In 2014, Todd Feske saw a Facebook post requesting clothing for the homeless. He grabbed some donations, but instead of taking them to a shelter, he decided to visit some camps he knew through his many hours hiking in the East Metro. What he experienced changed him and six months later, Todd started the nonprofit Walking With A Purpose (WWAP), serving the chronically homeless living outside the shelter system.
In the past ten years, Todd has developed all sorts of friendships, and is full of stories both heartwarming and heartrending. He shared two of those stories with us recently:
Pink was one of my homeless people. Everybody called her Pink because she loved pink and purple. She was a meth addict, but she was more than that. She was a mother of three, she was the lady you’d see with all the makeup—too much makeup. One time she told me she was saying hi to people downtown, and only two people said hi back, but she said, “All the squirrels say hi to me.” She was that kind of person. I got a lot of pleasure when I was sorting donations and found pink clothes because I knew she would love them. She rarely came to me and was always pretty well hidden, so I had to go find her. Then when I would show up, I’d get out the clothes and say, “Look what I got.” She’d get all happy, and I’d take the clothes out one piece at a time and we’d make it into a big moment.
Then, in 2019 we had a polar vortex come through and it got to 50 below. Walking With A Purpose went out to find people and bring them into a motel. As I approached the camps, I heard them praying to God for help. They were freezing to death. You couldn’t heat water. You couldn’t eat. Everything was frozen solid. I’d yell out, “What the heck are you doing out here?” and bring them in. We kept them in motels for three days and our volunteers fed them three times a day, but at the end of that, everybody had to go out because it warmed up to about 20 below.
Pink contacted me after that and I found out she was living underneath the deck of a public library. It was still cold, twenty below. I asked her, “What do you need? Do you want to come out?” She told me a couple things she needed, but didn’t want to come out. I told her I loved her, and she told me she loved me. We went back the next week and the front of the tent had cardboard, a piece of wood and a tarp cover in the front, and that’s kind of how you lock up your tent when you leave, so to speak. I said, “Hey, I don’t know if you’re in there. I’m going to leave you this,” and we left a bag.
The next week the bag was still there, and I could tell some animals had gone through it, but nobody had come and gone. So I opened the tent and there she was, like Sleeping Beauty, waiting to be found. We learned from the autopsy that she had died of carbon monoxide poisoning from the propane stove used to heat her tent. So every year, I go to that spot and leave pink flowers for her. And now we hand out carbon monoxide detectors, and we no longer hand out propane. We’re very careful how we support people and what we tell them, and we constantly encourage them to go in.
Two other people I helped very early on were Nikki and Anthony. One day I was sitting in a parking lot when I see this guy riding a bike with a makeshift trailer behind him, full of junk scrap. I’d tell you he had everything but the kitchen sink, but there was a kitchen sink in there, too. He notices a Butterfinger wrapper on the ground, hits those brakes, reaches down and he scores. There was still a bite or two of that candy. I said, “Hey, how you doing? My name’s Todd. If you’re hungry, I got something here.”
He said, “My name’s Anthony, I got a place up on the cliff up there. You should come up and have dinner sometime.” And I looked at his coat, and he said, “Yeah, I need a coat.” I showed him what I had, and asked, “What kind of jacket do you want?” He says, “Like the one you’re wearing.” So I gave him my jacket and after that we were best friends. Any place I went I told people I knew Anthony and I was accepted.
I did go up to his house on the hill, and the first thing I noticed were two full-size wooden replica cannons—cannons like you have on a ship! I don’t know if he was protecting downtown St. Paul from pirates or what. And then I saw a four by eight plywood structure and an extension cord going from that plugged into the cell tower up there. Inside is Nikki, and that extension cord is connected to a George Foreman grill, and that was their heater.
The last time I saw Anthony, he was in the hospital where they had just finished wrapping up burns on his arms and neck, and I did the one thing you’re not supposed to do, I made him laugh. I said, “Oh, Anthony, thank God it didn’t get your face. It ain’t any uglier.” The last time I talked to Anthony was about a year ago, he was with his family, he was working, riding ATVs, no longer homeless, no longer scrapping.
Nikki met someone else after Anthony and right before the pandemic, she told me, “We did the paperwork, and we got an apartment.” I said, “Oh my God, Nikki, it’s been over 10 years you’ve been out here, and I’ve tried to get you in. Why now?” And she looked at me and said, “Because of you.” And I said, “Nikki, I didn’t get you this apartment.” She says, “I know. But when you first came out here, we didn’t know who you were, we didn’t trust anybody. People that came out here, wanted something, whether it was the city or some church. But you came out and helped us. You didn’t ask anything, and you kept coming back. We learned to trust you. Well, we figured if we could trust you, maybe we could trust other people.”
So it isn’t just giving them stuff, it’s about building trust. When I went to visit Nikki’s new apartment, just for fun I brought her a George Foreman grill. I’ve run into her now and then downtown. She’ll be out riding her bike, looking good, looking happy.
A decade after these first friendships formed with Pink, Nikki, Anthony and others, Todd and WWAP volunteers are still out visiting people and bringing supplies. They build relationships, form connections and distribute things like clothing, camping gear, first aid, books, and pots and pans. Homelessness is on the rise, and Walking With A Purpose is seeing more people than ever before.
Todd says, “It doesn’t say God’s going to do his will here. It says, we will do his will here. God guides us by what we’ve experienced, not by what he wants us to experience, so that’s why each one of us has our own purpose. Not everybody is going to do what I do, but everybody can do something. We’re going to keep doing what we are doing, hoping we can do more.”
If you’d like to help Walking With A Purpose keep doing what they’re doing, and even more, Todd says their main need is financial donations to meet rising prices and growing needs. You can learn more about Walking With A Purpose here.
Keep on keeping on, WWAP! 
