Brian Dibley

Brian Dibley is simple. His Vendor badge number is simple. It’s #15—that means he’s been around for a long time. His smile is simple; and that’s because it’s honest. This is a true compliment. Like a few people we all know, Brian’s presence slows the world to a manageable place. His conversations keep the subjects grounded and his wit and intelligence shine in an otherwise chaotic world. He’s one of those people who reminds us to appreciate, when we often think we’re lacking.

 
Brian signed up in the vendor program in October 2007, but is only now debuting regularly as a vendor on the 16th Street Mall and Court St. He was born to an Irish Catholic family in Lockport, NY, thirty miles from the Canadian border. He was the eighth of nine children. Brian was born with a heart defect, and was kept indoors to stay “healthy” until the age of ten. “I had a lot of catching up to do! I rode a bike to get healthy!” His father, a career fifth grade school teacher, supported the family until the children got older, when his mom began to work at the local hospital, Lockport Memorial, in house keeping. At age thirteen, Brian became an avid track and field runner specializing in the, “Hop, Skip, Jump.”

In high school, Brian found a little trouble, like so many kids of that age, and left high school early. He began working installing carpeting and flooring, and at eighteen, he left New York for St. Petersburg, Florida, craving warmer weather. Of course there was a girl involved, but again, with kids that age, it’s nearly always fleeting. Brian stayed a year, working the whole time, and at 19, he returned to New York. He got a job in the same hospital with his mom. His brother Dave also worked in that department and Brian took his position when Dave became the manager.

At age 20, Brian joined the Air Force. He was a specialist in air crew life support systems, building and maintaining all the pilot safety mechanisms on a plane: parachutes, helmets, oxygen masks, etc. When asked if his work ever helped save a pilot, he smiled and said, “thank goodness, none of them ever had to try them! Those were some really good people I worked with!” He was stationed in Upstate New York, and then signed on for an extended service to be served in Okinawa, Japan. He was able to see all of the Orient, claiming Korea was his favorite because of local food.

When he returned, he moved to Denver to be close to his sister, Karen. For the first few years, he worked in construction, delivering materials. He then worked as a painter for three years, and followed that with a job at an upholstery company. They trained him from the bottom up in every aspect. Becoming a master, he worked there for fourteen years until 2006 when he had a seizure and possible heart attack. He could no longer deliver or work some of the machinery safely, and he was forced to change work.

He went back to day labor, just trying to keep above water. It was scary. “Some days, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it or not,” he said. Working with two temp agencies, Brian plowed through until 2007 when he went into full heart failure. He was hospitalized for over a month and he began the process of applying for disability. In 2008 he received aid and a pace maker, but most importantly, he got back together after a short break with his love, Manuela Shaw.

You might know Manuela from 16th Street and Tremont; she’s Vendor #12. They began dating in 2000—a storyline we can’t leave out! Introduced by Bruce Wright, Vendor #1 and VOICE Board Member, Brian has found his love. Through working at the VOICE together and saving their money, they’re working on getting married. Brian’s goals include getting into the 300 Club and furthering his life with Manuela. “The VOICE gives some people who can’t go out and do other jobs a way to make money. It gives them, and me, a sense of purpose,” he said. And Brian’s purpose is Manuela. •

Dave Atencio

Text & Photograph by Gretchen Crowe

We all know the phrase that we’re all about a month or two away from being homeless, but how many of us know someone where that has become a reality?

Dave Atencio knows this concept very well. “I never thought it could ever happen to me, but it did,” he says. For a quiet man who never expected this path, he has become quite the icon and public face of homelessness. He has been interviewed by 9 News twice, both on dealing with the extreme cold in February and on his experience as a vendor for the Denver VOICE in an upcoming story. Ironically, he never uses the word, “homeless,” in his pitch as he vends the paper.

Dave, a Denver native, was laid off in August and became homeless at the end of September. He has been staying at the Rescue Mission since. When asked if he had ever had to sleep outside, he said he was thankful that he hadn’t. Every morning he gets in the lottery for a bed, and his luck has prevailed. Dave is currently looking for full-time employment, and looks forward to reclaiming his previous life, working and living in his own place. He vends six days per week at 16th and California from around 7:30 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. “I don’t care what anybody says, vending the VOICE is hard work,” he says “I’m out doing, and I just meet fantastic people.”

