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Here we have an 82-bed "intermediate care facility" called Wincrest Nursing Center. In 2005, the Illinois Department of Public Health fined the center for the following allegation:
"Wincrest Nursing Center , an 82-bed intermediate care facility located at 6326 N. Winthrop Ave. in Chicago, has been fined $5,000 (Statement of Violation) for failure to provide adequate supervision and to take all necessary precautions to ensure a resident’s environment remains as free of accident hazards as possible. A resident, who had a history of setting fires when he was upset with his wife, started a fire in his room. The facility took no safety precautions to safeguard and closely monitor the resident after he came back early from being out on a pass because of a personal problem with his wife. The facility also failed to check the resident for smoking materials upon his return. Wincrest has requested a hearing. No hearing date has been set."
*Here you can read details of a 1976 fire at Wincrest where 23 people died of smoke inhalation.
Between web and on-the-ground research, the following report details my initial perception of Wincrest's community service.
Part One: The Place
Though nothing stands out about the place from its Google Street View, I learned over the last week that this building shelters psychiatric patients on residential Winthrop, a common foot or cycle path for Loyola students residing in the neighborhood.
An anonymous commenter on the Edgewater Crime Blotter stated that some of the "nursing home" residents are responsible for the most violent crimes in the area. A 26-year-old female living a couple blocks south avoids that stretch of Winthrop because the place "doesn't seem right. The people outside its doors seem very threatening."
And before the east end of Granville "went dry" - one area resident described his encounters with Wincrest patients on the Sun-Times website.
"The talk on the street is that they were "graduates" of the Wincrest home up the block. Wincrest is a nursing home whose residents are primarily people with mental/emotional/social/substance abuse problems. A lot of the worst winos came from there... one time I saw a guy from there come down in a wheel chair, get his booze, drink it on the sidewalk, then hobble over to the place where Sam's store adjoins the fence around the new bldg. I was more scared for him than anything, I thought he was going to break his neck! Likewise, a lot of the most persistent and scary panhandlers are Wincrest residents... I had one follow me almost all the way home from Walgreen's after dark a year ago... that REALLY creeped me out!"
The "pass" referenced by the IDPH complaint is essentially unsupervised freedom: to step out to smoke, or to walk down the street, or to plant oneself outside of the Granville CTA station to panhandle. This might not be a privilege for all of Wincrest's patients, but it is granted daily to one of the neighborhood's most notorious figures.
If you live or visit Edgewater, you might be able to guess without reading any further.
Part Two: The Person
Quoth the residents of Edgewater, "Yes!"
Yes, "the crying lady" rings a bell. One local at the Kenmore/Granville corner laundromat let me in on what he and his roommates call her:
"Sniffles."
If anything would give someone something to cry about - homelessness in America might be it. And for those whose mission it is to aid the homeless, demeaning someone who might already feel a loss of dignity ("Sniffles?!") would show tactlessness and perhaps a deficit of good character. She is harder to dismiss than most persistent beggars, and as I mentioned in a previous post, her tactics are like guilt bombs.
But the tears-streaming strategy has inflicted a Pavlovian response upon those who recognize "the crying lady." It's a pretty consistent and universal process:
1) Deep Concern:
It's a woman in hysterics. You've never seen her before. What can be done to help? She's hungry? She needs help.
Possibly, a charitable donation is doled her way; but if not, she's made an impression.
2) Concern and suspicion
She's still here? Certainly she couldn't have been ignored for an entire afternoon,
week, month? She's still crying? Does this woman need a doctor?
3) Eye-rolling/Jesting
This is theatrics! - A spiel, gimmick, shtick - call it what you will. The damn lady is still
out here crying. I don't buy it anymore.
Without fail, this is the response described to me - a dozen times over - by everyone that recognizes her. Though the phases are variant in duration, the ending result is the unanimous. What begins seeming like a crack in the foundation of society, an incomprehensible symbol of homelessness, turns sinister. Everyone begins to feel like the harmless lady who cries, whose sobs turn to shrieks as you pass by, is a public nuisance and a personal annoyance.
Part Three: The Point... or, the Problem
It was my third encounter crossing her path, but I still pitied her and wanted to help.
Her name is Jackie W---.
Jackie asked my Dad for a meal when we passed by and offered her a cup of coffee. She pointed to a BBQ joint across the street where she would order Italian Sausage and some soda.
