Downtown’s Cleaning Lady
The brick missing in the sidewalk in downtown Coeur d’Alene didn’t faze Sharon Halfast.
She plopped herself down on the surrounding bricks and thrust her arm into the hole. All she felt was air.
Turned out the hole was nearly 6 feet deep and about as wide. Rain water had washed away the sand fill.
“The only thing holding me up was air and bricks,” Sharon says, laughing. “I feel fortunate I found it first before someone could’ve really gotten hurt.”
Sharon arrives downtown at the crack of dawn daily to make sure she finds everything first - from the vomit frozen on the sidewalk to the branches vandals rip overnight from sapling lindens, ashes, elms and plums.
When people compliment Coeur d’Alene’s spiffy clean downtown, they are praising Sharon. She is the 60-year-old Rose Lake woman who shovels snow from sidewalk ramps at each intersection, sweeps broken bottles and condoms from sidewalks and doctors the wounded trees.
“You’re better off keeping yourself in shape,” she says, her rosy cheeks a human billboard for good health.
The Coeur d’Alene Downtown Association hired Sharon nearly five years ago to clean up downtown. It had no plan for her and no equipment.
She first walked the streets listing everything that needed her attention on Sherman, Lakeside and Front, Coeur d’Alene and Indiana.
“I’ve always been a person to fix things, take care of things,” she says, and her work-hardened fingers are proof.
She found plenty to keep her busy. There’s the ordinary: leaves in the gutters, newspapers in the tree grates. Then there’s the extraordinary: benches hacked to splinters, human waste on the sidewalk.
“When will they quit and what will be left?” Sharon says, sadly shaking her head. She protects and fusses over her territory as if it must pass inspection - and maybe it does.
“When people come up and tell me it looks so clean, I feel good,” she says. “I have a reputation to uphold.”
Snug as a bug in a rug
You don’t see them on the streets because Kootenai County’s charities take pretty good care of homeless families during the winter. But the need is there even though you can’t see it.
About a dozen churches open their doors from December through March to shelter families overnight from the cold. Parishioners cook dinners and breakfasts for their visitors, then send them on to a day shelter.
The St. Vincent de Paul Society supplies sleeping bags, cots, foam mattresses, fabric tote bags and transportation for families to and from the churches. But it always needs help.
If you can donate any of the above items or cash, call 664-3095.
Oh woe, I owe
A 25-year-old colleague of mine told me he borrowed $15,000 to earn his double bachelor’s degree. He started post-college life at the bottom of the professional ladder with $200-a-month loan payments. Those payments will nag him for another decade, but he says it was worth it.
What was so valuable to you that unending debt didn’t matter? A vintage car? Trip around the world? Entrust your priceless story to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814; send fax to 765-7149; or call 765-7128.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo