideas about life and balance.”

“Of spirituality,” Henderson added.

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The event is not actually focused on spirituality at all. Services include dental care and mammogram tests while new eyeglasses, running shoes and haircuts are also provided.

Henderson and Merriwether stood in line for more than an hour. Henderson hoped to have six teeth pulled. Henderson’s bag sat next to them. In it: new running shoes that Henderson planned to give to a friend who needs them, Salman Rushdie book from the free book table and a new cell phone.

Henderson says he’s lived in the Seattle area for years.

“Yeah I’m down here,” he said. “I’m kinda … I’m homeless. I’ve been down here since 2004 but I’m originally from Chicago.”

He blames himself for his life on the streets.

“It’s mostly because of my choice,” he said. “I made some bad choices in life that I had to live with. I got into drugs.”

He says heroin was his problem but that he’s been clean for about seven months and is experiencing a totally new life now.

Henderson and Merriwether had recently come to the same conclusions about religion.

“I kinda grew up Jehovah’s Witness, so I’ve done time,” Henderson said. “But she grew up … What’d you grow up as?”

“Southern Baptist,” Merriwether replied. “So we both just have departed from that.”

What makes this volunteer/guest match-up somewhat unique is that the pair plan to keep in touch. Merriwether wants her new friend to check out a chill church she recently discovered in Tacoma.

Jared Erlandson, with United Way of King County, which has been organizing this one-day, annual event since 2007, says the homeless individuals who attend the event benefit from spending a day with the volunteers.

“I think it helps impact them, not just with the services &#8212 and hopefully they did get connected with services that will give them the next step &#8212 but they’re going to leave feeling like people care and that they have value,” he said.

Erlandson says families are often an invisible piece of the homeless population because kids are at school during the day and parents are often at work.

The heroin epidemic, on the other hand, has made homelessness more noticeable.

“In the population of people who are experiencing homelessness, heroin does play in,” Erlandson said. “I would not want to say all of the growth [in homelessness] is because of that. There are multiple reasons people become homeless. I would say that is one of the reasons homelessness has become more visible.”