He was raised by his beloved mother, Vina Atencio, who cleaned houses in (what he remembers as) Wash Park for a living. His father passed away from an auto accident when Dave was a toddler; Dave was an only child. He attended Swansea Elementary, right by the Purina factory off Highway 70. He got his GED at the beginning of his junior year at North High School, and left because he was eager to begin working. He joined the Marines and was trained as a tunnel rat; however, the Vietnam war had ended and he served his four years in San Diego. “I was a Hollywood Marine. People always ask me about the military, but I don’t like to say much about it. I’m just Dave,” he says.

In fact, Dave’s work history reads like a perfect resume. When Dave returned to Denver, he was a “suit” and worked downtown at United Bank Servicing, a company that processed checks. He worked for ten years, consistently being promoted. During that time Dave had started a family. When Norwest bought the company, he was one of the many layoffs. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for him to get another job; he found a position at Dataplex as the microfilm darkroom processor. Dave stayed in that position for nine-and-a-half years, and laughed as he recalled one funny day at work. His shirt had gotten caught in the processor and pulled him tight into it, the alarms and lights began to go off and his fellow employees rushed in to cut him free. He wasn’t hurt, but it served as a good laugh.

When Dave left Dataplex, he temped for a bit, and then began working at the front desk at the Royal Host Motel at Ogden and Colfax. It seemed an uneventful job—aside from the daily Colfax shenanigans—and he worked there for five years, until it burned down. Dave was very quick to say that no one was hurt. After the hotel shutdown, Dave ran the maintenance and grounds keeping at an apartment building in Englewood. Dave stayed there until August of 2010, when he was laid off and was unable to find another job in time to avoid losing his home, bringing us to now.

“The VOICE has put me in a great situation. I was able to save money and give something during the holiday to the kids,” Dave said, “I would really like a full-time position as a groundskeeper or maintenance-man again. I don’t want to have to ask, ‘now what do I do?’ anymore. All I can say is thank you to the VOICE. It’s been great to me. It’s a job, and I get to smile, always greet people and be courteous, just like my mom…she was strict and hard-working, but always smiling.” •

Larry Blanton

By Gretchen Crowe

Larry Blanton is using his feet to get himself healthy. Sounds fairly straight-forward, but in Larry’s story, it’s multi-surfaced.

Larry was born the oldest of four children in Orange City, Calif. on August 1, 1965. He has always known mobility issues and has always conquered them. He was born with an inverted pelvis, and after the doctors broke the pelvic bones, he was put into polio casts around his legs until around age four. He doesn’t recall too many specific memories from the casts, but he distinctly remembers getting them off. “I just kept running around like crazy. My mom says she hasn’t even caught me since.”

Again, using his feet, Larry transcended any hardships and in high school was MVP in baseball and basketball; he excelled academically as well, and he was second in his class. After graduating high school in 1984, he joined the National Guard and began managing restaurants. He moved around restaurants until his son was born in 1989, and he was a shift manager at a casino in Laughlin, Nevada. One month before his son’s first birthday, the boy’s mother disappeared, leaving Larry a single parent for four years.

Keeping steady work was difficult raising a young child, but when the mother contacted Larry and let him know she was in Denver, Larry and his son soon moved. He began low-level management jobs in warehouses, organizing fork-lift crews, inventory control, and continued to raise his son, but bringing in his mom to be a part of his life.

Around four years ago Larry had his last warehouse job in Norcross, Georgia working for the BMW plant there. He was in a traumatic car accident that again was the catalyst for future mobility problems. Despite setbacks, he also completed his Associate’s degree class work for both Psychology and Business Administration. As soon as he pays his remaining owed fees, around $1000, his diplomas will be granted.

He moved back to Las Vegas, Nevada where his mobility problems began to resurface, but without diagnosis his doctors in Nevada said he would be fine in about a year. Not surprisingly, his issues didn’t clear up. After seven months managing a law firm’s call center, Larry was laid off.

