KGO Radio`s newest man-on-the-street reporter is really on the street. He`s homeless.
His name is Harry Swets, but he`s known around the Tenderloin district as ”Hooks.” That`s because he lost both hands in a hang-gliding accident in 1974. Swets, 49, also walks with a limp and doesn`t have total control of his legs.
”I probably fall down about three times a day,” he said as he made his way down Hyde Street one evening. ”It`s like I`m walking on stilts.”
An artist and the father of four daughters, he`s bright and
knowledgeable-especially on the subject of the homeless-but he talks in a halting manner, and has no broadcasting experience.
”He`s not a professional, but I didn`t want a professional broadcaster doing this,” said KGO news director John McConnell. ”I wanted someone who was homeless.”
McConnell, a board member of the San Francisco Council on Homelessness, had been thinking of assigning two KGO reporters to spend two weeks on the streets disguised as a homeless couple.
”But then it struck me that, after the series was over, they can go home. I thought, why don`t we have a homeless person do it? It`d be unique, and it`d be a perspective none of us ever had. So the search started.”
From six finalists, McConnell picked Swets, who does volunteer work with the Coalition on Homelessness, whose Hyde Street quarters also serve as a drop-in center for veterans.
”Hooks seemed to have the street smarts, and seemed to have his wits about him; that was it,” McConnell said.
Swets is expected to do several special reports over the next three months, McConnell said, ”and we`ll take it from there.”
At the coalition offices, ”Hooks” sat with KGO news writer and producer Ken Berry, who was assigned to acclimate Swets to radio work and to produce his first report, on homeless youth.
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Deeply tanned from his many hours outdoors, the bespectacled, goateed Swets was dressed for San Francisco weather, with a sleeveless parka over a tattered T-shirt, jeans, thick socks and hiking shoes.
”I know everybody here,” Swets said. ”I`ve been running the streets for two years.”
A native of Tucson, Swets moved in 1977 to Mendocino, Calif., where he sold firewood and painted. One night, said Swets, who has been married three times and whose four daughters range in age from 18 to 24, he was alone at home, watching television.
”I saw pictures of the homeless. I didn`t have anybody to take care of anymore, so I said, `Let`s go down on the streets and see if we can figure out what it`s all about.` And I came down here two years ago and I`ve been living in the streets.”
Swets chose to go homeless, he said, ”because I was too judgmental. When I first came in, all I saw was a bunch of dirty people-alcoholics and drug addicts who couldn`t get their trip together and deserved to live on the street.”
Swets, then, is ”homeless by choice.” He lives on Social Security and sleeps in various places, including the coalition office and a nearby church. But he has family in Mendocino and elsewhere willing to take him in.
”They look at me and go, `Harry, why are you doing this?`
”The answer sometimes gets lost and then I realize I`m committed,” he said. ”I have so much knowledge of the streets that if I was to give up at this point I`d be taking away from the mission of helping these people.”
Swets seemed singularly unimpressed with his new job as a radio reporter, for which he receives a modest fee.
”It`s kind of taking me away from where I`m supposed to be,” he said worriedly.
Still, he understands that he can raise issues most media people would never think of, and he has more access than any reporter.
At Ellis Street, Swets spotted one of numerous nighttime merchants who hang their wares-mostly used clothes-on fences.
”These people are unlicensed sellers, but they make their living this way,” he said. ”They collect clothes in the Sunset and Pacific Heights, go to Dipsy Dumpsters, get radios, dishware, old lamps, and come down here and sell them. It blows your mind what people throw away.
”Guys leave with their carts at 4 in the morning for Pacific Heights. They make $30 or $40 a day, and people of low income can come down and get a whole outfit sometimes for $5.”
Walking through what he called ”the dealing area,” Swets was calming.
”Most of the time, as long as you mind your own business you won`t get into trouble.” Dealers, he reminded, aren`t homeless. ”In fact, sometimes they`ll give you a couple of bucks.”