RV update: ‘Total coincidence’ that couple picked council member’s street

It turns out that the RV in front of Seattle City Councilmember Lisa Herbold’s house belongs to an expecting couple who actually intended to live in it.

Briar Rose Williams found a $1 camper online that seemed like a good fit for her, her boyfriend, baby daughter Nadia, and her new baby on the way. It was full of trash, but she knew that it just needed a good cleaning.

Who towed garbage-filled RV to council member’s house?

“We were going to intend to possibly live in it,” she said. “We just wanted to bring it, park it, clean it out, and we didn’t want to bother anyone … It was our next step out of being homeless.”

Williams’ godfather, Robert Fredricksen, is planning to put the trailer on a property in Kitsap County while building a house on the same property. The short-term plan was to find a KOA campground and stay there.

“We were never thinking about being involved in the homelessness controversy, because there was never any plan for this to be out on the street, with the kids living in it,” he said.

When they parked the trailer in Delridge, they had no idea they were parking it in front of a Seattle city council member’s home. They just wanted to temporarily park it somewhere while they cleaned it out.

Of all weeks, this was the week when former council candidate and activist Ari Hoffman had threatened in an email to the city council to tow broken-down RVs to council members’ homes if they did nothing to clean up the RVs that have sat in front of the Bikur Cholim Cemetery in Northgate for months.

On Monday, he and Dori talked of possibly buying RVs, locking them up so that no one could get in, and taking them to city government leaders’ streets as a visual protest.

When hearing of the RV in front of a council member’s home just two days later, Dori guessed that this was the work of a listener or Hoffman supporter. People who claimed they were fed up with Seattle’s RV situation rushed to the scene to turn it into a protest. During this time, someone spray-painted “DORI 4 GOV” and “LISTEN TO DORI 97.3” on the RV.

“We totally need to go to Las Vegas,” Fredricksen joked when hearing of the coincidence in his choice of RV placement.

Fredricksen, who owns a business, has also suffered from homelessness due to medical issues.

“Every time I get on a roll, I get sick again, because I’m diabetic, and when things get really stressful, I go down for a few weeks,” he said.

Dori personally gave them $100 to clean the graffiti off the trailer.

“If one of my listeners did this, I don’t want him to pay for it, because he was just being a goof on what he thought was an abandoned trailer,” he said. “I certainly don’t want you two to be out anything.”

“The fact that my radio show was broadcasting all day yesterday and one of my listeners went and did it, I wanted to make sure, for your sake, that you guys weren’t out anything …” he added. “The last thing I wanted to do was cause you any grief if this turned out to be the most stupid, ridiculous coincidence in the history of Seattle radio.”

Williams laughed that there was “no beef” between her family and the show.

“I think you’ve got a couple of new fans today,” Fredricksen said.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.