He tried for employment in Las Vegas, but he could come by nothing. To be homeless in Vegas, it’s “too wild, like a zoo,” he said. To stay safe, Larry would go out to the suburbs, find a group of foreclosed homes and break in to stay in the middle one. That way, he wouldn’t be seen or heard. “I never left a trace in case I had to come back.” During that time, he saved his money to get a Greyhound ticket back to Denver.

When he arrived in Denver, he stayed at the Samaritan House shelter. At first, he applied for jobs, interviewing on average three times per week. He walked into the Denver VOICE’s Vendor office on September 9, 2010. He thought he would use the VOICE simply to make bus fair to get to job interviews, possibly even getting a bus pass.

As he vended, standing at 18th Street and Champa, his legs were in so much pain that he went to the Stout Street Clinic at Saint Francis Center and was told he needed both knees replaced, alongside having a broken vertebrae. This came three days after starting the VOICE. It was the first he had heard of these diagnoses, and the VOICE subsequently became much more important in his daily role, seeing that interviewing for jobs was futile while waiting for such an expensive and employer-unfriendly surgery. Larry currently believes he is around six to seven months out from his surgery.

“Without the VOICE, I don’t get better. I don’t make my medical co-pay’s. It’s saving me from a life of pain. It’s saving me from a wheelchair. It’s saving me from a life of disability. And it’s saving me from falling further down, and for me, the VOICE is a step up.”

Everyday, you’ll see Larry at 18th and Champa, standing on his feet, something that so painfully affects him. But, in the long run, it will help shed those figurative polio casts again, and let him run around like crazy. •

Dennis Fee

By Gretchen Crowe

We often see the statistics of homeless veterans, and aside from an initial emotional cringe, it’s hard to really grasp what being a homeless vet means day-to-day for these individuals.  But by narrowing our focus to one individual, Dennis Fee, we begin to unpeel the multi-faceted impact, especially how the lack of housing and isolation can affect them.

Dennis Fee has been vending the VOICE for six months in Boulder, CO.  He represents approximately twenty active vendors in the Boulder metro area, including Longmont.  “Being a Vendor and the opportunity to represent the VOICE, because of what it stands for, is a blessing to stand together for the homeless.”  

Dennis is originally from White Bear Lake, Minn, not far from St. Paul.  Having one older brother, and four younger sisters, his parents, Joe and Evelyn, happily raised their two adopted sons and their biological daughters. Born on December 12, 1954, Dennis was adopted at ten months.  During high school, he noticed he wasn’t like other students, but his behaviors still remained a mystery to him until later in his life.

At 22, in the winter of 1977, he enlisted in the Navy, attending boot camp in San Diego, and having a seldom-visited home station of Alameda, Calif.  He worked on the USS Wichita as a store keeper and janitor.  He visited Japan, Hawaii and many Western seaboard cities, including Vancouver.  During his three years in the Navy, Dennis was married for the first time, and after his enlistment, they moved back to Minnesota.  In 1981, they parted ways.  He worked odd jobs for several years—the worst being a shoe salesman—until September of 1984 when he began a twenty-seven year career in private security.  He started by working in a bank lobby in a downtown St. Paul Skyway. 

In 1987, he moved to Boulder County, continuing his career in private security, and met his second wife.  However, this marriage was taxed and ended shortly thereafter in 1991 by what he called his mysterious behaviors—soon to have a name.  For the first time he was diagnosed with OCD that was affecting his daily life.  In high school, it manifested as contamination compulsions—widely recognized through movie stars—and these rituals continued.  On and off they would affect his employment, depending on their severity.  Most of his behaviors have manifested around checking door knobs, water faucets and sometimes light switches.  Dennis began to battle depression, because of the “melancholy of knowing what I suffered from.”  He tried various medications that never treated the OCD, just the depression.  “Having a recent renewed faith in God has helped me immensely,” he said.

Dennis continued to work private security—occasionally changing employers for better money, and met another woman he was with for thirteen years.   In July 2009, he lost his job due to his OCD and began the long process of applying for Social Security Disability, which still has not been accepted.  The stress of these transitions led to the end of his relationship, and he became homeless in Boulder County—where he had lived and worked for almost three decades.

