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Homeless
Family From St. Kitts Helped By Miami Police Officer |
Miami, September 2001: Officer Sharon Marbury always wondered why Jeremiah Crossley's sweatpants didn't reach his ankles.
She got her answer one afternoon after a day at the Miami Police's Police Athletic League summer camp, when she decided to take the 7-year-old boy home so he wouldn't get wet in a thunderstorm. Marbury asked an assistant to walk him from the car to his doorstep in Overtown. But the assistant came back to the car and told her there was no doorstep. The boy and his mother lived in a hallway, and their only possessions were the clothes they wore.
Jeremiah started crying.
"He thought I was going to take him away from his mom," said Marbury, the PAL program coordinator.
Since that day, Jeremiah has become a big part of Marbury's life. She went that afternoon to JC Penney and bought him new clothes. Next she picked up the phone and found them a spot at the Salvation Army, where the two could stay temporarily. Now Marbury is helping Carol Crossley, 43, who is from St. Kitts in the Leeward Islands, get her immigration status straightened out.
Marbury, an officer of 12 years, even offered to take care of Jeremiah while Crossley resolves some personal issues.
"If she didn't discover me, I don't know where I would be now," Crossley said.
Crossley said she left St. Kitts in the 1970s as a cook on sailboat. During a port call in Puerto Rico, she left the boat and never came back. She lived there for about 10 years, she said, and one day took an Eastern Airlines flight to Miami. She cannot remember the year she came, but soon afterward she married a taxi driver, which made her eligible to become a U.S. resident.
Then the physical abuse started. She said the fights were constant.
"He married me and abused me, so I left him alone before the papers came," Crossley said.
Since then she has had a series of boyfriends, but most have been similar to the first.
Jeremiah was born from one of those relationships. He has been a witness to some of the violence some of the boyfriends have committed against his mother. Crossley thinks that is one of the reasons the boy has been acting aggressive lately.
She enrolled him in Dunbar Elementary, and when school finished Crossley signed up at the PAL program to keep him busy and off the street.
Marbury, a single parent herself, said in the three years she has worked with the program, this is the first time she has run into a homeless child. And from the moment she found out where he lived, and that other children picked on him because of his clothes, the soft-spoken boy sneaked into her heart.
"I don't want to see him go into the system," Marbury said as her son played with Jeremiah.
Marbury got school officials to add her name to their emergency contact card and talked to his counselors to check Jeremiah's academic progress. Marbury said just knowing that there are people who care about him will help Jeremiah improve his self-esteem.
Positive signs are already emerging, Marbury said. Jeremiah is mellower on the playground and is looking forward to school.
"I want to be a firefighter. I want to save [people's] lives and that they don't get burned," Jeremiah said.
The long-term goal for the family, Marbury said, is to figure out first whether Crossley has a legal status in the country, something Crossley is not sure about. Marbury also wants to get her an apartment and some training in reading, writing and other basic skills so she can enter the work force. Despite all the problems Crossley faces, Marbury said, mother and son already have one thing working for them:
"She loves him and he loves her," Marbury said. "If she has only 10 cents, she'll give him those 10 cents to eat. My concern is for her to get straight and become the model mother he deserves."
(South Florida Sun-Sentinel)