HBO ‘Motel Kid’ discovers mentors through Hope Mobile, after years on the street

Workers with Hope Mobile wash cars at a location in Costa Mesa on Thursday, June 21, 2018. The organization employs those in need to help them live independently. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Zachary Brewster washes a car with Hope Mobile at a location in Costa Mesa on Thursday, June 21, 2018. The organization employs those in need to help them live independently. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
SoundThe gallery will resume insecondsRick Valdez and Wesley Landers, from left, wash a motorcycle with Hope Mobile at a location in Costa Mesa on Thursday, June 21, 2018. The organization employs those in need to help them live independently. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Casey Caron is the director of operations for Hope Mobile, an organization that employs those in need to help them live independently. The group was washing cars at a mobile location in Costa Mesa on Thursday, June 21, 2018. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Workers with Hope Mobile wash cars at a location in Costa Mesa on Thursday, June 21, 2018. The organization employs those in need to help them live independently. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Michael Moore, Danifu Stallworth and Zachary Brewster, from left, have a laugh while washing a car with Hope Mobile at a location in Costa Mesa on Thursday, June 21, 2018. The organization employs those in need to help them live independently. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Workers with Hope Mobile wash cars at a location in Costa Mesa on Thursday, June 21, 2018. The organization employs those in need to help them live independently. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Workers with Hope Mobile talk during lunch at a location in Costa Mesa on Thursday, June 21, 2018. The organization employs those in need to help them live independently. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Joe Soto washes a car with Hope Mobile at a location in Costa Mesa on Thursday, June 21, 2018. The organization employs those in need to help them live independently. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Michael Moore washes cars with Hope Mobile at a location in Costa Mesa on Thursday, June 21, 2018. The car wash employs those in need to help them live independently. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Zachary Brewster, right, has a laugh with other crew members as they wash cars with Hope Mobile at a location in Costa Mesa on Thursday, June 21, 2018. The organization employs those in need to help them live independently. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Matthew Escamilla, left, and Zachary Brewster wash a car with Hope Mobile at a location in Costa Mesa on Thursday, June 21, 2018. The organization employs those in need to help them live independently. Escamilla and Brewster have known each other since they were 6-years-old and living in motels with their families. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Zachary Brewster, bottom, and Matthew Escamilla wash a car with Hope Mobile at a location in Costa Mesa on Thursday, June 21, 2018. The organization employs those in need to help them live independently. Escamilla and Brewster have known each other since they were 6-years-old and living in motels with their families. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
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Something is seriously messed up when a billion-dollar company such as HBO broadcasts around the world the sad story of a motel kid and the only thing we do is sit on the couch and shake our heads.
Fortunately, Grey Nguyen is no couch potato and has a team of expert volunteers to back him up.
A decade after 11-year-old Zachary Brewster was captured on film in the movie “Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County,” I stumble across Brewster and discover he has a job washing cars, is the father of a three-year-old and that he, his son and fiance just moved into an apartment.
But Brewster tells me he has even bigger news.
Like the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz,” Brewster has a new brain.
Under Nguyen’s nonprofit — called Hope Mobile because its modest beginnings started in an RV — people such as Brewster are learning how to become proud and productive members of society, how to obtain things most of us take for granted such as a birth certificate and how to succeed in the workplace.
“I didn’t want to be just passing out food,” Nguyen explains of the new nonprofit. “I wanted to help people change their life.”
The unconventional nonprofit remains in an embryonic state, but is growing fast.
It currently includes three donated homes across three counties, a budding 36-acre organic farm and aquaponics operation in Perris, a landscaping business in its infancy and a mobile car wash that isn’t so much about cars or even making money as it is about learning how to be a good employee.
The numbers aren’t large compared to some homeless operations that often boast helping hundreds, even thousands. So far, Nguyen reports about 15 success stories in the pipeline. But it’s not about numbers, not at this early stage anyway.
It’s about creating new mindsets and that is no easy thing.
Without Nguyen and his concept to create a make or break environment for homeless people to learn skills many desperately need, Brewster would be just another statistic in what have become this nation’s homeless wars.
“To truly make change,” Nguyen explains, “we need to find people who want to be helped and help them make a change.”
Loaf your days away and you’re out.
While Brewster and I sit on the parking lot curb, he clutches a damp car cloth in his hand like a key — because that’s exactly what the material represents — and explains what many don’t understand.
When you grow up homeless in motels and city parks, you have no skills to turn around your life.
You don’t even have a clue where to begin.
But if you’re lucky, you meet an entrepreneur and a group of thoughtful volunteers who understand the significance of offering business acumen instead of doling out free food.
Starting over
On a recent day, I pull into a business parking lot in Costa Mesa and stop dead, shocked at the scene.
I’m expecting a bunch of guys in tattered clothes with buckets and rags washing cars like most folks do in their driveways.
That is definitely not Hope Mobile style, which caters to businesses.
A dozen men ranging in age from their early-20s to mid-50s and mostly recommended by churches wear turquoise shirts emblazoned with the Hope Mobile logo. They meticulously carry out what can only be called a professional operation.
