At his darkest moments, he had army of help
After 15 years, homeless man finally gave recovery a chance
Michael Chambers' family long ago gave him up for dead, believing he'd been killed in a street fight.
You could hardly blame them: Chambers had certainly given up on himself, if not on life itself.
Dropping out of regular society, he'd taken up residence among the homeless people on Lower Wacker Drive, slowly drinking away his life.
It was a bleak existence, yet it had its appeal to Chambers, chiefly that he was free: no rules to follow, no bills to pay, nobody to whom he must answer.
Still, some little part of him always wanted to see his son and daughter again, always hoped he might yet find a way to salvage what was left of his life.
Before he could move himself to act, though, there would be another bottle of vodka to empty, another drinking binge to sleep off, another day to kill.
It went on like this for 15 years, Chambers says, long enough to develop his own survival routines.
To bathe and clean his clothes, he'd collect water dripping from the pipes beneath the Hyatt Regency Hotel near where the homeless people sleep on the sidewalk. One bucket would be placed strategically beneath the hot water drip, another beneath the cold water.
The cold water was for clothes, the hot for his sponge bath. It would take about half a day to catch enough water to do the job, he says. For privacy while bathing, he'd use a large cardboard box arranged strategically around him.
For money, there was panhandling and "watching cars" parked -- legally or not -- on Lower Wacker, the latter sometimes requiring the use of the "Men Working" signs he kept handy for that purpose.
Somebody was always coming around to feed the homeless, not that Chambers ate much. The Salvation Army Mobile Unit came every night with food, blankets and offers of help. Chambers saw them but kept clear. He wasn't ready for help.
Then, one night last January, with Chambers' 51st birthday approaching, the Salvation Army's Christine Henry flipped him her card and repeated her standard line: "Your prayers have been answered."
Later, Chambers would tell her he actually had been praying. What he told her that night was: He was ready to come in from the cold.
Henry offered to take him to detox in the vehicle the Salvation Army brings along for just that purpose. Chambers demurred. There was another bottle to kill. He'd be ready the next day, he promised.
Normally, that would be the end of it. By next morning, somebody like Chambers would have changed his mind, or, to hear Chambers tell it, whatever do-gooder group was involved would fail to follow through on its promise.
In fact, Henry was a little late the next day for the scheduled pickup, and Chambers was nowhere to be seen. But as she was preparing to give up, something stirred beneath the lump of blankets piled on the sidewalk. Out popped Chambers. He'd decided they weren't coming and had gone back to sleep.
In the months since, Chambers has been through detox, rehab, job training and even started a job.
He works salvage at a construction site, sorting the steel and brick from the wood. There's some poetic symmetry in there, as he remains his own largest salvage job.
With his work paycheck, Chambers now pays Salvation Army for his housing. He didn't much like that at first, old habits being hard to break.
One day, he went shopping on Madison Street for a new hat and caught the last bus back. Across the aisle was a woman he'd known long ago, before he'd spent seven years in prison for robbery, before the long slide into homelessness.
Realizing this woman knew his daughter, who was just an infant when he'd abandoned her, he struck up a conversation.
She was shocked to see him, also believing him dead. He was shocked when she told him he had four grandchildren.
Since then, Chambers and his children have reunited. Nancy Powers, director of the Salvation Army's Harbor Light Center, says I should see how his face lights up when he's around those grandkids. It lights up at the mere mention.
"It's like a dream or something. I talk to them every night," Chambers told me.
The Salvation Army's Red Kettles will hit the streets Nov. 13, taking donations for programs like the one that saved Chambers.
So what will Chambers do this holiday season when he passes by one of those kettles on his way to show his grandkids the store windows on State Street?
"Keep on walking," he says, grinning. "Grandkids needs clothes."
That's OK. I promise to throw in an extra buck for him.