What do you do, exactly?
We bring food, water, love, and other resources to the unhoused (homeless) population of Columbia, MO.
- Solid meals, hot food that frenz consistently call fire 🔥
- Give them clothing, boots, blankets and warmth
- Provide basic medical care as needed
- Provide legal assistance, such as replacing birth certificates, IDs, and other essential documents
- Power of Attorney; help managing finances and more
- Help with addiction recovery & getting folks into rehab
Isn’t this a lot like CoMo Mobile Aid?
Yes, it is. Though we have an explicit focus on night operations and a slightly different approach.
People sometimes ask why Columbia needs another aid organization.
In 1921, Lloyd ‘Dobber’ Mayes faced an important decision. Columbia already had one hamburger restaurant in town, Booches, which was founded in 1884. Did it make sense to open another? Yes, it did, he decided.
Just as there are enough people in Columbia to support more than one hamburger joint, there are enough people in Columbia who need our help on the streets. Moreover, a variety of aid organizations better serve those in need, especially when each offers different approaches and skills.
Because we are new to the scene, we are working closely with our peer organizations to learn from them. We are friends with CoMo Mobile Aid and communicate with them regularly. They might encounter someone having a tough day and ask us to check on them at night. Or we attempt to coordinate schedules to maximize coverage. We also collaborate with the Health Department, Compass Health, Burrell Health, Phoenix Rehab, ROC/Re-entry, Good Will, Spectrum Healthcare, the City of Columbia, Fresh Start, Boone County Overdose Response Coalition, DBRL library, and others.
About the Founder
I’ve called Columbia home for seven years now, and without a doubt, it’s the best place I’ve ever lived.
This is not my first rodeo. My first non-profit was a 16,600 sq.ft. community center & hackerspace in Mountain View, CA (home to Google HQ, Mozilla, Symantec, and countless Silicon Valley startups).
This 501(c)(3) nonprofit still exists today, with a board of directors, employees, and an “OPEN” sign on the door. The organization downsized during the pandemic and moved a few times, but next time you take a trip to the SF Bay Area, feel free to stop in to use the super-fast Wi-Fi and serve yourself some free coffee in the kitchen.
Hacker Dojo served as a hub for technologists, makers, thinkers, and doers. It brought together geeks, artists, DIY enthusiasts, startup nerds, Burners, circus performers, and other creative minds. Many successful startups were born there; for example, the two founders of Pinterest met at the Dojo and created the first iterations of their product there. My friend Otavio created a fascinating app called “WordLens” that would let you point your phone at Spanish text and it would translate it in real-time in front of your eyes. Google later acquired the project, and it became part of Google Translate.
I was the President and Executive Director of the organization. I was the lead investor and sat on the 5-person Board. Notably, I served as the “soul” of the organization, often found in the lobby greeting guests from around the world — and hosting the legendary Happy Hours every Friday for many years. I grew revenue from $0 to over $30,000/month before I left the organization to pursue a developing passion in video production when I moved to Los Angeles.
What about the street frenz?
On Sunday, September 7th, 2014, I found myself wandering the streets of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. Haight-Ashbury was the electric heart of the ’60s counterculture, where legends like Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and Jimi Hendrix lived, sparking a revolution of peace, love, and wild artistic freedom — which to this day much of the culture & vibe remains.
I bought two very large doses of mushrooms on the street, and decided to go all-in on both. This changed my life. I ran into someone on the street that was asking for my help, but I didn’t know how to help them. I kept coming up with idea after idea, but they weren’t interested in any of them. They still wanted my help, yet I felt useless. That night, my brain rewired itself. From that day on I felt an overwhelming sense of compassion for folks on the street. However, this sense of compassion was dialed up to “11” — so much so that I couldn’t do anything productive with it. It was an overwhelming emotional response that honestly did more harm than good. It would be years before the intense emotional response would slowly wear off and I could start being productive with my compassion, as I do today.
That was a long time ago, and my days of experimenting with psychedelics are over. These days, the only substances I partake in are caffeine & nicotine. I had my journey, and it changed me, and I’m now quite happy with where I am, body and spirit.
I became more involved with helping others over the years. Sometimes on the way home from the bars in California, I would meet a street fren and invite them to my apartment, cooking them a solid meal and offering them my couch.
From 2014 on, I started volunteering as a first responder at various festivals, the largest of which is an 80,000-person event in the Nevada desert. I quickly gained experience in handling various situations: sexual assault, trampoline injuries, heated arguments, and many cases of unconscious or severely dehydrated participants. But honestly, most of it fell into one of two categories: 1) people having a Really Bad Day™, often related to substance use or the challenges of a harsh desert environment, and 2) de-escalating conflict between parties (“You can’t put your generator right next to our Yoga area!” “Yes I can, it’s on my side of the line!”). Things get crazy out there, and I enjoy helping people when they stumble & fall.
What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.
— The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger