It’s not really a big story but for some reason it has left a big impression on me.
I’m talking about the story of Brad Hawkins and Molly Came, an impossibly photogenic couple from New Zealand who had all their stuff stolen – their car and everything in it – from a parking garage on Denman Street, on the eve of their flight back home.
It happens all the time. That’s why there are warning signs posted across parking lots all over town.
But these kids, Brad and Molly, both 22, are the poster couple for Innocents Abroad.
Thanks to great reporting from Maria Spitale-Leisk of this newspaper, we learned they spent last winter working at Mount Seymour and that Molly had to get back to New Zealand to continue her quest to become an elementary school teacher, while serving as a volunteer firefighter and surfer rescuer in her spare time.
We learned they lost everything and were left wandering around town looking for their 1998 Chevy Malibu and what was in it: laptops, passports, wallets, IDs, bank cards, camera, GoPro, iPad – about $12,000 worth of gear. Of course, they weren’t insured.
At one point, Molly said they were so desperate they went looking in the Downtown Eastside: “I honestly can say I didn’t think ... places like that actually existed,” she told the North Shore News.
Well, kid, now you know. On your very last day in Vancouver, you encountered the dark side of paradise, a place where thousands are sick, hungry and poor. In a few hours you would have climbed on a plane and gone home, none the wiser.
But Brad and Molly were wised up in a hurry. The Mike Wakefield photo on the front page of the North Shore News powerfully captured their hurt and disillusionment. Just like that, childhood ends.
I want to ask how you could make it through 22 years on the planet without realizing that the Downtown Eastside is a fact of life, but, really, all you can do is reach out to these kids and try to restore, if not their innocence, the balance between dark and light. Or at least a plane ticket home.
Of course, that’s what happened. One look at Brad and Molly having lost it all was enough to mobilize a fearsome force of Good Samaritans, offering food, lodging, etc. After staying with a helpful couple on Vancouver Island, passports restored, they returned to the Shire.
Where, presumably, no on steals your stuff.
Perhaps if this pair were less fair, their tale would be less poignant. Right now, there are millions of refugees huddling in camps with nothing and no prospects. I can bet you each one has a compelling story to tell. And no one has stepped up to take them in, feed them, and make sure they find safe harbour. Instead they continue to struggle for existence in places that make the Downtown Eastside look like Coal Harbour.
It’s interesting what triggers empathy in this day and age. A couple of privileged white kids who have walked through life unscathed, and after a brief setback, are back on the path to wherever privileged white kids end up? What about all those people clinging desperately to the raft of life?
I don’t mean to blame Brad and Molly. It’s just that they have triggered, despite my best efforts to ignore them, a litany of woeful images:
The guy standing bowed on the median in the midst of traffic with his pathetic sign and little bundle of personal effects, begging for change.
The drug-addled woman darting through the crowds, muttering and scratching the scabs on her face, going nowhere as fast as she can.
The people who are so desperate for sanctuary they trudge through unimaginable cold to cross the Canadian border, leaving fingers and toes behind.
On a distant shore, a little boy lies lifeless on a beach.
Somewhere else, 10 people wait for nothing in a tent built for two.
Back “home,” a guy sleeps on a grate in the middle of a downtown street.
I’m glad Brad and Molly found kindness and resources in their hour of need. It’s heartening to see their smiles restored, although I imagine those smiles will have lost some of their pristine wattage.
Meanwhile, folks, there’s more to do.
Journalist and communications consultant Paul Sullivan has been a North Vancouver resident since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Madonna. p.sullivan@breakthroughpr.com
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