With a vest and a voice, helpers escort kids through San Francisco’s broken Tenderloin streets
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Wearing a bright safety vest with the words “Safe Passage” on the back, Tatiana Alabsi strides through San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood to its only public elementary school, navigating broken bottles and stained sleeping bags along tired streets that occasionally reek of urine.
Along the way in one of America’s most notorious neighborhoods, she calls out to politely alert people huddled on sidewalks, some holding strips of tin foil topped with illicit drugs.
“Good afternoon, happy Monday!” Alabsi says to two men, one slumped forward in a wheelchair and wearing soft hospital socks and one slipper. Her voice is cheerful, a soothing contrast to the misery on display in the 50-block neighborhood that’s wellknown for its crime, squalor and reckless abandon. “School time. Kids will be coming soon.”
Further along, Alabsi passes a man dancing in the middle of the street with his arms in the air as a squealing firetruck races by. She stops to gently touch the shoulder of a man curled up in the fetal position on the sidewalk, his head inches from the tires of a parked car.
“Are you OK?” she asks, before suggesting he move to a spot out of the sun. “Kids will be coming soon.”
Minutes later, Alabsi arrives at the Tenderloin Community Elementary School, where she is among several adults who escort dozens of children to after-school programs. The students hitch up backpacks emblazoned with Spider Man and the sisters of “Frozen,” then form two rambunctious lines that follow Alabsi like ducklings through broken streets.
The smallest ones hold hands with trusted volunteers.
Long known for its brazen open-air drug markets, chronic addiction, mental illness and homelessness, the Tenderloin neighborhood is also home to the highest concentration of kids in San Francisco, an estimated 3,000 children largely from immigrant families.
The neighborhood is rich with social services and low- income housing but the San Francisco Police Department also has seized nearly 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of narcotics in the area since last May. Of a record 806 overdose fatalities last year, about 20% were in the Tenderloin.
But amid the chaos is a vibrant community stitched together by differing languages that has found ways to protect its most vulnerable and deliver hope, something many say the city has failed to do. Officials have sent in toilets, declared a mayoral emergency and vowed to crack down on drugs, but change is glacial.