A massive waterproof mat collects distilled water so it can be recycled. Prices hover around $20 and washes range from extreme cleaning to restoring cloudy plastic headlight covers until they sparkle.
I’m impressed with myself when I rub on some Armor All. Rick Valdez takes restoration to a whole other level.
The 52-year-old resident of a Hope Mobile home in Moreno Valley — yes, Valdez gets up awfully early for his commute — explains he buffs out headlight covers with 1,000 grit, then 1,600 grit.
Next, Valdez uses a mix of environmentally safe chemicals to bring back clarity. Finally, he tops off the lens with a UV protector.
Most importantly, however, Valdez teaches other workers.
A former Silicon Valley research and development guy, Valdez’s life got so far off track he almost never got back. Now, he may even open his own mobile car wash.
New beginnings
If you are a frequent visitor to La Palma Park or the Santa Ana River, you may know Matthew Escamilla. But chances are you looked the other way.
Escamilla, now 21, first landed in a shelter with his mother, brother and two sisters when he was six years old.
In a country with more than 500,000 homeless people, Escamilla’s background is worth thinking about just as it’s worth considering his chances of rising out of homelessness.
Escamilla grew up in single rented rooms with several families and moved from motel to motel with his mother and siblings.
“We kept getting kicked out of stable places,” he confesses. “We were moving all the time.”
The first time he dropped out of school, Escamilla was 11 years old.
In good times, his mother managed to get a job as a caregiver, traveling to work by bus or riding a bicycle. But if she was late, the job evaporated.
When Escamilla was 15, the last threads of hope broke away and the family wound up living in a battered tent in La Palma Park — for five years.
Later, he settled on the Santa Ana River Trail. But last year, Escamilla had an epiphany. He decided he could no longer live in homeless encampments staring away his life, surrounded by drug abuse, stealing and fighting.
About the same time, he heard of Hope Mobile.
Born in Los Angeles, Escamilla today shares an apartment with Hope Mobile assistance, learns about being a solid employee at the mobile car wash and is on his way toward getting a social security card, an I.D. card and a birth certificate.
Documentation means that not only can he get a job, he can think about having a future.
His goal is to get his own apartment so relatives “can have a different life than mine, where we can finally go to sleep without being bugged.”
A business, not charity
Hope Mobile founder Nguyen is atypical when it comes to what some call charity but what he calls a business model.
Born in Saigon just before its fall in 1975, Nguyen graduated from UC Irvine with a major in physics and thrived, first in the boom and bust cycle of the dotcom industry, then in small business finance.
Several years ago, he sold his equity in his company and looked for ways to help people.
“My mom taught me a long time ago that when you can, you give back to the community.”
For several years, Nguyen drove a friend’s RV, handing out food and other necessities throughout Orange County and Long Beach. First it was good, then it grew frustrating.
“I started seeing the same people in line,” Nguyen explains. “They were getting a hot dog and a blanket, but nobody’s life was changing.”
Over time, Nguyen realized that homeless people fall into several distinct categories. Some need expert help and daily care and are either mentally ill, drug addicted or both. Others are content being homeless and living off general relief and state welfare.
But there is a third segment, he says, a group “who can truly take action in their own hands” with the help of life and leadership coaches.
If it sounds cuddly-wuddly, it’s not.
Hope Mobile volunteer and professional life coach Chris Knierim explains people such as Brewster “need to be dreaming again, thinking there’s other ways to live.”
Changing a life lived on the street means changing a mindset, Knierim says. And the impact can be far reaching.
“When you’re changing one family,” he points out, “you’re breaking a generational cycle.”
Nguyen states, “It comes down to accountability.”
HBO motel kid
With any new business or nonprofit, there often is enormous struggle and Nguyen is the first to admit a steep learning curve.
The homes in Garden Grove, Pomona and Moreno Valley are donated and how long that lasts remains murky. The farm in Perris still has its original two cows, 25 chickens and two dogs.
But instead of waiting to have everything in perfect, proper order, Nguyen prefers to forge ahead and help people now.
The nonprofit’s first family with a firm home, for example, moved into their apartment just a month ago.
“I really feel that we’ve learned so much since when we started out,” Nguyen allows.
“Our philosophy is different than a lot of other groups. Instead of asking people to donate money to us, we’re asking businesses to give us the opportunity to wash cars.”
Brewster puts the finishing touches on a blue Corvette and shares he hopes to stay with Hope Mobile as long as possible. “I’ll never be done learning.”
That’s something Brewster couldn’t imagine saying when he was interviewed by HBO a decade ago.
Back then, he admitted to petty theft and described his life this way: “It’s kind of hard living in a motel because they don’t want you to play outside.
“There’s nothing really for us kids to do,” the adolescent Brewster continued. “Parks are starting to be filled with gang members, taggers, a lot of stuff.”
Now, the former motel kid says of Hope Mobile volunteers, “I feel like I have a daddy for the first time, mentors.
“They’re teaching me how to reprogram my brain.”
It’s time to turn off the TV, get off the couch and help hope.
Source: Oc Register