Challenging The Guru's To Take A Homeless Family To Hopeful Family

Email Me About Homeless 2 Hopeful

I thought it fitting in this perfect time of need to challenge all those Guru's and online 'successful' stories to take the most noble of approaches to the 'Guru's' that we all get dozens of emails from each and every day.

For the first time, a entire family that truly wants to take the Challenge of any Guru to show them how to 'get it done' online and change the face of their future forever. Thus creating a blueprint for success for not only this incredible family of 8, but many others that are desperately seeking out a new path and a new life.

I am standing on my wall of the Internet with my virtual megaphone calling each and every Guru out there that dares to care and take on this Challenge. "Who out of all of you think you can teach and take a broke and homeless family to a thriving and hopeful family in 90 days or less? Is there any of you footloose and fancy free success stories out there that care enough to break out of the norm and into real life and show us what you got?"

I am going to ask that each and every single one of you that sees this Lens send your friends to it. That you blog about it. That you get those Gurus out there thinking about it and out of their beach shorts and 'sell-sale-sell' mentality to take on a HUMAN project. One that will gain the attention of the entire Internet, but more importantly change the lives of some very real, very homeless people.

Yes, they are working their buns off to change their own future. But as you know, their is this untouchable secret region online that is reserved for those with funding, money, education, and mentors that are the hidden few. The ones we all look up to and wonder how the heck they keep doing it, we keep trying and failing. Or for those that have never made it before, it is a virtual shipwreck in the making for those that dare put their dingy on the waves of the Internet wanna-be-a-success ocean. There are more pieces of boat afloat out there then solid sailors these days.

Please, won't someone take this Challenge, won't several someones take this Challenge or band together to create a one of a kind idea and teach this homeless family how to get to hopeful successful family like they are???

If that is you, if you can, if you dare - email me at homeless2hopeful@gmail.com

All this genius, all this success out there - let's see how much they can walk their talk! Go Guru's Go!

SEATTLE - Once the tables have been moved out of the way and the floor has been mopped, Joe Pace grabs a tan mattress off a stack, slides it into a corner and beds down at the Family and Adult Service Center on Third Avenue.

His feet hang over the edge of the mat, so he rolls up a blanket to support them. He shares the room with 60 people. He pays $3 a night for this privilege.

Thirty years ago next month, Pace slept in one of Seattle's finest hotels, though he can't remember which one, as a visiting pro basketball player for the Washington Bullets, sharing in an NBA championship won in this city at the expense of the Sonics.

A snack bar, room service and chocolate left on the pillow are no longer an option for this 6-foot-10 man, who is homeless in Seattle.

"Sometimes I don't want to wake up, I'm so sad," he said. "Sometimes I wake up crying and say, 'What did I do to be like this?"'

Instead of becoming a millionaire, Pace, 54, frequents the Millionair Club, another downtown facility for the destitute that provides meals and job leads. He sits at the front door as a security guard from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., wearing a gold badge and clutching a black walkie-talkie. He performs this chore more for something to do than as a source of income, regularly limping outside for cigarette breaks.

Pace spends the rest of his afternoons riding on buses, using a disabled passenger pass he bought for $8. He is afforded this right because he has degenerative disks in his back and is in need of surgery he can't afford on both knees. He takes trips to Woodinville and Tacoma, simply to kill time.

Then it's back to his homeless shelter. Pace usually is asleep by 8:30 or 9 p.m.

"NBA players are all looked at as millionaires, but a lot of guys back in those days didn't make it, and Joe is one of them," said Zaid Abdul-Aziz, a former Sonics forward. "The image of them as big, opulent people isn't always true. They take a fall sometimes."

Of all the things Pace longs for, the simple pleasure of soaking in a hot bathtub ranks near the very top. There have been the rare moments when he has paid for a hotel room just to turn on the water and give his aching, middle-aged body some needed relief. It beats the homeless shelter showers he considers risky at best in regards to good hygiene, especially when barefoot.

For that matter, he doesn't shake hands or exchange high-fives anymore with people he encounters in a similar situation, and he's friendly enough. Repeated colds and congested lungs have forced him to adopt this policy. Fist bumps are much healthier.

"That hand could have 5,000 germs on it," he said unapologetically.

Pace rode a bus to Seattle in 2002 on impulse after wandering aimlessly through his hometown of New Brunswick, N.J., and Baltimore, Charlotte and Atlanta for a decade, unable to thrive without basketball.

"It's where I played my last NBA game," he said of his current city. "It was like I can't do nothing wrong here."

Pace spent just two seasons in the league, appearing in 88 games for Washington, including a pair of playoff contests against the Sonics, drawing mop-up duty in Game 2 and Game 6 of the finals. He was paid $35,000 each year. The Bullets drafted him in the second round, as the 31st player overall, envisioning the big man as a future replacement for center Wesley Unseld.

The pros became enamored with Pace after he led Baltimore-based Coppin State to the 1976 NAIA championship and was named most valuable player, supplying 43 points, 12 rebounds and six blocked shots in a 96-91 title-game victory over Henderson State (Ark.).

"He was a very explosive, athletic player," said former Sonics center James Donaldson. "He could jump all day."

Impatient with his NBA progress - and unwittingly leaving himself one season shy of a receiving a pension - Pace took his game overseas. He got a good look at the rest of the world over the next 12 years. He played in Italy, Venezuela, Mexico, Panama, England, the Philippines and Argentina.

He was married twice, fathering a child each with American and Argentine spouses. He bought a Buenos Aires convenience store and sent money home to family members who never had much.

He became homeless after injuries and a haze of drugs and alcohol. Everything came undone for Pace in Argentina when he dunked and landed on his back, crashing to the floor when a guy grabbed his legs.

