Betty and Flora

It’s been pointed out that my life is currently that of a rich housewife, only I’m not married and I’m not rich. Aside from those two minor factors, I am living a life of leisure – volunteering, doing yoga and plotting up ways to make lots of money.

My latest volunteer endeavors are through an organization called PAWS (Pets Are Wonderful Support) a San Francisco non-profit that cares for companion animals for low-income persons with HIV/AIDS and other disabling illnesses. It’s an impressive organization, helping both pets and their owners at the same time.

My job is to walk a dog once a week for a woman who has AIDS and dementia. This woman, whom we’ll call Betty, zooms up and down the halls of her government-funded housing in her government-provided wheelchair. It makes me happy that government programs are in fact working for some folks. She gets regular check ups, personal care and care for her dog. I get the impression that I am one of a whole host of characters that Betty sees day-to-day (always to her surprise, as she never seems to remember that I’m coming, or exactly who I am or what I’m doing there) to help her survive.

Betty and her chow mix, Flora, are best friends. “A pack of two,” Betty mumbles through her barely comprehensible English. Flora follows Betty’s wheelchair from the housing project to the corner donut shop and back every single day. The first time I met them, I joined them on their regular two-block walk. Betty explained to me that she used to be addicted to crack and has been sober for six years. She’s been HIV positive for 20.

Since Hayes Valley is located frighteningly close to the Tenderloin, I’d passed by Betty’s hang out spot many times in the past. I’d seen the homeless people begging for change on the street, men and women in dirty clothes pushing shopping carts, individuals covered in nasty smells and sores on their faces yelling angrily at the wind. However, I’d never been introduced to them before. These are Betty’s friends, her people, and she called out to them as we walked along “This is Audrey, she’s going to walk Flora for me.”

They know Betty, they know Flora, and now they know me. As I drag Flora on her 30-minute weekly walk through the urine-soaked streets of the Tenderloin, past rundown hotels and liquor stores, the people I pass wave cordially to me and Flora, “Hi Flora, looking beautiful as ever today.”

This is Flora running through plants for what could possibly be her first time.