NEWSBYBECKY BLANTON

What are they thinking? People obviously don't see the homeless as human or they wouldn't attempt to hire them to do most of the insane, demeaning and illegal jobs out there. Here's a small sampling:

Rob dead bodies. The Aokigahara forest at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan is the site of 50 to 100 suicides a year. The forest is too large to patrol, and authorities sweep the area only once a year. According to this documentary, the Yakuza (Japan's organized crime syndicate) pays homeless people to sneak into the forest and rob the corpses.

Murder people. He's not the only husband to order a hit on his wife, but he's one of the stupidest and most famous. The Food Network's "Calorie Commando" Juan-Carlos Cruz reportedly gave homeless men ten $100 bills, each cut in half, to kill his wife. The other half of the bills were promised to the men once the deed was done. Of course, the men reported his offer to police and Cruz was arrested.

Dumpster dive for identity theft. Police say a man named William Frelix hired homeless people to search through dumpsters at Nashville hotels to find customers' credit card information. Frelix used the numbers for over two years to buy more than $100,000 worth of stuff. The homeless didn't get much of a cut.

Despite its economic troubles, Detroit is not known for being kind to the homeless. That's too bad, since there are nearly 10,000 homeless people living there.

In October, police say that Steven James Diponio, 54, became so enraged at Charles Duncan, 42, who was homeless and sleeping behind a school near Diponio's house, that the older man beat Duncan with a baseball bat, tied him to his car bumper and dragged him down the street until neighbors stopped him. Duncan was left bleeding and battered on the sidewalk until someone called for help.

Is that what Duncan deserved for sleeping near Diponio's home? The fact is that he had little choice. There are fewer than 2,000 shelter beds for 9,500 homeless people in Detroit.

Detroit Chief Judge Pro Tem Kenneth J. King didn't consider Diponio a threat, however. He set bail at $80,000, allowing Diponio to post 10 percent of that and walk out of jail until his trial. If convicted, Diponio could get 10 years in prison, where he would probably experience being beaten senseless himself. But chances are that he won't serve that kind of time since apparently Detroit doesn't take violence against the homeless very seriously.

It's time to send the Detroit court the message that violence against the homeless calls for harsher punishment!

Being mentioned by President George H.W. Bush in a 1999 letter to the Main Street Association of Breckenridge, Texas would be heady stuff for anyone. But for friends Billy Ines, now 54, and Angel Valencia, 64, it was the highlight of their rise from homelessness to local household names.

Fame doesn't always bring fortune, though. It just opens a few more doors. Thanks to a mural painted by Ines and Valencia, Breckenridge, Texas had beat out 138 other cities to win the "State's Best Public Improvement Project." Hosted by the Texas Downtown Association, the honor helped make Breckenridge a destination city and Ines and Valencia models for what's possible — even if you've been living in a box. What it didn't do was guarantee them money or even a home. That's where business acumen and marketing skills come in.

In 1998, the year before they made headlines, Ines and Valencia were homeless in Munday, Texas, painting signs and murals, a skill Ines developed as a child. With the help of townspeople in Munday, the men got into public housing as they worked their way off the streets and focused on their small business. Their break came when they got the job in Breckenridge.

"Homelessness. It's the hardest thing ever," Ines told me. "I don't ever want to be homeless again. People think they have it bad, they need to live in a box in an alley for five and a half months like I did."

The new mural brought tourism and attention to the town of Breckenridge, but it also brought positive attention to Ines. He describes the award and the resulting publicity as "overwhelming." Demand for his talent skyrocketed, creating more business than he could handle, so Ines became a bit more selective, then later decided to quit painting murals altogether  in order to care for Valencia, his assistant. Valencia suffered from some severe health problems, including diabetes.

"It was hard, painting with one hand, taking care of Angel with the other," Ines recalls. Loyalty runs deep and Ines says Valencia was there for him when he needed help so it's only right that he return the favor. The men have worked and traveled together for years. Mural painting jobs in Breckenridge slowed down so the partners painted in surrounding towns, including Graham and Olney. They took up residence in Amarillo and lived there for about six years. Eventually they bought and renovated an old Airstream trailer and now live in it in Altus, Oklahoma.

Does Hollywood imitate life? Or does life imitate Hollywood? For the most watched television soap opera in the world (with 26 million+ viewers), the answer is, both.

Beginning tomorrow, Oct. 28, The Bold & the Beautiful will begin airing episodes featuring real homeless people. According to TV Guide, B&B producers went down to LA's Skid Row and hired 25 homeless people for the show. They filmed them telling their stories and plan to air the interviews as part of a plot line that has one of the soap opera's characters, Stephanie Forrester, who is battling terminal cancer, reaching out to the less fortunate.

CBS shouldn't have to do it all. Urge NBC and ABC to incorporate realistic portrayals of the homeless as well!