"I think they sent him in there to take me out," Pace said. "My legs went numb. I stayed in bed for eight months."

His problems multiplied after botched back surgery, a case of gangrene and the break-up of his second marriage. He left South America in poor health and without basketball or any other livelihood to count on.

"My wife said she wasn't going to stay married to a cripple who couldn't play basketball anymore," he said. "We had to close the store and there was no money. Her family was saying, 'Why don't you get rid of that bum?"'

Back in the States, Pace had few prospects. He started abusing alcohol and drugs, and eventually was forced to go through rehabilitation. He sold his NBA championship ring for $1,000 to a Baltimore pawnshop, his biggest regret. He started bouncing from city to city.

He's still living on the edge in Seattle. He receives a monthly $600 permanent disability check. He has $2 in a bank account. His name is on a long waiting list for subsidized housing.

"He's my baby," said Selina Daniels, a Family and Adult Service Center administrator. "My job is to try and help him obtain permanent housing. He's trying to do something but it's hard. You just can't take life for granted. We're all one paycheck from being homeless."

In recent weeks, the NBA Retired Players Association has publicized Pace's dire situation to its members, collecting clothing, toiletries and other nonperishable donations for him. The man wears a size 44 coat and 18 shoe, according to the organization's Web site.

Mitch Kupchak, Los Angeles Lakers general manager, has provided clothing and gift certificates to his former Bullets teammate and calls him a couple of times a month. Others have chipped in with coats and shoes.

Abdul-Aziz and Donaldson have stopped in to see him. Vester Marshall Jr., another former Sonics player and ordained minister, has been supportive.

Meantime, Pace rolls out his tan mattress every night. The makeshift bed is hard. The floor is cold. His mood is flat. He has significant hypertension and liver problems. He's trying his best to stay hopeful, to make a difficult comeback.

He's a long way from the NBA, though KeyArena, a place he used to frequent in uniform when it was the Coliseum, is less than a mile away.

"I'm surprised I'm still alive," Pace said. "I guess there's a purpose in life."

You see us in business. You see us giving meetings. We own a suburban, we go camping, our kids play in the band and love to sing. Our boys play ball with yours in the leagues, our girls dance with yours at the recital. We are the ones that do community service so that single moms can work without paying for a babysitter, we are the ones that donate $1,000 to the local clothing recycle store. We have a family with kids that excel in school, we are sought out for our ability to work with people and train. We are also homeless.

How does this happen? How does the seemingly 'can succeed at anything' family end up alongside the traditionally categorized generalization of other folks in the same boat?

Dependency. Yep. I said it. We were dependent.

What?!?!? Think about it. As 'independent' as we were, we were also dependent.

We depend on someone else to grace us with a paycheck that we earned working on other peoples dreams.

Without that so called 'security' the rest of our solid foundatino falls like a house of cards. And man, if they don't blow away fast when the wind blows.

We are not lazy people by any stretch of the imagination. We are those that have worked 2 and 3 jobs sometimes to make ends meet and take care of the kids we would die for and kill to protect. And yet, when you lose a job, its amazing how little control you have over your life when you go to bed each night on the facade pillow that says, everything is right with the world.

Like hell it is.


When life revolves around what someone else can control or dictate, you lose your sense of true freedom and self. And your spirit and self power knows it. Why they don't bother to scream it a little louder only is manifested when your lying on the floor with 6 of your kids stuffing tears of fury, anger, fear, and the childish feeling of being lied to.

Then and only then can you understand how someone that can manage thousands of employees with flair and success can end up in the food line, the sub for santa list, and the out running the repo guy on dirt roads to try and keep your car a few more hours to pick kids up from school. Then and only then can you imagine what its like to think the life you owned, was never yours.

The love of the business world online - the internet, takes on a new driving voracious lust to figure out in record time and find your own rock to cling too. To own. To chisel out into your very own masterpiece and create your own golden goose that so many talk about, and hunger after.

It's like a new reality show that isn't playing in any theater or have any one producer - but has millions of extras waiting in the wings for the a chance to make a hundred bucks walking across the street for some main star in some major proverbial picture. Only this is all virtual and the Hollywood stars are Gurus and the extras are all the online success wanna-bes that know this is the closest they will ever get to being a success in the industry. And hey, if its a paycheck of any kind, its at least closer to their dream then not, right?

Good grief.

This is why I created this Lens. To duke it out with the odds and find a way to create a real life success for at least one family that can change the course of history for that entire generation and all that follow. To find a way to give them the closely guarded ever elusive means of living next to Oprah if you know what I mean.

There are so many good people. Smart people. Deserviing people. People that would give up all their sleep, all their time, everything to BE that success story.

Now I know that most will never experience the security lie of what living paycheck to paycheck truly is. Not even if you think you are all savvy for having hoarded away a year of pay will you be okay. What if you are jobless for a year and a half? You're still HOMELESS and so is all that you love that is near and dear to you - your family.

The rest is just 'stuff', we all know that. But 'stuff' is what you sleep on, live in, ride in, wear, and so on...so that minimalization of how important 'stuff' is, is what us poor folk do to feel better about NOT HAVING IT!

Come on Guru's! Are you secure enough in yourselves, in your lifestyle to teach one more? To bring up 10 more? What CAN you do with your Guru-ness, or is it all done by slight of hand and half-baked products that keep you in the lap you love and the rest at bay?

Think about it.

Change the world.

And NO, it's not funny or to far away for most people YOU love...

This says what the bigots of our own nation treat those they haven't yet slept next too.

God forgive them - or not.



As for me? Working my way to creating more Millionaires In Training so this doesn't repeat such history.