AS I fastened my seatbelt, a young woman walked across Save-on-Food’s parking lot straight toward my pickup, holding her left hand palm up before her. I assessed her approach and locked my driver door.
Maybe 18 years or slightly older, she was well enough dressed appropriate to the 42°F weather, with a fresh face and natural rosiness to her chipmunk cheeks. Except for her lack of makeup and hangdog demeanour, she could have blended into any knot of young women around town.
She tapped on my window. Her palm displayed perhaps 85 cents in coins. I rolled the window down several inches.
“Can you help me?” she said in a dull tone. “I’m desperate.”
My thoughts raced. What might her reaction be if I refused her request? Cautiously I asked, “Why are you desperate?”
“I need $25 to buy a phone so I can keep in contact with my family.”
Only $25?! Keeping in touch with family is commendable, a comfort to her parents, but at her age, does she need to be in constant touch with family as though her umbilical cord had never been cut?
“Sorry,” I said, “ I don’t have $25.” But I was thinking, What gall! To expect $25 from a stranger. And why buy a phone when she could talk all day for fifty cents on a payphone? And even if she was given $25, how would she pay for the calls? I have never owned a cell phone, but so far as I know, calls are not included in the cost of a cell phone.
Without comment or apparent rancour at my refusal, she turned and walked to the nearest car where a young mother was transferring her baby from a loaded grocery cart into her SUV.
The mother didn’t pause or make eye contact, just shook her head and ducked into her car to buckle her child’s seatbelt harness.
The panhandler headed off toward Lakelse Avenue from whence she had come.
What does today’s society deem a necessity?
Apparently among the younger generation, a cell phone takes priority above all else except a car, an iPod, and a computer. You see them sitting on a concrete ledge even in chilly temperatures, texting with the concentration of an explosives expert dismantling a roadside bomb.
For me, necessities include food, warm clothing, a decent and safe place to live. And a job.
These necessities should be earned. They should not come to us through begging.
The last panhandler I met, five years ago in Safeway, claimed she had just arrived in Terrace from Dease Lake to visit a friend in Mills Memorial Hospital and needed money for a cup of coffee. She, too, was well dressed in a clean white ski jacket. I gave her two dollars and watched her meet a man who had been waiting outside the store’s entrance. Together they proceeded directly to the beer and wine store on the corner of Lakelse and Emerson.
Under British Columbia’s Safe Streets Act, a panhandler can be arrested and fined $86 for soliciting anyone “in a captive audience situation”.
A captive audience situation generally refers to when a person has no choice but to attend/stand in a particular location.
Therefore, it is illegal to solicit people who are waiting at a bus stop/taxi stand, riding on or getting off a bus, waiting to use or using a bank machine, waiting to use or using a public toilet, getting in or out of a vehicle (such as in a parking lot).
Fortunately for me, after my morning grocery shopping when many items I routinely use were on sale, my wallet no longer contained anywhere near enough cash to satisfy this panhandler’s demand.
If I had forked over money, I would only have aided and abetted her in her life of petty crime.
