by Andrea Vogt   ‚   Photography by Robert Hubner

This cold October morning, Gypsy is resting under a shower curtain duct-taped to a tarp in a thicket of thorn trees along the Spokane River.

Two Washington State University students and a Spokane caseworker who does weekly outreach to the homeless wind along the narrow brushy trail leading to his camp. The caseworker, Martha Nelson, calls out to announce the presence of visitors.

"Knock. Knock. Anybody home?"

"Who is it?" a man asks.

"It's Martha, from outreach. I'm here with the nurses."

Gypsy remembers Martha, and he's been homeless long enough to remember that the student nurses come each spring and fall. Happy to see friendly visitors, he comes out in his stocking feet to welcome them. He apologizes for the mess-garbage and rusted metal-and warns about the "mine field" of feces in the wooded area he's designated as his bathroom. He just got back from North Dakota and hasn't had time to fix up his camp, he explains.

Students Kate Pavlicek and Jennifer Schwarzer, both 24, ask him if he has any health needs.

"You know what I need-some blankets, a sleeping bag. Somebody stole mine in Fargo. Can you believe that?"

They chat about his family back in Colorado, and his health. He's battling emphysema and has been short of breath lately, he says. He peels off his coat and starts unbuttoning his flannel shirt, revealing scars on his chest.

"I think maybe you better take my pulse. I had a triple heart bypass up in Montana a few months ago. They opened me up like a peanut, took five veins out of my leg. But I'm taking aspirin."

Student Kate Pavlicek checks the blood pressure of Gypsy,
who currently lives along the river.

The nurses look at each other, eyebrows raised, then take his blood pressure. One-sixty over 100.

"That's pretty high," says Pavlicek, unstrapping the Velcro band from his thin, white arm.

"Yea, that's hard on your heart after a new surgery," adds Schwarzer. "You need to go in to the clinic tomorrow and get some blood pressure medicine."

Gypsy jokes about the jump it gave his heart to see so many pretty young faces at once. The student nurses laugh and dig into their Jansport backpacks for juice, two power bars, and some fruit leather, which he eats on the spot. A carton of a half-dozen eggs on the ground by his tarp is the only food visible. They promise to check back the following week and bring blankets if they can. He promises to go downtown to the free Community Health Association of Spokane clinic the next morning.

Gypsy's camp is evidence of the harsh living conditions faced by a growing number of Spokane's homeless. This day it's also doubling as a WSU classroom for students being educated as nurses. It's a lesson in reality that often changes the way they see the world.

"I personally want to go into public health," says Pavlicek, of Bremerton. "This opens your eyes totally."

For Schwarzer, it's been a new take on her hometown.

"I didn't know there were this many homeless people in Spokane and had no idea the places they were. You could be walking by a trail to where they sleep, and never know it. I actually recognize people now. Instead of 'Oh there's a homeless person over there,' it's like 'hey there's Gary.' They have names now."

Established in 1968, WSU's College of Nursing-also known as the Intercollegiate College of Nursing-is the nation's first, oldest, and most comprehensive nursing education consortium. The college offers baccalaureate, graduate, and professional development course work to nursing students enrolled through its four consortium partners, Eastern Washington University, Gonzaga University, Whitworth College, and Washington State University. Each year, the college educates more than 550 graduate and undergraduate students and prepares more entry-level nurses than any other educational institution in the state. Every student who graduates with a nursing baccalaureate is required to take a semester of community health nursing. For some in Spokane, that means a semester of working with a needy downtown population-among them the poor, homeless, mentally ill, drug- and alcohol-addicted, abused.
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