In his first few days homeless, he went into the Carriage House, Boulder’s amazing day shelter that also serves as a satellite distribution center for the VOICE.  He saw a sign on the bulletin board, “Want To Be Your Own Boss?” and came into orientation.  Dennis joined the prestigious 300 Club by selling over three-hundred papers in December alone.  He wants to continue to develop his clientele and maintain this status in 300 Club. His long term goal is to work to get permanent housing and be in a place to healthily deal with his OCD. 

 “Some days it feels the whole world is against you, but I know I can survive anywhere now,” Dennis said. “I’ve met some special people in my six months being homeless.  And I’ve had two miracles through it—one is my connection to God, and the other is actually positive, knowing better who I am.”•

Brian Augustine

By Gretchen Crowe
On July 8, 1961, two extraordinary happenings occurred in Colorado. The first was that it was snowing in the mountains in July. The second, Lorene Arnoldy gave birth to her fifth child, Brian Augustine, at Denver General Hospital. Brian’s mother raised her four boys and her daughter, and as Brian said, “She raised five hellions; she really did her best.” The family moved all over the state, sometimes hopping between jobs, but often with Lorene as a stay-at-home, single mom.

Brian claims allegiance to Columbine Grade School in Boulder, Shaw Heights Junior High in Westminster and Central High in Aurora, where he finished ninth grade. Brian then began work as a dishwasher at Furr’s. “Funny thing when I left high school, I couldn’t read. I was illiterate,” he said. “Well, my family was dysfunctional; it wasn’t the best environment to learn.” In fact, a lot of Brian’s upbringing was dysfunctional. None of this can be detected from his soft demeanor and sense of awareness, all wrapped into his helpful nature. He has certainly overcome a lot.

Right at his eighteenth birthday, Brian enlisted in the Army, shipping off to Germany after boot camp. “After getting to Germany, I bought a dictionary and a copy of ‘War and Peace,’” he said. “A great read, by the way… I would read until I couldn’t understand a word. Then I would look it up, copy it and the definition down ten times in a notebook, and just keep going that way. It took me six months to get through the first third of the book, and then during the next six months, I finished the rest of it. See, my goal was to read Shakespeare and understand it. And I am proud I can read and understand it now.” He smirked as he said it. In fact, last time he was tested, Brian has a grade sixteen reading level.

While in Germany, Brian had a daughter, Hiki, who still lives in Germany and works as a translator. Brian was discharged for not being able to adapt to military life and moved back to Denver after nearly two years away. He was offered a job as a bouncer and moved up to bartender. He worked the circuit of popular clubs in the 80’s, until one day he quit to enjoy his own time. He worked various jobs at a temp agency, then got a job as a “maid” in Vail. That’s where he found Christianity, which he says has “changed and shaped my life so positively.”

About the same time, Brian went to prison for a couple of years. “I have no doubt that I deserved to be in prison at that time, but that’s where I learned to control my anger. In prison,” he says. When he got out, he went back to temp work until he hurt his back at his home in May 2007. Without being able to work and without workman’s comp, Brian has been trying to get approved for Social Security and other assistance since, which is not an easy undertaking.

Brian became “homeless” in August. It’s a vague term in his case, because August was only the point at which he couldn’t live with his other family, not actually when he lost his own place. Brian also lost his mom on November 1. He has seen a lot of pain this year.

But one positive is that he walked through the doors of the Denver VOICE. As Brian says, “I now know the meaning of my life. My mission is to make someone else’s life better. If we all did it, everyone would live much better lives.” Brian loves it that he gets to greet people everyday while vending—especially the mornings, his favorite time of the day.

Brian also says of the VOICE, “it gives us the opportunity to share. It’s a little community, if someone is hurting, we all come to together to make it better—even the most selfish of us vendors.” Brian has tapped into the immeasurable community of the VOICE Vendor Program. He hopes to someday go back to college and become a counselor. He wants to help ease the pain in this world, and with an ear like his, counseling is an appropriate and admirable goal.