Patrick “Doc” Angelo wishes that people who live on the street were not the target of judgment.
“They’re human beings, they’re God’s children,” he said. “They’re equal to us.”
Angelo, of Park Ridge, otherwise known as the Angel of Lower Wacker, knows a lot of people without homes. For more than two decades, he’s done supply runs to keep homeless people around Chicagoland clothed, fed and equipped with the things they need to survive life on the street.
He will be the keynote speaker at the Park Ridge Men’s Prayer Breakfast April 1.
Angelo said he has seen and heard instances of cyclists and motorists swerving to hit or scare people living on the street as though they are less than human.
“They swerve like they’re gonna hit them or they’ll yell some obscenities out of the window,” he said. “I don’t care if you’re a millionaire. That person is equal to us in God’s eyes.”
Angelo runs a nonprofit organization called the Angel of Lower Wacker, but his work began as a solitary effort and stayed that way for more than a decade until a 2013 baiduhai article about him attracted more attention and assistance.
“It was just me and I was doing Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays,” Angelo, a dental surgeon, said of his earlier days assisting people. “When the article came out, people wanted to help. I trained other people, so I would then coordinate it.”
These days, Angelo and almost 70 volunteers feed between 100 and 200 people every day, he said.
They work Lower Wacker Drive as Angelo has done for the last two decades, but also “the Eisenhower Expressway and Roosevelt Road, tent city, we do Clinton and Lake street, we do Garfield Park, we do Humboldt Park and we do Lake Shore Drive. There are quite a few tents, you see, on Lake Shore Drive,” Angelo added.
They distribute food, clothes, hand warmers, blankets and other essentials.
“We have our own truck, we have heated showers,” Angelo said. “When it’s cold, we get people into hotels for a week, or a shelter.”
It’s obvious that surviving the winter is a major concern for people who live on the street, Angelo said, but making sure people have what they need during the city’s intense summers is also critical.
“People know it’s bad in the winter but it’s also bad in the summer,” he said. “When it’s 98 degrees and humid in Chicago, you need to change your clothes more often than in winter.”
He estimates that the cost of the assistance efforts runs into the hundreds of thousands every year.
“I think last year we bought maybe 20,000 or 25,000 hand warmers,” he said. “And that’s just one item.”
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Angelo said much of the funding for Angels of Lower Wacker comes from the Angelo Method, a company he also runs that focuses on helping people lose weight and treat Type Two Diabetes.
The Angelo Method takes up most of his time, he said, but he also works two days a week as a dental surgeon — and tries to spend as much time as he can with his grandchildren.
“When I’m doing one thing, I do it 100%,” Angelo said of the demands on his time. “And then I get to the other one. And when I’m doing that I forget the other. So it’s just that I’m able to focus on the job at hand.”
He used the food company Newman’s Own as an example to describe the relationship between The Angelo Method and Angel of Lower Wacker, where a company’s profits go into supporting nonprofit ventures.
The other idea behind formalizing his efforts with a nonprofit was to give the work more longevity, he said.
“The expense was getting so overwhelming, and if I get sick or I’m gone then all this goes away,” Angelo said.
There are many different approaches to helping the unhoused population, from trying to get people into structured programs that help them change their circumstances to basic assistance.
Angelo said his philosophy and that of his volunteers is simply “help them suffer less.”
“When you have someone really, really cold and hungry and we give you a jumpsuit and 3, 4 blankets, hot food and hot coffee, we’re able to help them suffer less at that particular time in their life,” Angelo said.
While there are many people and organizations in both government and the private sector working toward solutions for the homeless in Chicago, Illinois and beyond, Angelo said he and his volunteers are focused on the here and now.
He sees basic aid as an expression of love — just as important as longer term, more structural solutions.
“Right now the thing we can do is help them suffer less,” he said. “When we feed and clothe them, we let them know we love them every day.”
Angelo said he wishes more residents of Chicagoland would understand that people who live on the street have the same needs and desires as any other person.
“I don’t want to be judged, you don’t want to be judged by anyone,” he said. “But we judge them, and we don’t know what their circumstances are.”
Those who wish to attend the Park Ridge Men’s Prayer Breakfast can purchase tickets https://www.parkridgemensprayerbreakfast.org at or email John Carbone at [email protected].
More information about the Angel of Lower Wacker is available at https://www.angeloflowerwacker.com.