Feature
Top Pot customer bails out Real Change vendor
A friend in need
Learning of James Williams’ arrest last month, Bob Hannah [left] put up his own money to bail the Real Change vendor out of jail. The two got acquainted at Williams’ sales location at Top Pot Donuts in Belltown. Photo by Cydney Gillis.
It’s a drizzly day in downtown Seattle and, inside Belltown’s Top Pot Doughnuts, James Williams is munching on a sugar-coated jelly doughnut while Bob Hannah jokes about the upside of the month that Williams has just spent in the King County Jail.
Williams has lost the 20 pounds that he needed to, he says, for Hannah to finally take him paragliding.
Jail food is not the diet that either friend imagined, but Williams, a Real Change vendor who baristas say brightens everyone’s day outside the shop at Fifth Avenue and Blanchard Street, would still be in jail if Hannah had not paid his bail and sprung him – an act of kindness that not only involved putting up $1,000 of his own money, but paying a month’s worth of Williams’ rent to make sure he didn’t lose his place.
Hannah, a paragliding instructor who was one of Williams’ first customers, says it’s all because of the kindness and good cheer that Williams shows passers-by and customers on the street each day. And because he knows that people who end up on the streets can get back on their feet again.
“To me, James is a fixture here and a good one,” Hannah says. “He has a good interaction with the people who work here [and] people enjoy seeing him…. He helps them get parking and watches over the car. He’s there to answer questions for tourists and always has a smile on his face and a cheery disposition.”
Williams came to Seattle from New Orleans with nothing in 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Back in Louisiana, he was a handyman who renovated homes. Hannah had already given him a set of tools that Williams says he’s used to get work from apartment managers in Belltown. When Williams was absent in May, Hannah noticed it and became concerned after baristas told him that police had taken him away following an incident in front of the store.
Williams was arrested May 14 in front of Top Pot after a man approached him with two $1 bills in his hand spewing vulgar language at him, he says. The guy asked for change and Williams counted out some quarters and put them in the man’s hand.
The man walked off, he says, without giving him any money in return. When he called to him, Williams says the man came back, threw the quarters down on the sidewalk and took a swing at him. “When he did that, I took a swing back,” Williams says, knocking the man down and bloodying his nose.
“That guy was clearly out of his mind,” Top Pot barista Ginger Emshwiller says of the man who attacked Williams. She did not see the incident herself, she says, but after Top Pot’s staff gave the man a towel for his nose, she later observed him use it to wipe blood all over a cafe table.
When the police came, however, it was Williams who was arrested, on a warrant he didn’t know he had, he says, for a court date he had no idea he’d missed – a common problem for the homeless who have no address or people like Williams who have little money and frequently have to move.
Police records allege that Williams threatened a Department of Corrections officer while he was in jail on another matter in 2009. The warrant was issued when he failed to appear for a court date on the harassment charge.
If he’d known he was supposed to go to court, Williams says, he would have been there. But he says he never got the hearing notice. His jail records show that the notice was sent to an address he had used temporarily between a move he made from West Seattle to Capitol Hill in 2009 and was returned to the court as undeliverable.
“I never slept a night on Holden Street,” Williams says of the interim address – and he never made any threats of harm to the Department of Corrections officer, he says.
Without any money to bail himself out, he spent a total of 31 days in jail. Between a move and figuring out the mysteries of the justice system, Hannah says, it took him that long to figure out where Williams was and how to get him out – something that a kind bail bondsman from Lacey O’Malley walked him through, he says, after he finally went down to the jail. Getting jail information on the phone, he says, was impossible.
Before taking the final step of putting up $1,000 of his own money, he asked the baristas at Top Pot if there was anyone who didn’t want Williams around and, to a person, they all said, “We’d love to have him back here, we miss him,” Hannah says. “That’s when I decided to take the risk and pay the bail.”
Williams has pleaded not guilty to the harassment charge and says he’ll definitely be in court at his next hearing date on June 24. “What he’s done for me,” Williams says of Hannah, “it’s unexplainable my appreciation and gratitude.”
Comments
Our world needs many more Bob Hannahs. Sure hope that Mr. Williams make good of this very special kindness and try to make sure to pass it on!
I think it’s all too easy for someone to get railroaded in America, most people don’t believe this but I have observed, studied and consequently been convinced otherwise. The justice system is not very fair for those without resources. I know James Williams well, maybe he’s no angel, maybe he hit a guy in the face, but the nation has let him down in response to a natural disaster. It’s not easy being a refugee, why does America allow this? How many refugees will there be from the latest Gulf fiasco? Will there be enough room in our nations jails for them when justice is served at the end of a long stint out on the streets?
Keep your head up James, I know your a good man.
Your Friend,
Neal
The support our city’s Real Change vendors get from the community is amazing. Everytime a vendor is honored or saved by the community he serves we are bolstered by an overwhelming sense of the depth of kindness that the human spirit is capable of. And sometimes it even erases the bad taste we get from all those selfish individuals who snarl at homelessness as if they are immune to the vagaries of our society.
Thanks, Bob, for reaffirming my faith.
as i grow older and wiser it seems life is a series of problems to solve…why didn’t this act of kindness result is paying this vendor’s rent until the judge let him out of jail? why bail him out? this set’s high expectations for others who now expect to be bailed out under similar circumstances. regular visits to a man in jail and sound advice and love will always trump bailing somebody out IMO.
“The warrant was issued when he failed to appear for a court date”
I don’t either believe or disbelieve the claims made Mr. Williams regarding the two incidents (DOC officer & man on st.). What I do know is that a failure to appear is a failurer to appear, regardless of how and why. I personally have about $10K tied up in out-of-county and out-of-state jury duty (little minor screw-ups of the federal mail system, 1987 to 1994). The last jury duty summons I got was in Glendale AZ. What I got was a big stack of papers that included:
1) a jury duty summons
2) a letter requesting that I come to the court to explain why I didn’t show up for jury duty
3) a letter stating that I hadn’t shown up to explain why I didn’t show up (AKA Failure to Appear)
The letters came from a place I’d long left, Inyo County CA. The original letter had stamped on the outside of the letter:
Postmaster, Do Not Forward Out Of Inyo County
The letters were forwarded to General Delivery, Boise ID, and then to a private mail drop in Boise, and then to Phoenix AZ (Gen. Del.) and then to a private mail drop in Glendale AZ.
That’s all it takes! I’m a criminal.
Even though I don’t side with Mr. Williams, my own experiences with gov’t employees tell me this:
I’d like to know if the Correction Officer had his lips moving when all this stuff happened. When gov’t employees have their lips moving, I usually assume they’re lying.
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