'DOING WHAT THEY NEED'

An ex-junkie has heroin addicts smacking their lips at Hastings and Main.

Every Monday, Thursday and Saturday at suppertime, Cheryl Guy hands out 450
peanut-butter sandwiches from the back of her station wagon outside the
Regent Hotel.

"This is my new high," said Guy.

"I'm doing what they need. You've got to bring it right to them. When I
was an addict I wouldn't walk 10 feet for a meal. I needed everything given
to me."

Originally from Boston, Guy landed 11 years ago in Vancouver's Hastings and
Main area, where she shot heroin, turned tricks, and starved.

Now clean and living in Cloverdale, she's never going back.

"If I ever do this again, I hope someone just shoots me," she said, looking
at the line of addicts in front of her.

"All junked up, sleeping with disgusting men to get money for another fix,
living out here. I know a few people would shoot me for sure if I did it
again."

She's done it all, and that endears her to the hookers and addicts who come
to the buffet.

One woman with glassy eyes, dirty clothes and shaking hands pointed at Guy
and yelled, "I know you. I remember you. You look good."

"Yeah, I'm the one that jumped out that fourth-floor window," said Guy,
pointing to the Regent Hotel. "That was me. Cherri."

She forces sandwiches into junkies' hands and slips hard-boiled eggs into
their pockets while she talks.

"When you're down here and in the life, you don't know how really bad it
is," she said.

"It's your world. But now when I come down here -- well, the first time I
was in tears."

Working with her is "my new little Christian friend" Linda Karpiuk of Langley.

Karpiuk is as straight as Guy was wild.

She and her husband had driven by Hastings and Main, and that's as close as
she ever came. Until she met Guy.

Now she's making 200 of the peanut-butter sandwiches on delivery days and
handing them out to junkies.

"Cherri has got such a big heart, how could you not want to help with her?"
said Karpiuk. "I just thought, 'Why can't people see that just because
these people out here may be on drugs, they're still hungry and they're
still people?'"

Donations are needed: Food, money, clothing, pots and pans.

You can call Guy at (604) 576-3883.