Edmonds woman raising money from roof

If you happen to be driving after dusk in downtown Edmonds, on tree-lined streets with charming small shops, you'll come across an unlikely sight on the roof of a one-story building at 523 Main Street.

There is a tent that's been Carol Schillios' home since July 31, and where she now has spent 90-some nights. She also has spent three-quarters of daytime working hours in the tent, the rest of the time climbing down the ladder to help run her store below that's also part of her cause.

In the evening, you can see Schillios sitting on the roof at a folding table, typing on her laptop. The inside of the tent is illuminated by the glow of a table lamp with a white lampshade, and a string of orange lights.

In this cluttered information age, you've gotta have a gimmick when looking for contributions to your cause, what with more than 1.5 million charities registered with the Internal Revenue Service.

Schillios wants to raise money for a number of projects — like a health clinic in Nepal. The shop she started, Fabric of Life, is part of a nonprofit (which she also started) that sells everything from skirts to necklaces made by impoverished African women.

All that's great, but in this latest fundraiser, Schillios is competing with charity stunts that include people who walk, crawl or bicycle across the country, or shave their heads, or even pose naked for calendars.

Originally, Schillios had her sights set on raising $1 million.

So far, she's collected around $72,000. She hopes to raise $100,000 by the time she ends her roof living on Nov. 21. She admits she aimed a bit high, and jokes that the wind has blown one of the zeros off her goal.

Portable potty

Living atop her shop's roof seemed unusual enough.

"It just popped into my head," Schillios says.

Of course, living on a roof does have some unforeseen problems.

There was the matter of a portable potty, one of those folding things you take on a camping trip. It was encased in a PVC structure with plastic around it for privacy.

It was 3 in the morning on Labor Day, Schillios recounted in her blog, and she had not had a full night's sleep for three days.

"The last straw came when I made a mad dash to the porta potty only to find my bathroom structure had collapsed with the flimsy 'roof' barely attached," she wrote.

"With what little dignity remained I sat in the rain thankful at least that it was too dark to be seen. At that moment the roof decided to collapse on my head."

Schillios is 57 and has traveled plenty in developing countries.

A portable-potty structure collapsing, and the rainwater puddled on top of the tarp roof pouring on top of her, she says, wasn't any big deal compared with what people in those countries live with every day.

"At that point, I told myself, you're either going to get through this with humor or come apart," she says. "So I took off my clothes and stomped around in the nude. No one could see me at 3 in the morning. I started laughing."

Right now, Schillios walks around with a little bit of a limp; recently, when the fall rains came and the temperature dipped at night, she slipped and fell on her rear end.

Since she started, she has taken two showers in a real bathroom. The other times she's used one of those camping shower rigs in which the sun heats up some water.

These days she goes a week without a shower because there isn't much sun to heat the water. "I use lots of baby powder and deodorant and stay away from people."

The two times she took a real shower were to keep meeting commitments she had set up before the stunt. She remembers those real showers quite well, and looks forward to that everyday American amenity.

"Oh, God, it was heaven," she says.

In the tent, these days she's plenty bundled up. She has one extension cord running up from her store to power her laptop, the lights and a breathing machine for her sleep apnea. There is no electric heater, as Schillios fears it'd be too much for the one extension cord and "if the homeless in Seattle can live without one, why can't I?"

Contribution basket

She's kept company by her 22-year-old cat. Schillios is twice divorced.

The husbands were "wonderful men," she says, but "because of my 'calling' I neglected my personal life ... I have no children except the children of the streets of the world."

In Edmonds, the locals take her roof living in stride.

Volunteers, including high-school students, put food in her basket. Every morning, Schillios makes her way down the ladder in the back, holding the portable-potty container atop her head for balance, and empties it in the shop's lavatory.

Across the street, Bryan Benn, manager of the Taki Tiki Bar & Grill, keeps an eye on the tent during his night shift.

"I couldn't do that," he says about living atop a roof. Benn says that sometimes at midnight, he'll hear four or five people sometimes ring the bell on the contribution basket. Schillios says that one evening, a bar patron went around the neighborhood, collecting money at the local joints, and put $250 in the basket.

Besides raising money, Schillios wanted those contributing — whether by putting money in a basket she lowered and raised from the roof, or online, or by regular mail — to write down one small thing they were doing "to make a difference in the world."

She's received hundreds of responses:

"Teaching my children tolerance." "I love someone unconditionally." "I care for my 92-year-old father in my home." "Being kind to beggars." "I baby-sit regularly for my niece."

Then there were the nastier comments.

The Fabric of Life Web page on its Web site has pictures of three girls from Bamako, Mali, in West Africa. Two are 14, the other 15.

Through "microfinancing," meaning loans of $50 to $100, the girls have been able to start producing handicrafts. The Web site says they have "gone from begging on the streets" to "business owners in 18 months."

Some commenters had another take on the assistance.

"They'd write how could I take advantage of these young girls and use them as a ploy to make money," Schillios says. "Or, 'Please, give me a break!' Or why wasn't I helping people here."

She took down the nasty comments.

"I don't know what motivation people have to put you down for helping other people," she says.

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com