It contains his ID and some family pictures. One of the pictures show all three of them posing together. It is a bit faded and torn around the edges. Carl is smiling, standing between the other two, with an arm around each. His grip is strong and his eyes still have a certain twinkle.

Carl apparently wandered away from home and somehow ended up here. He has Alzheimer's and has done this before. He's just never gone so far before. His daughter guesses some well-meaning bus driver might've given him a "courtesy ride" and he got off at the Central Station, eventually walking to the shelter. But she'll never know for sure.

They take him home.

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You'd think the biggest drug problem on the street would be heroin or crack or something. But, in my experience, it's not - it's black market prescription drugs. One guy gets a prescription filled and then sells what he doesn't necessarily need right away to others - mostly painkillers.

Sometimes there are guys who are what we call shoppers. They visit many doctors and quickly get their 'scripts filled at different locations so they'll have a big stockpile long before any computer tracking (for what that's worth) or paperwork ever catches up with them.

Jeremy M. was a client who frequented the shoppers. One night he was so zoned out on painkillers that he crawled into another man's bed, thinking it was his. I don't know that he even realized somebody else was already sleeping in it when he climbed in. The staff had to direct him back to his own bunk. We later had a behavioral health counselor talk to him, but Jeremy said he didn't want help - he could handle things on his own.

One day, Jeremy came in and was quite excited. His disability benefits had finally come through and he had cashed his check. He then proceeded to count and recount the hundreds of dollars he had with him, on a nearby desk, in full view of everybody. He kept losing count and would start over.

He finally finished and told the staff he had used some of the money to buy a plane ticket, that he planned to check out the next day and fly back east to stay with his family.

He left to eat, or so he said, but returned about an hour later with two police officers.

"I got jumped right outside the shelter," Jeremy said, "and this Mexican robbed me!" He had called the police, swearing he could identify his assailant. He then proceeded to point out every Hispanic male in sight, one by one, saying, "That's him! Oh wait, that's not the guy!"

Finally, the police questioned Jeremy instead and got to the bottom of it. He had, in fact, been robbed over a mile away - in a drug deal gone bad. Apparently the painkillers had worn off and, when he couldn't find his usual source, decided to buy some crack to take the edge off.