Grand Lake neighbors mourn proud Mary

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Jul 1, 2006 | by Susan McDonough, STAFF WRITER

OAKLAND -- A handful of people held a memorial service this week for a woman who, had she been invited, probably would not have come.

Oh, she might have accepted the invitation, been delighted even. But in the end, the homeless woman people in Oakland's Grand Lake neighborhood knew only as Mary would just as soon decline.

That is how a small group of shop owners on Lakeshore Avenue and neighbors remembered her Thursday at a service in the back room of a Lakeshore Avenue church.

Mary spent the last eight years in this neighborhood near Lake Merritt. She slept with a light blanket on a broken-down cardboard box in places such as Splash Pad Park or more recently in the parking lot of the closed Albertons on Lakeshore Avenue.

Paramedics found her there June 15 suffering from a ruptured stomach ulcer, the Alameda County Coroner's Office said. She died a day later at Highland Hospital, and sheriff's deputies are still trying to identify her.

"There is so much we didn't know," the Rev. Jim Hopkins, pastor of Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, said at her service, where a handful of people described a woman who liked to sip tea at Colonial Donuts and kept herself immaculately clean, even stylish, despite what some say was probably 20 years on the street.

This much the small group whoknew of and cared about her did know:

- Mary wasn't interested in moving to a shelter, although social workers like Kathy McCarthy, a case worker at St. Mary's Center, tried.

- She wouldn't accept a room from a sympathetic stranger or sleep in an old van a man from the neighborhood offered.

- She refused medical care one day not long ago when a police officer and Oakland City Councilmember Desley Brooks found her sitting on a curb with her head down and complaining of a persistent cough.

On the right day, in the right mood, Mary might consider the help, but in the end, there was always some excuse.

McCarthy said Mary was one of many homeless and mentally ill who cannot say yes to help.

Although if something appealed to Mary, apparently she wasn't immune. Neighbor Ken Katz remembered Thursday a time when someone in the neighborhood offered her a warm coat to get through the winter.

"It depends on what it looks like," she said.

Lisa Flores said Mary was so unthreatening she hired her several years ago to work in her Lakeshore Avenue dry cleaners.

She lasted three days.

Flores said she felt bad letting Mary go, but in the three days she worked for her she had only washed one shirt.

Mary told her politely, "Well, I am not a machine."

Flores remembered Thursday making a check out to a Mary Sandoval, although she told others her last name was Cline.

She is a Jane Doe at the Alameda County Coroner's office, where records show she was likely in her 50s when she died. She told others she was 65, and some people remember she said she had family in Richmond.

Mary's politeness might have kept her from getting the help she needed, McCarthy said.

Authorities can only forcibly hospitalize the homeless if they threaten the public or themselves, and even then only for a limited time, she said.

"The quiet ones die on the street."

E-mail Susan McDonough at smcdonough@angnewspapers.com