Hero

Last Friday at the morning Rotary meeting, the speaker was Bette Chin, a local woman who is known for her work with the homeless.

Bette's story is one of those which makes you believe you have wasted your own life. She and her family fled the Communist Revolution in China, ended up in Hong Kong. In China they were considered "counter-revolutionary" and Bette, as a child, wore a sign on her back that said "Do Not Feed." She ate out of garbage dumps and found food.

Then Bette came to America with $20 in her pocket. She knew no English. Somehow, though, she struggled on. Eventually she married a professor at Humboldt State University. All of her children are college graduates, many of them with advanced degrees.

Bette began working with the homeless in Humboldt because she met a student, during her work at HSU (she has a clerical position) who told her that she did not eat breakfast because she had no food. Bette began to bring her in coffee and donuts, then eventually went out looking for other people who needed something to eat. Bette started with coffee and donuts, then moved up to sandwiches and other sustinence. Along the way, she has convinced doctors, lawyers, dentists, and other professionals to donate their time in helping the homeless in Humboldt.

One homeless person told her that he was going on a job interview but he was embarrassed to show because he smelled so badly. She found him a shower, then was able to build a shower for all the homeless people.

Bette gets up at 2 a.m. to make sandwiches and plan her 35 mile route in the morning. "Most people I find in the bushes," she says. She doesn't tell her route so that authorities can't find and arrest the homeless.

Bette does not get paid for doing this. IN fact, she donates her own salary to the work. She does this seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

She told the story of how one homeless man pulled a knife on some others so he could jump a place in line. Bette herself stood in front of the man and demanded the knife. "I know karate," she told him. He meekly gave her the knife. Months later, he told her than he needed to bury the knife so that he wouldn't use it again. She went out with him to bury it in the sand on one of Humboldt's beaches.

Sitting a listening to this short, slight woman, you couldn't help but laugh at her funny stories and marvel at her grace and courage and generosity. I know this entry in the blog isn't very dramatic or cynical--it sounds more like a news story than a blog. But this woman is doing things in this world that humbles the rest of us.

(She has been recognized. She was given the Minerva Award by California's First Lady, Maria Shriver. At the awards banquet she talked to "a guy" who said "Bette, I don't know how you do it." That "guy" was Bono.)

I watched her on Friday morning, the light in her eyes, the happiness in her voice, the light of true grace surrounding her. I am not worthy. But then, none of us are.