By Terry McGuire

While heading to a movie one rainy winter night about two years ago, Bill Marty and his wife, Sheila, of St. John Parish in Seattle, noticed a street person in the parking lot clutching a sign asking for help.

They emerged from the theater some two-and-a-half hours later to find it still raining — and the man still there.

“We were touched by his persistence, and how cold and wet it was,” Bill Marty recalled last week. “I walked over to Larry’s Market, bought a sandwich and a bottle of water, and gave it to him.”

The incident got Marty to thinking: What if there had been no store nearby? He could’ve given the man cash, of course, but with no idea of how it would be spent.

Marty brought up the subject at a meeting of the parish’s St. Vincent de Paul Society conference, of which he is president. The results of those discussions came to fruition last month when the conference launched a new project, “Helping Hands,” to provide parishioners with food, clothing and bus coupons for those times when they encounter such people in need.

The coupons are packed snugly inside a credit-card-sized envelope that can easily be carried in a wallet or purse. Each packet contains five $1 gift certificates to McDonald’s restaurants, two King County Metro bus passes worth $1.25 each, and a $10 coupon good for clothing or bedding at any of the society’s eight Seattle-area thrift stores, with the stores’ addresses printed on the back.

A prayer card with the “Our Father” also is included. “This is still a good way to pray,” the card states. “Give it a try...”

The packets, which contain $17.50 worth of coupons, are being sold by the conference for $6. The conference gets the bus coupons at a discount and is billed by the thrift store for half of what is spent there.

“We don’t necessarily claim it’s a super original idea,” Marty said. But “I think it helps our parishioners quite a bit because when they’re approached by these folks on the streets they don’t necessarily know how to respond. They want to offer help without maybe making the problem worse.”

Parishioners greeted the project with enthusiasm when it was introduced at weekend Masses Dec. 14-15. They snapped up all 125 packets and ordered approximately 100 more, Marty said. This month’s batch of 150 envelopes also sold out. The packets are currently being sold once a month after Masses.

“A woman (visiting) from California wrote a check for 20 and asked that we put them in the parish office for (needy) people who come in,” Marty said. A St. John parishioner purchased 100 envelopes, with 90 of them to be distributed as the conference saw fit.

Marty said last week that the conference hadn’t been billed by the thrift stores yet, so he didn’t have an idea of how many have been used.

But he personally distributed his first envelope Jan. 18 to a man holding a cardboard sign near a freeway exit ramp in downtown Seattle. “He gave me a questioning look and I explained to him...there’s food and transportation (coupons) in there, and he seemed pretty excited about that. He says, ‘Well, that’s just what I needed.’”

To obtain Helping Hands packets, contact Marty by e-mail at billandsheilamarty@yahoo.com. Provide your name, phone number and the number of packets you wish to purchase.