Executive producer and head writer Brad Bell says it's not a one-time thing. He has hired an additional 30 homeless people to appear as extras and says he doesn't want to drop the storyline anytime soon. He plans to make it part of The Bold & the Beautiful's holiday season. He also said that the whole experience changed him.

"This has been a huge awakening for me — I now have a real appreciation for the pillow under my head and the roof that's over me. So many people are just a paycheck away from homelessness or living in a shelter," he said. "Our entire production company has been changed by this experience. Hopefully, so has the audience. To be a great country we need to take care of these people. As they say, we're only as strong as our weakest link."

David Muniz is a homeless man in Colorado. Not so long ago he made the front page of the local Greeley Tribune because he was pushing his grocery cart and all his worldly belongings over a mountain — several mountains really — on his way to a job at Walmart in Steamboat Springs. He was also unintentionally raising awareness of homelessness. And guess what?People chipped in to buy him food, help him set up camp and supply firewood. People felt inspired by him, not sorry for him.

Another homeless man, Kevin Clarke, ran for mayor in Toronto — and had more police charges leveled against him than when he was actually a criminal. He wanted to make a statement and he did.

In Richmond, Virginia, a couple dozen homeless men and women ran a 10K last spring and are all now training for their first marathon. Hundreds of people stepped up to pay for shoes, to donate clothing and to provide food and opportunities for them.

A New York City high schooler named Rosa Bracero didn't let being evicted on the day she was supposed to take her high school graduation tests deter her from pursing a career anyway. She aced her entrance exam into Lincoln Technical College, but couldn't get in without the high school degree. People rallied around her and the city quickly backtracked, giving her the diploma.

I could list dozens, even hundreds, of examples of homeless people who don't let being homeless stop them from going after what they want. They kick the victim mentality to the curb. And guess what? People step in to help. They may not step in right away, or in the exact way we want, but trust my experience, when you work hard enough and long enough someone will notice.

"Getting back on your feet" usually means finding a new job, maybe a place to live and whatever else it takes to become independent and self-sufficient once again. But for Anne Mahlum, it means more than changes in circumstances.

If Mahlum's name sounds familiar, maybe it's because you saw her on the national news a couple years ago, recruiting homeless men to join a running club in Philadelphia. Mahlum, a serious runner, says she passed by a homeless shelter every morning on her daily run and began to develop a rapport with the men outside on the corner. One morning she had an idea: "Back On My Feet" running clubs for homeless individuals.

When her initial Philadelphia group ran its first race, the media took notice. So did coaches around America.

Dan Blankenship, a track coach in Richmond, Virginia, and some volunteers coached 20 homeless men and women to their first 10K in March 2010. Blankenship, like many others, credits Mahlum with the inspiration.

Just two years after Mahlum got started, there are Back On My Feet chapters operating in four more cities: Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Boston and Chicago. There are plans to expand to Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta and Minneapolis in 2011.

On the BOMF site Mahlum explains why running and the homeless make such a great combination: "Running is such a beautiful metaphor for life. Life is about choosing different roads and our program teaches the importance of choosing roads filled with opportunity, hope and happiness."

More than just a club and a website, Back On My Feet is a non-profit organization that truly runs in the face of traditional solutions for dealing with the homeless. BOMF  "promotes the self-sufficiency of homeless populations by engaging them in running as a means to build confidence, strength and self-esteem." What I like about the BOMF program is that Mahlum goes against the victim-model in which an organization sees homeless individuals as people to be rescued, fed and housed with no effort on their part other than showing up and filling out the paperwork.

She and BOMF require something out of the participants as well. Not everyone is eligible. Shelter staff and BOMF leaders must determine whether the participant and the program are a fit since they invest $1,800 in each runner. Participants must sign an agreement and commit to the program. It's tough. And it works. Running is more than just exercise — it's discipline, life skills, goal-setting, teamwork and self-respect. What comes out of the commitment and completion of the program are the skills and the connections that the participants will use to "get back on their feet."

A woman named Patricia Reid was recently profiled in the New York Times. She has been unemployed for four years. Before being cut loose in massive layoffs, she worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing. The biggest fear for this 57-year-old college graduate? "Becoming a bag lady."

"Bag lady" is my generation's term for "homeless old woman with everything she owns stuffed in two big shopping bags." It is a position that women, regardless of age, marital status, employment or resources, fear. It summons up visions of a "living death," of tottering down a grimy street pushing a shopping cart, dragging our eco-friendly cloth shopping bags crammed to their cloth brim with fat-free cookies, a blanket with a torn satin edging, a stuffed animal, flannel pajamas and unread copies of supermarket tabloids. Don't laugh. I asked several women just exactly what they envisioned would be IN those bags. That's what they told me they thought they might need if they wanted to pass the night on the street in comfort. Obviously they've never given serious thought to what it truly means to be homeless.

