I interviewed a registered sex offender for food
Before he moved into the Stay Plus Inn, Steven Baumgartner stayed under an overpass in Orlando, Florida, the home of Disney World.
That was the only place he could stay as a registered sex offender.
I met him as part of the “Will Write for Food” (WWFF) program, a delightfully off-brand, immersive journalism experience run by the Society of Professional Journalists Region 3 board member annually over Labor Day weekend for more than a decade.
Students, some from as far away as Alaska, had 36 hours to produce a copy of the Coalition of Service and Charity (COSAC) Foundation’s “The Homeless Voice” newspaper.
I was accepted in 2014 and offered a travel stipend of $100.
The following year, the city got rid of the shelter, which had bouts of bedbugs and an occasional fire, by paying Cononie and making him promise to leave.
“Hollywood wanted to redevelop downtown, so they bought all the buildings I had for $5 million,” he told a local news station. “They told me I could come back in 30 years, but they didn’t want to open it up to the homeless – and made me sign a contract to make sure I stopped.”
So, he bought the Stay Plus Inn in Davie, Florida, and bused as many of Hollywood’s homeless as cared to go to the motel.
In 2016, I was invited along with WWFF alumni to produce a paper in the new location.
I featured Baumgartner in that issue.
He was grateful to have a place to sleep indoors with running water for a while, but Baumgartner wasn’t sure how long he would be allowed to stay in that motel room, either.
He had finished his prison sentence; it had been more than three decades since his conviction, but he couldn’t find stable housing.
As I wrote up my feature in one of the motel rooms, Baumgartner overdosed on his antipsychotic medication in a suicide attempt.
Another student reported minute by minute as COSAC staff with emergency medical training helped Baumgartner.
The ambulance took more than half an hour to arrive.
“A nursing home resident wouldn’t have waited this long,” someone suggested as we journalism students gathered under an awning outside the main office.
I caught the tail end of Baumgartner’s body on a gurney wheeled by me and into a bright red metal box with flashing lights, but no sirens.
No hurry to pick up from the motel housing the homeless.
No one smiled in any of the photos I took that night.