Shopping Cart Series: Personal Effects Cargo Carts

When we first met our “owner”, she introduced herself as a Ukrainian immigrant and said she needed us to help her out for a couple of hours.

She said she had some personal effects that needed to be hauled over to a new address. So, we figured that we could offer a helping hand. When we realized that the poor lady had been unable to pay her rent, lost her  apartment, and had her few remaining belongings in these plastic bags, we felt very  sad for her — but, we were wondering how we could have gotten involved in this situation. We did feel bad for her having to live on the streets as a homeless person, but it was short-lived when we realized that we were nothing but beasts of burden to her.

Night and day she leaves us parked out on the street in front of the Connie Lekas School (P.S. 811K) as if she doesn’t know us. She prefers to stay under the shelter of the Pathmark store bottle redemption center just across the street.

A couple of weeks ago, we spoke to a passerby with hopes that they would rescue us from this life. Instead, the person called 3-1-1 to help our “owner”. Some nice people from the NYC Coalition for the Homeless came by right after the 3-1-1 call and spoke to her, but she said that she didn’t want  to go a shelter. They said they would come by and check up on her in the future, but they never even asked us what we wanted.

If you’re in the neighborhood doing some shopping or dropping the kids off to school, maybe you’re up for a little rescue. You can find us near 2525 Haring St. Don’t even bother asking our owner anything about the cargo. Just take the load off, drop it across the street and we’ll make a roll for it. Hope to see you, soon.