Throw-Away Kids

As the early morning hours slowly creep away, a small boy can be seen making his way through the desolate streets towards the Fullerton train station. He pauses as he crosses the street, not for fear of any passing cars; he simply wants to avoid any incursion with the police. His name is Danny.

After making sure the coast is clear he darts quickly across the street and walks to the station. There he is met by a group of his friends. They gather here periodically, trading stories of dangers braved, money collected and drunken escapades. These are the homeless kids of Fullerton, the Throw-Away kids. Danny has lived on the streets of Fullerton since he was 14-years-old, claiming problems with his mother as the explanation of his homelessness. Danny doesn't seem big enough for the world - he is rail thin and frail, but the force of his personality overwhelms all appearances.

Standing next to him, the full impact of his strangeness hits you. His dirty, matted length of brown hair, cut into a sloppy Mohawk, dangles in front of his constantly darting eyes. It flops awkwardly over his face and he is constantly pushing it back over his head. He wears the same raggedy, tightly fitted red plaid pants everyday. They are shredded, with large holes, but he doesn't seem to mind.

Every night after he's had his fill of booze, Danny goes to sleep in a heavily dented Geo Metro. It doesn't run, but it gives his some shelter from the cold. He pushes it to a different parking spot every night so it doesn't get towed. It's not a very comfortable spot to sleep, but it is better than his last squat where he got a staff infection from a spider bite.

Before a friend gave him the car, Danny lived in the back of an abandoned trailer with his pet rat. He claims that the rat was his best friend. He talked to it, fed it and slept with it. Sometimes they would drink together. Danny would pour a little beer into the cap of his forty and the rat would run up, grasp the cap in its two front paws and lap up the beer. Danny even used the rat as a tooth-brush. He would give the rat a wide grin and it would lick the plaque off of his teeth, using his bottom lip as support for its front paws. Danny rolled over in his sleep one night severely injuring the rat. Danny wound up killing the rat after its injuries didn't get any better after a couple of days.

"It was the worst day of my life," Danny said.

While he may be homeless, Danny has a great sense of humor and is always ready with a smile or a joke. He spends most of his time drinking and hanging out with the steady stream of homeless kids who follow the railroad from San Francisco to San Diego. With the rail lines handy, there are always new faces shifting through the train station where Danny and the other young homeless in Fullerton spend a great deal of their time.

On Friday and Saturday nights there are upwards of twenty kids who gather at The Office, an area of the train station at the far end, by the Old Spaghetti Factory.

Currently there are over 16,355 homeless kids in Orange County. Homeless kids on the streets of America represent the largest growing population of homeless at twenty-seven percent. One of the richest counties in the state, it seems strange that most of these kids receive no assistance other than the occasional kindness of strangers. They wander the streets helpless, with no hope for the future. Most people they pass by won't even make eye contact with them. People look around them; they are invisible or worse, detested.

"I remember once I went home just to, ya know, take a shower and maybe get some food. It had been a while since I showered, at least a couple of weeks. I was sitting on the couch, taking off my shoes and my mom just freaked. She threw me out," Danny said as he sat at a park bench drinking King Cobra. He looked disheveled as usual, though he had a peculiar light in his eyes.

These homeless kids are often called Throw-Away Kids because many of their parents do not care where they are or what they do. They wander the streets looking for others of their kind. Friends never seem to be in short supply.

Many times their parents are drug addicts, or they come from a home where they were either physically or sexually abused.

One boy named Robert is kicked out of his house every morning and told by his mother, a short, haggard looking loud-mouthed woman who is addicted to methamphetamine, not to come home until after dark. Robert is a small 14-year-old boy weighing about 90 pounds. He has blonde hair and his two front teeth are cracked with one shorter than the other. He smokes pot and drinks every day as he rides his stolen bicycle from place to place to meet with friends around the city. When he is met by Fullerton Police late at night, he is simply told to go home. He typically sprouts some quick bursts of profanity and speeds off into the darkness to some unknown destination.

"I'd rather be about anywhere than home," Robert said.

You'll rarely, if ever, see one of these Throw-Away kids on their own. They travel in groups to protect themselves from things that an average person wouldn't even think about, but is a constant worry for these kids. They're distrustful of strangers, especially adults, and tend to form tight-knit groups.

Many of them have been attacked by pedophiles or by roving gangs as they sleep or wander the streets at night. One kid who was sleeping next to the train tracks in Fullerton was severely beaten and stabbed repeatedly in his wrist and hands for simply sleeping on gang territory.

On any given day 13 of these Throw-Away kids will die on American streets. Some are raped. Some are beaten to death, shot or stabbed. What makes the situation even worse is that the only help these kids ever get from police is constant harassment. They are given tickets for loitering, camping, or panhandling, which is their only source of income besides prostitution. Since they have no income these tickets usually turn into warrants and the kids are eventually arrested for simply trying to survive.