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Daughter Documents Homeless Dad’s Life - Uplifting story.
Daughter Documents Homeless Dad’s LifeMakenzie KochIntern
August 6, 2015
Diana Kim, a Hawaii-based photographer and law student, hadn’t seen her father since she was 5 years old. He had left Kim and her mom years ago, and they rarely ever saw him again — that is until Kim saw him living on the streets two years ago.
snip<> Kim found her father standing at the corner of a busy intersection in Honolulu. After approaching him cautiously, she tapped him on the shoulder. He didn’t look up at her. “Everything felt heavy. I felt the weight of our circumstances in my heart and struggled to process what was happening. It was painful and raised so many of my childhood feelings, insecurities, and frustrations of him not being there,” she says.
snip<> Over the next few years, Kim and other family, friends, and outreach workers continued to track down her father at whatever doorstep or sidewalk in Honolulu he was living on at the time. They encouraged him to get medical help, bathe, eat, and change his clothes. Every time, he refused or didn’t respond.
snip<> Kim’s desire to do more largely stemmed from her father’s health scare. In October 2014 he had a heart attack. Luckily, someone called an ambulance and he was taken to the hospital. “My father was a ‘John Doe’ in the hospital until my cousin received a hospital bill, and we figured out that he had a heart attack. It killed me that he was in the hospital for weeks and nobody knew,” she tells Yahoo Parenting. “It was an emotionally intense experience seeing him there. He was cleaner than I had ever seen him. His cheeks were fuller. I didn’t know if he would ever sleep in a bed again, and there he was, resting under clean covers.”
snip<> Over the next few years, Kim and other family, friends, and outreach workers continued to track down her father at whatever doorstep or sidewalk in Honolulu he was living on at the time. They encouraged him to get medical help, bathe, eat, and change his clothes. Every time, he refused or didn’t respond.
snip<> Kim’s desire to do more largely stemmed from her father’s health scare. In October 2014 he had a heart attack. Luckily, someone called an ambulance and he was taken to the hospital. “My father was a ‘John Doe’ in the hospital until my cousin received a hospital bill, and we figured out that he had a heart attack. It killed me that he was in the hospital for weeks and nobody knew,” she tells Yahoo Parenting. “It was an emotionally intense experience seeing him there. He was cleaner than I had ever seen him. His cheeks were fuller. I didn’t know if he would ever sleep in a bed again, and there he was, resting under clean covers.”
Picture of her and her father in 2015:
More: https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/daughter-documents-homeless-dads-life-126018369792.html
There is hope if we can only get people the treatment they need. There is no excuse for the multitudes of homelessness we have in this country.
