PORT TOWNSEND – Don Schaefer will be homeless for the holidays, but the volunteers at Port Townsend’s emergency shelter will bring a warmth to his heart that is deeply appreciated.
“The last couple of years I have been in too much pain with my bones and stuff to live outside,” says Schaefer, 55, who is disabled with an arthritic ankle, osteoporosis and a back broken in a fall while he was installing a window in 2002.
Schaefer walks tenderly with a limp.
“When you get old and start getting crippled up, you start getting to be an easy target,” he says.
He left Port Angeles after he was robbed near the Safeway shopping center east of that city.
Schaefer has lived at the Port Townsend shelter in the American Legion hall basement at Madison and Water streets since it opened Nov. 26.
He was hanging out and reading at Monday at Kah Tai Lagoon Nature Park. He also watched birds there, passing time on one of those rare sunny days this time of year.
Although it was warmer, a biting northerly wind occasionally swept off Port Townsend Bay, leaving Schaefer grateful he was wearing long johns and two pairs of socks under his jeans, shirt and coat.