She didn't eat it in front of us. She took it into a house where she told us she sometimes stays for $10 a night. The old woman who owns it was kind enough to her to charge so little, even allowing her to crash on the floor of a hallway when she doesn't earn enough panhandling to eat and pay the door-fee. But we weren't advised to approach the house with Jackie. She said the old woman was paranoid and would think we were cops. We thought it best not to pry any further.
We gave Jackie $20 for two night's lodging and bought her the meal. We gave her a phone number to reach her and promised we would help her get in touch with her family. After all, she was only homeless because friends abandoned her when they got drunk in Chicago and went back to Jackson, MS, without her, taking Jackie's purse unknowingly. She missed her job as a postal carrier.
She wasn't sure she had any family when I asked at first, but later said she has a 5-year-old daughter living with her sister down in Jackson.
They live at a fictional address Jackie provided me. No phone number was traced to the names. In fact, no people were traced to the names either.
Poor Jackie, I still thought.
I thought.
A few of Edgewater's shoppers let me know I would be foolish to believe her story. She'd been around much longer than 3 months. For some who moved into the area years back, they can't remember a time without Jackie's wails greeting them as they landed on Granville from their daily red-line commute home.
I still felt bad for her. Even if she was fabricating her story, I knew her name, but no one I asked about her did.
Part Four: The Proof
Jackie called me on Easter Sunday. Less than 24 hours since we parted ways, she knew I was going to try and help her. She needed some place to stay that night. When I asked what happened to the $10 we gave her to stay in the woman's house on Sunday, too, she said she'd spent it on breakfast.
She'd been resourceful enough to manage a good deal for herself. Her call was to solicit my investment. She even enlisted a broker to help iron out the deal.
His name was "Rick Sing" - an administrator at the Wincrest Nursing Center. He knew Jackie from previous stays, and was happy to see her return for help. For $100, he could slip her into her own room and lodge her for the rest of April. She wanted to stay 2 - 3 months to get herself a job while getting 3 meals a day, medical care, and a bathroom to herself.
She told me her reason for crying so much was that she was so, so, tired, and so desperate for a place to shower. Wincrest would be perfect, and Rick Sing would be her angel, if only we could spare $100 more.
She could stay for practical pennies while Mr. Sing would get her public aid to finance the remainder of her stay. It was such a professional proposal: her medical needs would be attended to by the Illinois Masonic Organization.
All for the going-under-the-table rate of one hundred dollars.
Surprised, I told Jackie this was not our agreement, but that I would investigate our options through the week. Though the noise of the day room where they placed the call was almost too loud to hear a word they said, I was able to hear the name "Bobby Bains" when I asked who I might speak to when I call back.
Two hours later, Jackie called again, telling me the administrator was getting ready to leave for the day. I told her it would take me a few days to figure everything out. A college student with no extra cash living in the south suburbs was really in no position to do anything - I thought she understood that. It was the first time I heard her not crying.
She told me she would call me back the next day.
That night, I spoke to a nurse at the facility.
When I mentioned I'd spoken to Rick Sing, the administrator, she asked me how he sounded, if he was a quick-speaking Indian. Indeed, he was certainly not Indian.
Bobby Bains is a resident there already. So is Jackie - for the last two years. Currently, she "works" for Bobby. She's a "psych" patient and a "substance abuser." He's a great administrator impersonator and a pimp.
When I asked if her employment involved dealing drugs, I was told no.
When I asked if this meant she prostitutes, I was told I'm a smart girl.
When I asked how she's able to roam the area daily, crying and panhandling, I was told "she's a citizen of the United States of America." - but thanked for the information about what she's doing.
Part Five: What in the.....?!
I called Jackie on Monday to politely let her know I knew she was already a resident in the center, told her I was sorry for her troubles, and let her know that I wouldn't be able to help her any further. I wished her the best.
She told me they were confused and referring to another Jackie.
In the last week, when I've explained to curious residents of the neighborhood and otherwise what I learned about "the crying lady" - I've been wondering if my usage of her story as a journalistic subject is ethical.
But any business is subject to the Better Business Bureau, and every bureaucracy is subject to probing from the media.
She is a substance abuser, and I noticed physical symptoms of that. Her psych classification isn't necessarily based on other mental illness. She's been specially trained by those in her circle, like Bobby Bains, how to play on the emotions of people like me to support her habit.
That's fine. It's a whole operation based on drug addiction. Sympathizers of the alleged homeless are unknowingly subsidizing them.
My question is: why is the government?
My other question is: what does "intermediate care" really mean?
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