STREET MINISTRY

FATHER CHRISTIAN RIVER SIMS TENDS TO THE CITY'S HOMELESS, JUNKIES AND SEX
WORKERS, BUT "A LOT OF PEOPLE . . . VIEW ME AS THE DEVIL HIMSELF'

The way River Sims tells his horror stories, calmly, barely raising his
voice, poised like the Anglican priest he is, makes them seem all the more
ugly by contrast. For instance there's this kid - a teenager - who ventures
back and forth between Haight Street and the Polk, living on the streets.
No one can get him to even try staying in a shelter.

"He's third-generation homeless," says Sims, speaking in tones members of
Old San Francisco might use to speak of their lineage. "His mother shot him
up with heroin for the first time when he was 8 years old."

Then there was another boy - young man, whatever - who came back to his
Polk Street buddies bragging that he had just made $200 from a john and
hadn't even had to perform a sex act.

"All he had to do was let the guy carve up his back with a knife," recalls
Sims. "He thought he had really gotten over."

Sims - Father Christian River Sims, born Michael Smith in Missouri 41 years
ago - has been working with San Francisco's homeless, junkies and sex
workers, primarily in the Polk, Haight and Civic Center areas, for the past
three years. He moved to The City after visiting a year earlier. He thought
it would be the perfect place to establish his ministry, which he calls
Temenos Catholic Worker (temenos is Greek for that which is abandoned, cut
off or separated). The ministry is really just Sims, working out of a
sparsely furnished one-bedroom apartment that is crammed with the things
that he needs for his work.

And watching Sims work is an eye-popping experience, day or night. It's
high noon on Polk Street and Sims, dressed in his usual baggy jeans,
sweatshirt with a cross on the breast and backward baseball cap, makes a
left into Fern Alley. Immediately, a very buzzed, effeminate male pushing a
shopping cart stops him in the middle of the street, barely three feet from
bustling Polk.

"Need points?" Sims asks simply, and there follows an endless speed riff
response as the person pores through the cart, pulling hypodermic needles
from nearly every conceivable spot and loading them into a plastic watering
jug.

"How many do you have?" asks Sims, as though this is the most common sight
in the world. To him, it obviously is.

"One hundred and fifty," is the answer and Sims calmly reaches into one of
the overloaded canvas bags he carries around and counts out 150 syringes,
"longs and shorts" in the parlance of the streets.

The exchange made, Sims offers one of the dozens of sandwiches he spends
two and a half hours a day making. The offer is rejected - not enough
mayonnaise. Others will later be passed by for having too much mayo. There
is not a whole lot of "thank you" going on here, though later people will
exchange hugs with the priest and ask for nothing in return.

Sims wanders off and explains that that may have been only two days worth
of needles for the shopping cart person. He exchanges 2,000 needles a week,
which he gets from the Prevention Point needle exchange program. He also
distributes condoms, clothing - socks are a big draw with the rainy weather
- - and as much advice as people ask him for, about drug rehab or shelters or
where the free showers are or anything else a street survivor might want to
know.

He never gives them money, so they don't ask. He won't let them crash in
his apartment, but if he knows they are sleeping on the step in front, he
might sneak down and cover them with a blanket. He'll buy them a soda or a
slice of pizza. "I must have spent $8,000 on pizza the first year I was out
here, trying to gain their trust," Sims laughs. He's serious, however. He
survives on donations, gets food from the Food Bank, lives on less than
$800 per month himself. It's his life, usually five or six nights a week,
from 8 p.m. until 4 a.m. The boundaries he has set keep him sane.

Night time on Polk is surreal. The neon from the fancy restaurants, bars,
ice cream shops and liquor stores glows off the rain slick streets,
reflecting into the faces of the boys trying to look languid perched
against the walls, studying the cars that go by studying them.

Everyone knows Sims. He knows all their stories. The faces of some of the
young women who come over to grab needles or a sandwich - peanut butter and
jelly this time - reveal some of what they have seen, minus the details.
They are the same women whose pictures adorn the walls of Sims' tiny
apartment, holding their babies like little angels just before the Child
Protective Services takes the kids away. Babies having babies.

One boy comes over and shows Sims a walking stick he's made. He's taken a
cane and used leather strips from an abandoned easy chair to weave a
pattern on the top, which he has adorned with a silver skull and a horned
bull's head. The bottom three-quarters of the cane is covered with small
pornographic photographs of every imaginable type. It may not be suitable
for family viewing, but it is art. Naturally, it's stolen the next day.

"He got his first job in San Jose when he was 13," Sims says of the cane
boy as Sims walks on. "A woman paid him to take pornographic pictures of
teenage girls. He's been obsessed with pornography ever since."

The cops know what Sims is doing, but look the other way - it's one of
those San Francisco things largely influenced by Mayor Brown, who said of
needle exchange, "I wrote the law. I think it is a way in which to avoid
the spread of AIDS - the best way. It has proven to be an accurate
assumption through studies. The National Medical Association, C. Everett
Koop, a whole bunch of people believe as I do."

"I know I'm controversial," Sims shrugs. "A lot of people, mostly
fundamentalists, view me as the devil himself. But that doesn't mean I'm
going to stop doing this. This is the happiest I've ever been in my life.
This is my calling."

He says he's known of just five kids that have successfully left the
streets since he's been out here. But as to why he would put so much effort
into a seemingly endless and hopeless task.

"I see God in their eyes." He smiles. "I see Jesus in every one of the
people I see on the street."

)1998 San Francisco Examiner Page B 1