After bouncing from place to place, without a home to call his own for the past several years, Zach D’Angelo is not one to ask for big-ticket or lavish items on his holiday wish list.
So when youngsters from the Creek Kids Angel Project come to interview him at the Trinity Center day shelter on a chilly November morning, he keeps his requests modest, as most homeless folks do.
D’Angelo doesn’t mention the cellphone or car that he occasionally dreams of, even though those items would help him in his quest to find work as a line or prep cook, or as a day laborer, raking leaves or painting houses, jobs he’s hoping to get after sprucing up his resume.
Rather, his list is a winter jacket and a sweatshirt size XXL, and a pair of shoes. And a tent. The only thing that he asks beyond the basic necessities are a couple of “Monster High” dolls for his two daughters, ages 9 and 7, which he chooses only after asking 10-year-old twins Henry and Allison Jackson, who quiz him on his holiday wishes, clipboard in hand, on what’s popular with young girls at school these days.
“I’m just so grateful to have these things,” D’Angelo says when they ask if there’s anything else he’d want. “That’ll be fine for now.”
