COOK COUNTY, IL — At 6 o’clock, Steve Skilbeck looked through the dark in the review mirror at the six people in the back of the van. Half-filled. A light run. That’s a good thing on a night so cold you can throw a pot of boiling water over a balcony and watch the plume freeze mid-air. More people off the streets. He shifted into gear, the heater wheezing, and headed to the homeless shelter where his passengers would sleep for the night.

Skilbeck was relieved when the 10 year-old van’s engine turned over on the first try for the evening’s trip. At 4:30 in the morning, as the polar vortex blanketed Cook County, it took a dipstick heater and a heckuva lot of patience to get the van to go. Shelters are few and far between in Cook County, and South Suburban PADS has been running the shuttle between them only since 2012.

If Skilbeck couldn’t make his rounds from Matteson to —sometimes— as far as Blue Island, how would the scores of people who depended on the PADS shuttle get to the centers and shelters that would keep them warm and out of the cold? On this night alone, he was transporting five women, a 13-year-old boy and two babies, one whose cheek blazed with fever. What would happen to them?

On any given night in Cook County, at least 100 people are looking for a safe place to sleep, said Doug Kenshol, executive director of South Suburban PADS, a nonprofit that serves the needs of Cook County’s homeless people. Last year, more than 870 people in suburban Cook County were counted as homeless, statistics showed. PADS’ shelters, on the coldest of nights, were full.

But the Streamwood was moving, and as he pulled out of the parking lot at St. Lawrence O’Toole Parish, he flipped on 104.3 Jams FM. They could all use a little Beyoncé to light up the night. A woman in the back pumped her hand in the air. “Put your hand in the air,” she called out, singing about a ring on it. “I’m too cold to put my hand in the air,” Skilbeck shouted back.

Under the singing, he turned to his supervisor, Stephanie Kidd, who was along for the ride. The route would be a typical one, with minor changes because of the extreme cold: St. Lawrence O’Toole to Chicago Heights police station, where there was a warming center, then on to Church of the Holy Family in Park Forest, where the women and their children would stay overnight. From there, they would head to Franciscan St. James Emergency Room to pick up a shelter resident, and then back to St. Lawrence O’Toole, where the man would spend the night. But Skilbeck wanted one more stop, one he wasn’t exactly supposed to make. A woman named Fern needed some antacids and he wanted to stop at a gas station so she could pop in and buy some. Kidd, who has been running shelters a long time, agreed.

Homeless in Hazel Crest
Skilbeck wanted to help Fern because he understood. He was homeless once, too. Back in 2007, he was a contractor, and things were going well until he was on a job and fell several stories, crushing his ankle. He was laid up for a year. Lost his job. Lost his home. He spent four months crashing at friends’ places —but still couldn’t work. He said knew he couldn’t keep living off them, and they didn’t argue. Skilbeck searched until he found his last resort: the Hazel Crest Metra train station. Hazel Crest was where he was from, he said, so even if he didn’t have a house to live in, at least he was home. He had avoided shelters because he’d heard they were rough, and he would be beaten or robbed.

“I was too proud,” he said.

And besides, nobody in the suburbs was homeless, right? Like the time on New Year’s Day when he and his buddies who lived outside, too, split what money they had for some coffee so they could sit in a shop out of the snow. Two women near their table, he said, made a game of guessing why he and his friends were there with their suitcases. They must be going on a skiing trip, the women said.

“Right. If they only knew,” Skilbeck said.

By February, the cold became too much. So he took a friend’s suggestion and went to PADS for help.

“The woman there said to me ‘you look tired.’ I was tired. I hadn’t slept in four months.” Skilbeck still cries when he tells the story. “Then she gave me a big hug.” From there, his circumstances turned around. He found work. He got married. And now he drives the shuttle bus for PADS.

So, he gets it. That’s why he blasts Beyoncé. That’s why he stops for Tums. And that’s why the nine-minute-or-so trips from church to church take a little longer. Skilbeck’s eyes scan Sauk Trail and the roads between for the homeless folks, most of whom he knows. He’ll pick them up to bring them to the shelters and the warming centers, even if they didn’t quite make it to the shuttle stops.

Back on the route
At the Chicago Heights police station’s warming center, he peered through the van’s open doors. “I don’t see anybody” waiting for the shuttle, he said. He sent the teen in to check.

“Nope. Nobody,” said Akeen Davis, 13, as he jumped back into the van.

“Good. That means we got them all this morning,” Skilbeck said. “We got them all off the streets today.”

Time: 6:32 p.m. Temperature: 13 below zero. Wind chill: 33 below.

Davis slid into his seat, right behind Skilbeck, alongside his mom, Kissy Jennings, 41. They were on their way to Church of the Holy Family for the night. Jennings said she had been doing fine in Ford Heights for a while until her landlord was killed. Then, she rented a room for $400 at another place until it went into foreclosure and Jennings was evicted. She and Akeen had been looking for a good place to live for several years, she said, when they discovered PADS.

“It’s tough to stay warm,” he said, fiddling with the zipper on his hoodie.

Jennings spends her days in the library, he explained, and after school, he hops the 357 Pace bus to join her. On the days when he doesn’t have fare money, he asks the driver for lenience. When that one rejects him, he waits 30 minutes for the next bus. And the next. He sighed, pulling his zipped hoodie over his mouth.

Kissy glanced at her son. “I worry about him. Some nights, I don’t even sleep.” She turned toward the window and its veil of ice.

Their stop should have been Skilbeck’s last. But he learned he’d be picking up a shelter client at the St. James ER. The man was very sick, yet was afraid to get treatment because he thought that if he missed the shuttle, the ER would discharge him and he’d have nowhere to go in the cold. Neither Kidd nor Skilbeck would let that happen.

Back at St. Lawrence O’Toole, the two helped the man off the shuttle. Skilbeck sat back in his driver’s seat. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Kidd responded. Skilbeck took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his hair.

7:09 p.m.

His wife, Jennifer, was home, waiting for him, keeping the Hamburger Helper hot. He put the cap back on his head and eased the Streamwood back out of the lot, tail lights glowing red in the fog. The polar vortex was parked for one more night. Morning would come soon enough.

Photos via Erika Hobbs/Patch.

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