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Notes -
As I looked out my window, I saw the park across from my house. But something was wrong. There was a man sleeping in the park, by the playground fence, in the middle of winter.
I’ve been tracking the weather closely because our fridge went out and we are keeping our cold stuff in the garage. It’s a constant struggle to make sure food doesn’t get too warm or too cold. Lately the outside temperature has been getting down into the single digits at night and while the garage stays a bit warmer it has been hard to keep our food from freezing.
I knew it was under 10 degrees outside and no one can sleep on the ground in that cold. At least, not without a lot more equipment than he had on. This man didn’t even have a hat. So I worried that he might be dying.
As I got myself ready to go outside and check on him I imagined how the interaction might go. I know vagrants can be volatile, unpredictable, and dirty. I thought I would talk to him, tell him he needed to go, maybe offer to take him to a shelter in my car. I could give him my extra winter hat and one of my coats. I was loathe to invite him into my house with my wife and child but my car could be okay. I toyed with the idea of just calling 911 and not interacting with him at all. But I figured I would first observe up close and make a judgment call.
With my winter gear donned, I stepped out the door and walked to where he was laying. I spoke to him, “Hey man, it’s too cold out here. Can I take you somewhere warm?” or something like that. It was quickly apparent that my fears of him were misplaced. He was breathing and shivering slightly. His eyes were open. There was a pain in them, animal-like. Sadness without language. His fingers were curled and stiff. He was in far worse shape than I had imagined him to be.
I called 911 and moved my car closer to the park as a potential warm haven for him. The ambulance was on the way, and we live very close to the hospital so I knew it wouldn’t be long. Approaching the man again, I saw that walking would be out of the picture and to move him would require that he be physically carried. I wasn’t confident in my ability to do so. He was breathing heavily and his eyes were darting around. His limbs looked frozen and stiff.
He appeared to be of Hispanic background, about 50 years old, short with a slim build. And as the ambulance was coming in a few minutes, I decided to do what I could to keep him warm. I put my coat over him and placed my hands on his cold skin. I said whatever little prayers I know from the liturgy in Spanish - “lord have mercy” and “the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit”. I played the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish on my phone and I lay next to him, covering us both with my coat to warm his body with mine. I reverted to praying in English since my Spanish is so limited.
Within a few minutes I heard the ambulance approaching. Still laying next to him, I waved the paramedics in. My hands felt like they were freezing, being outside only 10 minutes or so in the 8 degree weather. His fingers had a grey hue to them and seemed frozen stiff.
The paramedics parked and approached with a stretcher and I gathered my coat and walked off. They didn’t say much to me. One asked me if he had spoken (“not a word”) and one said thanks for calling. The four of them easily lifted him onto the stretcher and took him away.
I didn’t know how much my interventions mattered, besides calling the ambulance. Perhaps someone else would have called the ambulance if I had not. But it’s easy to get used to vagrants sleeping on the ground in an urban area and not put the facts together that given the weather and his dress it was an emergency situation. When there is a crisis, it’s easy for everybody to assume that someone else will handle it. I felt there was a chance that had I not called 911 then the next time my family went outside we would have been greeted by a corpse.
Later, trying to make sense of the incident, I asked Grok about the details of hypothermia and found it was a somewhat less urgent situation than I imagined. The man likely had been outside for 1-2 hours and likely would have been dead in about 3 more. Grok gives a big range of 2-12 hours for death by exposure in similar situations, varying based on the size and health of the person and whether or not they had any alcohol and drugs in their system.
I don’t know anything about the man but I can guess given the circumstances he found himself in. It’s likely that he was new to town and unfamiliar with the homeless support system. He had no friends or family nearby that cared about him. It’s quite possible that he was an illegal migrant — there are quite a few in my city, and my city has declared that it will not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts.
Politically, I am an immigration restrictionist and fairly onboard with MAGA. I don’t see a contradiction in saving a migrant’s life in a tragic situation, and advocating that there be fewer such tragic situations, thousands of miles from home. I am in the party that insists on following the rules, because after a complicated calculus of plusses and minuses I think they make the world a better place. Had the man been picked up by ICE and sent back to Honduras or Ecuador or wherever he came from, I don’t view that as an inhumane outcome compared to a lonely death in a strange land.
The more extreme people on the political left, the kind currently protesting ICE in Minnesota, call people like me “nazis”. Well, if I am a nazi, I am one with a soft heart.
But I’m just guessing about the man’s circumstances. Perhaps he is a legal resident with mental illness or a drug abuse problem who somehow fell through the cracks.
Grok thinks the man will make a full recovery. Probably today, he will be released from the hospital. To go where, is the question. Who will take him in? Where does he belong? Who cares for him? Will he find himself in the same situation again? A blizzard is coming tomorrow.
May the Lord have mercy on us in this deep winter.
You also called the hospital to leave your financial details right? To make good on the bill in case that man can't pay. Otherwise, net-tax payers and/or patients who do pay their hospital bills will find themselves in the situation of subsidizing your decision-making. Generally, the rule is that a bill is paid by the person or entity who requested the good or service.
Your choice, at the margin, increased such situations. Whether it be with this migrant in the future finding himself in such situations again, or if other (potential) migrants hear yet another story of the soft-heartedness of gringos and the ultra low cost of consuming public services in the EEUU ($0).
That's why they call people like you "nazis" and why the discourse is so one-sided. Because it works.
Because you (the general you) have a soft heart and care what they call you, whereas they have a hard heart toward you and people like you and don't care what you call them. Calling you "nazi" gets you to do more of what they want and do less of what they don't want. It makes you shy away from fighting them head on and instead turn toward policing yourself and your own side for Empathy and Compassion, for Going too Far. And then if you're religious they also have the "No, I'm not Christian and I have nothing but contempt for your backwards beliefs" card to play.
For this reason I would had called emergency services to come pick him up, to spare my family this unpleasant sight.
Indeed. The fact he reacted to a homeless guy sleeping in a park within sight of his house with “Won’t someone think of the poor homeless guy and help him” is exactly why we are in this mess in the first place. We need more people whose first thought is “Ew, get that disgusting bum out of my park” if we are ever to have hope of solving this.
We don't need that at all. Indeed, if those people were to stop there (though in fairness you didn't say that should be their only thought) they would be evil people indeed, so if anything I think we very much need fewer such people. What we need in order to solve the immigration problems we have is people who are compassionate, but don't let that impulse override every other consideration. We can, and should, try to help the less fortunate, but also take into account whether third parties will be hurt by our attempts to do so.
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I do have a bit of feeling of disgust at the sight of a homeless man in the park. Hostility even. It offends me as a sign of lack of public order and I resent the inconvenience I’ve undergone throughout my lifetime on their behalf. But I’m also a Christian and I’m bound to help a fellow man, even if I resent his presence.
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