JEFF PEARLMAN

JEFF PEARLMAN

Jessie

Photo on 3-24-16 at 2.29 PM

Sitting outside a Starbucks in West Hollywood. It’s not the best place around, and at one of the tables is a homeless man. He’s dirty, wearing tattered clothes, blathering aloud to himself about experiments and Jimi Hendrix. We all ignore him, as we tend to do with homeless people talking foolishness.

Then a woman arrives.

She sits at a table, turns to the man and says, “Do you want some food?”

He approaches.

“It’s pancakes,” she says.

“Are you sure it’s OK?” he says.

“Of course,” she says. “Please.”

He returns, and starts to gobble away. I commend her on the kind act. Her name is Jessie. She says she was homeless for a month. The food, it turns out, wasn’t even hers. She saw someone else about to throw it out, and knew somebody would gladly take the leftovers. So she carried them around until arriving here.

I asked Jesse if I could speak with her and put the video on my website. She agreed …