I've found that for the middle-to-upper class, "bag lady" is a euphemistic way of saying "homeless." It conveys slightly more pity than "homeless" because the stereotype doesn't include addiction of any kind, only the sheer, oppressing poverty that frightens middle-aged women living in suburbia (and maybe a little mental illness). "Bag lady" is a step above homeless because it seems more like a specter in the night than a real possibility.

Last week Time magazine reported that when a devastating earthquake killed more than 200,000 people in Haiti earlier this year, more than 75 families fled to a small church for safety. The church, owned by preacher Samuel Farncois in the Delmas district of Port-au-Prince, is no more than a small shack, but it was still a structure.

The survivors settled into a makeshift tent camp — as the homeless do everywhere. At first, when the devastation was a "natural disaster" and pity and compassion for victims was running high, the land's owner — a wealthy Haitian business woman — tolerated the survivors. But recently, once NGOs began installing latrines and providing other aid, she balked and demanded that the families leave.

According to Time, "She refused an offer to rent the land until better shelters could be found for the refugees; since then, residents say they have faced police harassment aimed at forcing them to leave. 'They tell us, 'Get out of here, you're nothing but dogs',' says Rosena Desriveaux, 21, who still lives in the Delmas camp in a threadbare tarp shelter with her unemployed husband and 8-month-old baby." She said her family has nowhere else to go.

Sound familiar? The landowner, who is known as Madame Biton, isn't stopping there. She is trying to tear down the church, which she personally approved. And, she has gone as far to have dump trucks pour loads of earthquake rubble on the lot to force people away. Call it the equivalent of police shredding tents. Biton even had the latrine walls torn down and now the refugees say they only use the facilities at night when they can't be seen.

Somebody ought to do something. Everywhere I surf, I see it — blog post after blog post, comment after comment — "Ain't it awful! Somebody ought to do something!"

I get dozens of emails a week from people asking me to "do something." Write an article, sign a petition, march in protest. They're busy, but they thought somebody ought to do something. So they started emailing their friends.

Guess what? You're that somebody, even if you're homeless.

That something can be almost anything — donating money, collecting food for the food bank, hiring a homeless person, running for office, volunteering one day or one hour at a community non-profit, helping an entrepreneur get her business off the ground, or even just babysitting someone else's child so she can go to work.

I've heard people say, "I'm homeless, so why should I do anything? What has anybody done for me?" That's the attitude that got me and so many others in tough situations in the first place. Let's turn that around. Doing something isn't about resources; it's about resourcefulness. Since when is homelessness a get-out-of-giving-back-to-your-community-free ticket? Some people are living hand-to-mouth and overextended 24/7. If you're not one of them, consider helping out. If you are, when the day comes that you're back on your feet, remember how much you would have appreciated the help.

Here's my favorite example of taking initiative on one's own behalf. I met a homeless man in Denver in 2007 who had a shopping cart filled with bundles of wood. He collected kindling and dry branches from city parks and along the road where crews were clearing brush during the day. He tied up the bundles with twine ($1 for 200' at the dollar store) and sold the bundles outside grocery and convenience stores for $10 to $20 a bundle, depending on the size and type of wood. He spent a portion of his earnings at the store and made sure the managers knew it — so they gave him permission to stand outside. He told me he was beginning to clear $200 a night when I met him and bought a small bundle of wood for a campfire. I don't think he was homeless long.

Actor Randy Quaid and his wife Evi were arrested on trespassing and burglary charges this week after they were found squatting in a ritzy home in Los Angeles they owned years ago. It's their second brush with the law over housing in a year. They were charged with skipping out on a $10,000 hotel tab in Texas in 2009. For some reason, the media is still refusing to use the "H" word — homeless.

Apparently as big a hit as some of the 59-year-old Quaid's movies were, they weren't enough to keep him afloat in a down economy with the cost of living in a California neighborhood with the likes of Oprah Winfrey.

His role as "Cousin Eddie" in the National Lampoon movies Vacation and Christmas Vacation seems to be more disturbingly real every time he runs into trouble. In the films, Quaid plays a man who is laid off from his job, trades his house for an old RV, moves his wife and two teenage kids into it and hits the road — essentially broke and homeless. He sponges off of his relative Clark, played by Chevy Chase. He asks for a "little money" from Clark  in the movie — a loan of about $52,000. Oddly, that's just a bit over his bail on this current burglary charge ($50,000).

It's sad and scary. Homelessness respects no one — even the supposedly rich and famous. Reports over the years have mentioned famous actors and actresses pawning their awards and jewelry, but this has a face to it, a face most of us know. Hurting for money is one thing, but to be arrested for squatting in a home you sold three years ago? Or stiffing a hotel owner for $10,000? That's homeless in anyone's book. So why doesn't the media just come out and say it?