JUNKIE DIES HOMELESS, BUT NOT FRIENDLESS

Ellen Schlesinger, who lives in the Whiteaker area of Eugene, started
to worry when she hadn't seen him for a few days.

That wasn't like Pete.

The homeless man would come by every few days, a bag slung over his
shoulder as if he were the Santa Claus of returnable bottles and
cans. Perhaps offer a quote from Romeo and Juliet. And chastise Ellen
for working too hard.

"Here, gimme that rake," he'd say. "I'll take care of your leaves."

She would. And he would.

He was, she'd come to find, 55 years old. Grew up in Brooklyn. Had
spent some time in an Arizona prison. And was now a self-described
professional Dumpster-diver who liked to read science fiction.

"He had the sunken face from too many drugs and a lot of missing
teeth," says Ellen, who's 59. "But he'd always say: 'I'm not
homeless, I'm a bum.' "

He never asked for money. But his appearance scared people. Scared
Ellen the first time she met him.

She'd been helping spruce up Scobert Park, the pocket park near Blair
Boulevard and West Fourth Avenue, and he'd seen her pushing a
wheelbarrow full of plants.

"Hey, you shouldn't be doing that," he had said. "Let me help."

The two started talking plants. He mentioned that his mother used to
grow prize-winning hydrangeas. Could he help some more?

He'd help her out at the park. Talk. Ask about her gardening column
in The Register-Guard's monthly Home & Garden section. "What's the
word 'sumptuous' mean?" he asked.

"It means 'rich.' "

"Well, then, why didn't you just say 'rich'?"

He spoke loudly. "Not like a speed freak," Ellen says, "just like a
New Yorker."

He could be blunt. So could Schlesinger. He'd bring her a Dumpster
gift, say a porcelain frog. Wasn't it cute? "Naw," she'd say. "It's
awful." But she'd take it, of course.

Once, one of her dogs died. Pete gave her a hug. About two months
ago, Ellen told him that her husband, Don, was sick. Real sick.

Later that night, there was a knock on the door. It was Pete. "Ellen,
don't say that to me about Don - that emergency-room stuff. You and
Don are the closest things I've got to a family."

It touched her. "He was a junkie and had done some crappy things, but
he was a prince to me."

His body was found in an alley off First Street. He died Aug. 19 of
an infection caused by a longtime practice of intravenous injections,
according to Frank Ratti, Lane County deputy medical examiner. Peter
Paul Krisiunas had no family. Nobody to claim his cremated ashes.

Until, that is, Ellen Schlesinger called Ratti. Could she have the
remains? Ratti said yes. "I didn't want him to go out like he was
nothing," she says.

And so last Saturday morning at Scobert Park, Ellen held a small
ceremony. She had posted fliers around the area, hoping to draw
friends of his. None came. It was just Ellen and four of her friends.

A man in a sleeping bag slept beneath the playground slide, a
family-sized box of Wheat Thins near his head.

Ellen and the others looked at the plastic sack of ashes. Under
"description," the tag said "Indigent."

She scattered some ashes on and near the bench where he'd been
sitting where they first met, then in the flower beds that he'd
helped her revive.

"He was one of those people who, when you run into them, makes you
feel better."

"And you were that to him," said Chris Donahue, a friend of Ellen's
who works at Down to Earth.

Ellen opened a wallet with all Pete had to leave behind: a handful of
coupons he'd saved for Camel cigarettes. Nothing else.

She tossed a few clippings from a hydrangea on the ground.

"Pete," she said, "you may have been homeless, but you weren't friendless."

Under the slide, the man in the sleeping bag slept on.