Crystal Bauer was necessarily blunt with TIME Magazine’s Paul Moakley back in the winter of 2020-21 when explaining to him why she does what she does for the homeless population in Wheeling.
“The short version of my story is, I grew up in a home where I experienced every kind of abuse. When I tell people it is a miracle that I am not homeless and living under a bridge, it absolutely is.”
Bauer never has hidden the fact that her childhood was surrounded by abuse and addiction, and since an uncounted number of people have greatly benefited from her decision to remain in the business of making miracles.
“She did not have the greatest childhood and Crystal has been very open about that,” said Dr. Bill Mercer, the founder of Project Hope and former health officer for the Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department. “She has a lot of armor around her and it can be difficult to penetrate sometimes, but you always know where her heart is because that’s what keeps her going. Above all else, she’s determined to help people.
“She just fights, day after day, for the unfortunate because she knows she could be in that position herself,” he explained. “After she first got involved with the homeless when she was working with (Youth Services System), she hasn’t stopped. She’s made it her mission, and she’s not a fan when people try to get in her way.”
When Moakley penned the piece for TIME, the country’s homeless population was estimated to be over 580,000 men and women living unsheltered, but officials with the Department of Housing and Urban Development now believe that number has climbed well beyond 620,000. The number of homeless now living in Wheeling has increased, too, to at least 150 individuals, according to Mercer.
“They come here because of the wonderful people who operate the services they need, like the (Greater Wheeling) Soup Kitchen, Street MOMs, the (Catholic Charities) 18th Street Neighborhood Center, and YSS,” the doctor said. “And then there’s Project Hope and the street medicine we provide to them when we go out on the weekends or when something is wrong with someone through the week.
“And I’m telling you, if Crystal gets a call from someone, she’s gone,” he said. “{And it doesn’t matter what she’s doing either. She goes to help.”
Kenny and Sonny and Jim and Carl and Freddy
She’s aggressive, for sure, and at times Bauer makes people not like her much. Mercer says it’s because she loses sometimes.
People die, rules remain unfair, and not everyone cares. Local residents have told her, to her face, that they wish the homeless would just go away from the encampments, the street corners, the interstate ramps, and from under the city’s plethora of bridges, and that they should find a different community to torture with their panhandling and their filth.
“I know she ruffles feathers sometimes, and I know sometimes she needs a filter, but that’s how you get things done and she knows it. Her compassion for our homeless in this community is unmatched, and that says a lot because there are not too many people working to help those folks on a daily basis,” Mercer insisted. “It’s because of her that we’ve gotten to know some of the homeless so well.
“There’s been Kenny and Sonny and Carl and Freddy,” he explained. “We came to know them so well so when they’ve passed, it’s felt like it was a relative of ours, but somehow, she has just kept moving forward and working so we can help those who really can’t help themselves even more than we already do. That’s why those men and so many more of our homeless have come to trust her.”
Mental health. Drug addiction. In many worst-case scenarios, the homeless in Wheeling have been treated by Bauer and her Project Hope teammates for both afflictions. Except for the three months between December and March when a winter shelter has opened since 2009, the unsheltered have created encampments in East Wheeling or nearby the neighborhood to remain close to the non-profits that assist them most.
When criminal activity had been reported or when fires have damaged bridges, the clearings of those campgrounds have drawn the attention of the directors with the ACLU-West Virginia office in Charleston. Bauer, though, strays from those frays and beats back the criticisms with doses of reality she initially learned by working closely with the founders of street medicine, Dr. Jim Withers from Pittsburgh and Dr. Jim O’Connell from Boston.
“She is tenacious and that’s why she is our biggest advocate for our homeless unsheltered and she and I have had some disagreements about how she has gone about things because her stick-in-the-eye approach isn’t always the best approach,” Mercer said with a chuckle. “I have just explained that there are more subtle ways to approach some things, but I also always keep in mind that she’s not being mean but instead just fighting harder for what she believes in.
“You have to respect her passion, and you have to understand that she doesn’t do what she does to gain any attention or recognition for herself. She does it for people,” she said. “She fights so hard to save lives. She’s a nurse, and that’s what nurses do.”
Front and Center
Mercer does not expect Bauer to share the link to this “Person of the Year” article on any social media platforms, and he doesn’t suspect she’ll mention it to anyone either.
“When she finds out she’s been honored as LEDE’s ‘Person of the Year,’ I think the first thing that will come to her mind is that she’s not deserving of it because all she does is what she does,” the physician predicted. “And then she’ll just get back to what she does every single day. Crystal has never looked for any spotlight, but it does seem to find her at times.
“She just tells people that ‘someone has to care,’ and then she goes about what she does without a second thought,” Mercer revealed. “I’ve seen it over and over again.”
Bauer was honored in 2018 by the board of directors of the Wheeling YWCA, a non-profit agency located on the corner of 11th and Chapline streets in downtown Wheeling. Along with Carol Austin, Kimberly Florence, Betsy Jividen, and Deiona Bush Gilliam, Bauer was honored during the “Tribute to Women” event for her contributions to entrepreneurship, professionalism, and philanthropy.
“Anyone who knows Crystal knows she can be a pit bull while she’s worked for the growth that’s taken place over the past six years, and this area has never had a bigger advocate when it comes to get our homeless shelter,” Mercer explained. “It was great when the Wheeling YWCA recognized her and her efforts a few years ago, but I hope people realize that Crystal works 24 hours a day in a part-time job.
“Every single day she takes phone calls about problems, and she never turns down the requests for help,” he said. “She’s the fixer and we’re lucky she’s on our side.”
Thank you for bringing to our attention the tremendous
contributions to the Wheeling area of Ms Bauer.
We could never thank her enough.
Comments are closed.