Safety ambassadors offer helping hand to those in need

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - The man and woman standing outside the Downtown YMCA seem to see Rich Northup before he sees them.

It’s just after 6 a.m. and still dark on this mid-December day, but Northup isn’t exactly inconspicuous. As he rolls up on his state-of-the-art mountain bicycle outfitted with a strobe headlight, the cigarette-smoking woman and the man in a wheelchair appear wary of the uniformed stranger.

But Northup recognizes them right away because he has interacted with them before.

“Good to see you, buddy!” Northup says to the man with an enthusiasm that is not reciprocated.

Both of their guards remain up - maybe it’s the ski mask obscuring Northup’s face in this bitter cold - even as Northup begins his spiel.

“Is there anything I can do for you today?” he asks. The answer, unsurprisingly, is no, but Northup offers them help finding shelter or hot food, nonetheless.

Before he can press on with his route as a safety ambassador for the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District and Discovery, another familiar face approaches him - this one friendly.

It’s a 51-year-old man he knows as Tom who complains to Northup about some wiring issues at the West Side house he rents with his mother. Northup asks him “Are you OK for food, coffee, everything today?”

“Huh-uh,” Tom said.

“You hungry?” Northup asked.

“Yeah,” Tom said.

Northup tells Tom he’ll return in an hour or so with food from the nearby Red Roof Inn. The hotel is happy to provide items from its breakfast buffet at no cost for Northup to hand out to those in need, a daily show of gratitude for the outreach he and the other blue-clad safety ambassadors offer to homeless men and women around Downtown.

It’s a job that Northup, 67, unequivocally loves.

The Dublin man began his first stint in 2013, about six years after retiring from a career in education, both as a high school teacher in Virginia and in textbook publishing.

Northup left the ambassador job in 2015 when he had to have knee surgery, but he’s been back since August 2018 and has no intention of leaving again until he’s physically unable to perform his duties.

“This is eminently more fulfilling, more interesting than any other security work I’ve ever done,” said Northup, who has been deployed elsewhere as an employee for Ohio Support Services, a security contracting business. ″It’s just amazing, the stuff I see on a daily basis.”

Northup is one of 20 safety - plus nine cleaning - ambassadors employed by OSS and contracted to the special improvement district, said Lisa Defendiefer, the deputy director of operations and advocacy for Capital Crossroads. The program is mainly funded by Downtown property owners who are interested in maintaining a safe and clean environment.

The safety ambassadors - who are trained in defensive tactics and verbal de-escalation and first-aid techniques - spend most of their time connecting those on the street with resources to meet their needs. Last year, they helped 127 people find temporary shelter and permanent housing.

As part of their duties patrolling an 80-block area of Downtown and the Discovery District, they also report any crimes they witness to whichever special duty Columbus police officer is working with Capital Crossroads that day.

“We don’t have much power, but we have enormous influence,” Northup said.

Defendiefer praised Northup as a tireless advocate for those on the street.

“He is probably one of the most caring individuals that I’ve seen,” she said. “He’s really a good mentor for the other ambassadors here and just has a terrific temperament.”

But Northup insists his outlook on the job isn’t special.

“Everyone here has a lot of empathy in their heart, and if you don’t, then you shouldn’t be doing this job,” he said.

Safety ambassador Aaron Runyan said he shares that approach. Like Northup, Runyan relishes the success stories of those he meets living on the streets.

“We’ll run into someone who’s a drug addict, and you get them off the street and see them later on and they’re doing better,” said the 31-year-old, who in February will mark his fifth year as an ambassador.

Northup spent his recent shift checking in alleyways and under overpasses for homeless individuals - “sleepers,” he calls them - and drug users. He knows their names, where they hang out, where they sleep, what they like to eat, whether they’re using drugs or are clean and, usually, if they have a mental illness.

He earnestly uses words such as “buddy” and “friend” to describe his relationship with the people he helps, who unfortunately, he said, are too often treated by society like public nuisances.

Northup once brought a sketchbook and markers to one man, an artist, so he could draw while he was trying to get sober. When Northup found out in September from another homeless man that his friend had been found in a doorway dead of a heroin overdose, it crushed him, he said.

Northup recognizes that he can’t compel people to go to rehab and he’s powerless to force them into shelter. But as a recovering alcoholic who hasn’t had a drink since 1977, he knows the darkness many of them are living in.

And as a devout Catholic, he sees this job as a way to live his faith. He also has volunteered at prisons since 2002, mostly ministering to inmates.

Northup estimates he bikes up to 20 miles per shift, from 5th Avenue to the Scioto River, and from Nationwide Boulevard to Fulton Street.

Barbara Northup, 66, worries about her husband of 47 years when he’s on the job, but mostly she is proud.

“It’s his passion and makes him happy,” said Barbara, a full-time real estate agent.

Dangers lurk around any corner, but Northup said he’s had only one close call that required backup. Most people are simply happy to meet someone who cares.

After 7 a.m. on the mid-December day, the morning darkness is just starting to give way to light as Northup finally makes his way to the Red Roof Inn.

He does a quick scan of the hotel’s parking lot for any signs of car break-ins. Then he pauses and looks toward the east, where he takes in the sunrise as it meets the Downtown skyline.

He said he does this every day if he can; it’s a moment of mindfulness, a chance to thank God that he gets to do this job.

It’s not long before he has loaded a bag with hard-boiled eggs, bananas and coffee from the hotel and is headed back toward the YMCA. Tom eagerly takes what Northup offers him.

Northup tells Tom to give his best wishes to his mother, but he doesn’t linger long.

“I’m riding to help someone,” Northup said. “I just don’t know who it is yet.”