By Jared Morgan
Special to the Daily Press

NORTH OF WILSHIRE Mario Sanders stood near the doorway of the Fairmont Miramar Hotel’s Starlight Ballroom wearing a sharp, black suit and squinting through a pair of spectacles.

Few would ever guess that Sanders was once homeless. A successful businessman, maybe, but not homeless.

He began living on the street in 1986 after his wife committed suicide during an argument in their home.

“She said that if I didn’t come into the kitchen, she’d take all my sleeping pills. She did,” Sanders said Friday. “I felt guilty and depressed for a long time after … I was pretty messed up.”

Following 18 years of homelessness, Sanders, now 52, finally sought help with Step Up on Second, a Santa Monica-based organization that helps assimilate the mentally ill back into society by providing housing, employment and self-empowerment programs to boost morale and confidence.

Sanders was one of many people being honored at a breakfast sponsored by the Westside Shelter & Hunger Coalition Friday morning for their successful climb from out of homelessness and into the working world.

Another honoree, Veronica Sanchez, 25, attributed her success to Culver City’s Didi Hirsch Mental Health Center.

“When I was a kid, I experienced homelessness with my mom. In 2005, my fianceé and I lost our house in Riverside and both our jobs. It all seemed to happen at once,” Sanchez said. “We found ourselves homeless with two kids.”

The family lived in transient limbo, bouncing around from outreach program to outreach program, city to city, never getting the support that her and her family needed to self-sustain.

In one instance, Sanchez was told by Catholic Charities in Pomona that she and her family would receive lodging for somewhere close to 30 days. They were only put up for six.

Then, Sanchez learned that she was pregnant with a third child.

“That was the breaking point,” she said.

Their relationship tested to the limit, she and her fianceé separated.

“He went to his mom’s,” said Sanchez. “I went to Upward Bound.”

Upward Bound offers a number of programs, from education to transitional living.

“I don’t think I would have made it if we didn’t split up,” she said.

Sanchez currently lives in Santa Monica courtesy of a section 8 voucher and is studying psychology at Santa Monica College.

“I’m pushing to get a woman support group on campus for depression and anxiety,” she said.

The Westside Shelter & Hunger Coalition “is the largest coalition, that I know of, in Los Angeles,” said Santa Monica Mayor Richard Bloom. “That speaks volumes.”

Bloom recently went on a ride along with H.L.P., or the homeless liaison program, a specialized team of police that act as a direct link between those living on the street and city social services organizations.

“I saw hope in the faces of these people,” he said.

Officer Robert Martinez was assigned to H.L.P. seven years ago.

“This is non-traditional police work,” said Martinez. “For instance, we drove a girl to a clinic to get pregnancy exams … we knew her from the work we do on the streets. She opened up to us.”

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