He gave us something to mourn

On Aug. 5, Philip Carrasco jumped off the 12th Avenue South Bridge.

He was the sixth Seattle homeless person this year to commit suicide.

I know what some of you are thinking. One only needs to dip a toe into the online reader comments on our stories about the homeless to feel a certain coldness; a numbing, courtesy of those who have become numb.

One less loser, right? One less mouth for our tax dollars to feed. One less lazybones who couldn't get his act together, despite the services offered, the meals ladled out, the shelters and the tent cities. Good riddance.

I went to a memorial for Carrasco the other day with those thoughts in mind. I stood in the noon sun with the Women in Black, who mark the death of every homeless person in Seattle with a vigil across the street from City Hall.

People assured me that Carrasco, 55, was someone special.

"He seemed to have the most promise, the most leadership, as opposed to some of the clients we see," said Patricia Kushmerick, a volunteer at the North Helpline and Food Bank in Lake City. "I'm surprised how much his death has impacted me."

Carrasco had been on the streets for 15 years until last November, when he moved into a "supportive house" run by the Seattle Mennonite Church in the Lake City neighborhood.

Pastor Jonathan Neufeld said Carrasco was "like Moses," in that he took care of his people. He directed the newly homeless to services and discouraged them from panhandling (my personal numb spot).

Carrasco was a day laborer who also sold Real Change. He went to the food bank, but then used what he got to make meals for large groups at the church and in his housing unit. Cooking and eating together, he believed, was a way to build community.

"Being homeless, for Phil, had become a profound act of solidarity," Neufeld said. "He became homeless by necessity and his years on the street turned into a calling, somehow. He wasn't out there as a leech. He moved through his day looking for someone who was more vulnerable than he."

Carrasco all but bullied the church to start a day center, "Stop, Drop and Roll," where people without a home could leave their belongings for a day, get a bus pass, and take care of business.

He called the center "God's little acre," and compared it to an African watering hole, "where many different animals could drink, and not consume each other," Neufeld recalled.

The last time Neufeld saw Carrasco was when the pastor visited him at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System on Beacon Hill, where he was being treated for dehydration and, later, depression.

No one is sure when he was released. VA spokesman Ken LeBlond cited patient privacy laws, and Neufeld is still struggling with what led to that morning on the bridge.

I hope it wasn't us. Our coldness. The numbness that comes from living in a place where cardboard signs are on almost every freeway offramp. I can feel it, more than I like to admit.

So why should we mourn Phil Carrasco?

"He was a human being who belongs to us," said Pastor Linda Smith of the Church of Mary Magdalene, and one of the Women in Black. "We're really self-serving in today's time. But if we all cared about each other a little more, maybe it would have made a difference."

Said Neufeld: "Despite all the trauma and pain and suffering around him, Phil believed the world was turning towards good. And that good includes everyone."

In other words, he thought better of us than we deserved. And that is something to mourn.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

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