CABBY STRUGGLES TO HELP HOOKER

They met on a night in May on a street in Montrose, a part-time cab driver
and a hooker.

"Something told me to talk to her," he said. "Have you ever walked by
someone and got a certain aura or feeling or premonition?"

She struck him as quite different from the others he sometimes approached
between fares on slow nights. He gave her his phone number and asked her to
call him. A few nights later, after she hadn't, he found her again. She
told him she'd lost the number. He gave it to her again. Still no call.

"She kept losing the cards," he said. "So I finally got her to remember the
number."

May ran out, then June and July, and she hadn't called. But one night in
August ... She said she was at Ben Taub. The pimp had been shot in a drug
deal turned bad, and she had been staying with him in the hospital for four
days. Out of money. Nowhere to go. No one else to turn to.

He gave her his address and said she could come in a cab and he would pay.
Over the next several days he learned a lot about her -- where she was born
and the problems she faced growing up and how she came to be in Houston, on
the street, turning tricks.

A girl in a woman's body "I got to know her," he said. "She's a wonderful
person, but she is slow and can easily be taken advantage of. She'd be a
good wife for someone some day, but she has to get off the streets."

He became convinced she didn't fit the life she was living, convinced she
wants out but can't do it on her own because of mental problems that make
her too vulnerable, too gullible, naive. It's like she has two
personalities -- one of a 12-year-old girl and one of a 22-year-old woman,
he said. "I fell in love with the 22-year-old."

He is 38. Said he's "been a loner most of my life" but suddenly felt that
was changing. Said he found himself trying "to be a friend and a boyfriend."

They did all right together for 12 days, he said. Then she went out and did
some crack. And when she wanted to come back, he said he let her, "but with
some admonishment."

That time it lasted 19 days, he said, before she returned to the streets
and the crack. When she came back to him again, they argued and he said she
agreed to go to rehab. But the next morning, she changed her mind and left
and hasn't come back.

He is clearly distraught about it, struggling to find some answers, some
way to help her, some force to intervene and to protect and empower her to
make the changes he believes she wants, changes he is certain she needs.

He said he talked to authorities and was advised there isn't much that can
be done as long as she does not pose a threat to herself or others. That
left him wondering how much of a threat is required. Having unprotected sex
could easily lead to AIDS, which she could spread to how many others. And
what about the risks of getting pregnant and having a crack baby?

He wants to help her change

He said he phoned her adoptive parents in a distant state -- a couple she
lived with from age 11 to 18 -- about the possibility they might swear out
a warrant based upon her mental condition, have her picked up and
evaluated. He said he also talked to a local lawyer who volunteered to assist.

If that doesn't work, he isn't sure what he will try next but said there
has to be some way that he can convince someone to do something to help her.

"I think I'm the only friend she's got right now," he said. "I'm not doing
a very good job."

His voice quavered and his eyes glistened on the verge of tears. He stopped
talking. For about an hour, he had been telling the story across a table at
a fast-food restaurant. I struggled to find some appropriate words,
something reassuring to drop in the awkward silence while he regained control.

The guy was hurting. I knew he had called me in hopes the power of the
press might somehow conjure up a solution. And I knew I could only
disappoint him. The answer to this predicament lies somewhere far beyond
the reach of newspapers or legal maneuvers.

But I didn't say that. All I could come up with was some vague comment
about how difficult it can be to get someone to change, no matter how much
you care.

"I'm not talking about helping her for myself," he said. "Just helping."