A radio station scrapped its plan to send reporters into the streets to cover the city's homeless - instead, the station opted to hire the real thing.
Harry "Hooks" Swets, who earned his nickname after losing both hands in an accident, has lived on the streets of San Francisco for 21/2 years. He began his journalism career last week as a reporter for radio station KGO."We're trying to make visible the most hidden homeless," said the 49-year-old Swets, whose crash course in broadcasting included learning to hold a microphone with his prosthetic hooks.
His beat is one of the city's most pressing problems. The city estimates its homeless population at 6,000, but advocates for the homeless say the number is several times higher.
KGO hired Swets after dropping plans to assign two reporters disguised as a homeless couple to spend two weeks on the street. It has not been decided how long Swets will work for the station.
"We wanted to get the perspective of what it's really like," said KGO news director John McConnell. "Not from a pre-established opinion, but from somebody who is actually there."
Swets said he initially was suspicious of the offer.
"At first I was real scared that I was being set up, that they were saying `Let's go out and use up his life a little bit,' " he said. "But they're following through. They've given me full access to the studio and the personnel."
Swets describes himself as homeless by choice, a sort of volunteer social worker. He said he gave up a firewood business in Mendocino on the northern California coast and moved to San Francisco after watching television reports on the homeless.
"I saw pictures of the homeless. I didn't have anybody to take care of anymore, so I said, `Let's go down on the streets and see if we can figure out what it's all about,' " he said.
One of his four daughters, 19-year-old Shiloh, is also a homeless activist who lives on the streets.
She helped him with his first story, about homeless youngsters. He found that many are running away from abusive homes, only to find more abuse on the streets.
"The kids or adults they run into are what they are going to become. Prostitutes and drug dealers are the main things," Swets said.
Swets survives by sleeping in a churchyard at night and doing volunteer work by day for the advocacy group Coalition on Home-less-ness.
The $50 he gets per story supplements his Social Security benefits, which he says amounts to about $200 a month after paying child support.
He said living on the streets has changed his view of the homeless. Before, he thought they were drug addicts and alcoholics who were to blame for their ruined lives. But not anymore.
"I've realized these people are human beings, that most of them come from abusive childhoods," he said. "Most have never known a loving relationship, and they don't have any trust in humanity."