CHICO — As Anthony Lewis and Deashauna Hannah cuddle down into their bright blue sleeping bags on the frosty December morning they look like they're camping, but they are not. They are home.
They haven't known each other very long but they have established their home under a bridge that crosses Little Chico Creek.
While their domicile is humble it is not without its amenities.
They sleep on a concrete platform several feet above the water's edge. Their sleeping nest is situated on a wide, if thin mattress.
A collection of keepsakes, including a cow's skull, a small ceramic gnome and a stone frog rest on a backless chair that is pressed against one of the concrete pillars that hold up the bridge. Elsewhere, what appears to be the disembodied head of a small stuffed Star Wars Yoda-figure lies on the ground.
These are the treasures of individuals who have very little in a material sense to treasure, but still it is home. At least it is home enough that this is where their parole officers come to check on them.
Like many of the homeless Lewis and Hannah have criminal records.
Lewis, 30, who is soft-spoken and apparently reserved, said at least in part his path to living under a bridge began when he was 18.
At that age he was arrested on eight counts of car theft and he had a gun in his possession when he was busted.
He said he had the gun because he intended to by $12,000 worth of drugs when the police caught him and a "large amount of money and drugs" meant anything could happen. Lewis said the gun charge gives you "10 years (in prison) right off the bat," and he served seven years.
The prison record, according to Lewis, has made getting a job a problem.
"With six or seven years in prison, what do you put on your resume?" Hannah, 26, who often goes by the name of "Star," said she's been to prison as well. She explained she has done time for forgery and receiving stolen property.
She said she was using methamphetamine and heroin, and paying for that is what led to her crimes.
Most of the hard-core homeless, the people who live outdoors full-time, either have prison history or they are emotionally unstable, according to Hannah. She said she's been on the street off and on for years, but it was in 2008 when her father died that Hannah's life permanently changed.
Her father was her anchor. He was her connection to the more traditional society. He was the one person who was always there for her.
With his death, her only safe haven was gone and life became prison and the streets.
"I don't know how to live outside of prison," she explained.
Life under the bridge is life in a place where raccoons that "are not small at all," according to Lewis, wander through their living room. It is a place where they have to make sure there feet are carefully covered at night or they will be bitten by rats, and there is the apparent monotony.
Hannah said a regular day begins with the couple getting out of their nest and going to the Jesus Center, at 1297 Park Ave., for breakfast. Sometimes they will check out the center's "free store" for clothes and socks.
"Then we come back here and get drunk," said Hannah matter-of-factly. "I drink every day because it is how I stay warm," she continued.
Besides the creatures and cold, life on the street has other dangers.
Lewis recalled a beating he took one day at about 10 p.m. on Park Avenue, when two men with baseball bats attacked him.
Hannah said she knows women who have been raped, and has a friend who was stabbed.
Even with that as a background, Lewis said, "We aren't all bad people. We just happen to fall into bad circumstances."
Despite years on the street Lewis and Hannah both have dreams.
Hannah said she got her high school general education diploma in prison and now she hopes to get into a cosmetology school.
Lewis, who said he attended Humboldt State University, where he studied marine biology, hopes to get into a college art program because he learned he had a talent for tattooing in prison and he would like to make it a business. The pair said school could make them eligible for student loans that would get them off the street, but for now the home where their parole officers come to find them is still under a bridge.
People who work with the homeless say the key to survival and getting off the street is accepting responsibility and having some hope. On Wednesday we will meet a 30-year-old mother of three, who has a history of serious drug and alcohol abuse, but she is beginning to see a glimmer of hope in her future.
Staff writer Roger H. Aylworth can be reached at 896-7762 or at raylworth@chicoer.com.
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