Ronald Fox sometimes adds a little twist when he’s selling Real Change: He sings out to people instead of just talking to them as they approach. He says he loves the people he sells to at the Ballard qfc and that talking to them is good for him.
He used to sell with his dog Pepper, a Staffordshire terrier (pit bull) and Labrador mix, but he stopped bringing her along when she bit one person and made some other people nervous, though most of his customers miss her. He liked having her with him because she helped him stay calm. “All she wants is love.”
Ronald likes listening to music — “All types, I’m not picky. When I was younger I listened to everything. Lawrence Welk, remember that show? The one with the bubbles. My grandmother and me used to watch it.” He says he still watches it sometimes on a cable station from Canada.
He also likes the Grateful Dead and ZZ Top and has plans to surprise his 18-year-old daughter Jennifer on her birthday — August 26, which is also his birthday — by taking her to see ZZ Top.
When Ronald’s not listening to music on the radio, he’s tuned in to kiro fm, especially when late night Coast to Coast am talk radio airs. “It talks about everything — world events, ufo sightings, the end of days, everything like that. I listen with all my heart, but I don’t judge what they say.”
He says while some people are frightened by the things they talk about on the show, he figures we’re all here to survive and help each other when bad things happen. “I’ve been homeless. I tell other people, just don’t give up, just keep going forward and things will get better and then they do.” He now has a room and is in line for subsidized housing.
Ronald likes segments about the relationship between mental illness and spiritual and psychic phenomena. Both his grandparents died of cancer, and he’s very interested when people on the show talk about causes and cures for the disease. He is glad that he has relatively good health; he doesn’t drink and he makes sure he eats well.
Ronald, who is from Tacoma, lived in Yelm before coming to Seattle in 1981. He sometimes works at a used car dealership, helping with clerical tasks and going to auto auctions. He travels to see his mom and his other relatives in South Carolina and other parts of the country. Besides his daughter, he has a 19-year-old son.
It’s important to Ronald to relate to people from his heart and to promote peaceful solutions to violence. He tells of walking Pepper and coming upon a man beating up a homeless woman. He didn’t try to fight with the guy. “I just told him ‘That’s enough!’ ” When the man said, “She caused it,” Ronald told him, “That’s no excuse.” He expects he’ll see her later on and be able to make sure that she’s ok. He’s also glad he had his dog there to protect him.