LOCAL REGIONAL -- RELATED ARTICLES -- Salvation Army, Boston Police blanket area City takes steps to preserve MDC open space Removing Porter median not popular A continuum of care for the homeless -- PHOTOGRAPHS -- Homeless since April 2002, Gloria Maguire was recently taken in by Shelter Inc. in Cambridge. Above, she braves the cold in Cambridge's Central Square last week. (Staff photo by Jim Walker) -- RELATED SITES -- Find a Job in CAMBRIDGE Yard Sales around CAMBRIDGE MCAS Rankings for CAMBRIDGE Boston Homes: The Complete Guide BostonHerald.com Local & Regional News -- HERALD INTERACTIVE TOOLS --  Email this Article to a Friend  Email the Online Staff  Email the Newspaper  Printer Friendly Version  Subscribe to the Cambridge Chronicle

Stephen was a roofer, anxiously awaiting the birth of his first child.

Jack's dreams of a professional baseball career were once as tangible as the love he holds for his late wife and son.

Gloria was a temp, working in a cafeteria kitchen and helping to raise her 8-year old granddaughter.

Now all three are fighting to survive in Cambridge's shelter system, strangers connected by their status as homeless men and women looking to improve their lot in life.

While society generally lumps all homeless people into one category - the stereotypical down-on-his-luck, middle-aged man who drinks too much and harasses people for change on the street corner - stepping into any of the vast array of shelters in Cambridge reveals very different stories.

Whether they are at the First Church Shelter, the Hildebrande Family Self-Help Center, CASPAR's wet shelter on Albany Street or the Salvation Army Emergency Shelter, every one of the people who fills Cambridge's 250-plus shelter beds has a unique story.

Together they create a tapestry of experiences and needs, of talents and ambitions, of tragedies and enduring hope, illustrating the colorful and ever-changing homeless population.

The single-father anomaly

When Stephen Brockway, 42, speaks of his 3-year-old daughter Rebecca, his otherwise down-trodden face lights up, a smile extending from ear to ear.

"I want her to have her own place that she can call her own home," he said. "I'd like to put her in school. She's real smart."

While most single-parent families at the Hildebrande Family Self-Help Center are led by mothers, Brockway represents an emerging segment of the homeless population.

Having worked for years as a painter, the Somerville High School graduate has several community college credits under his belt. He tired of painting and trained to be a roofer, a job he loved.

Three years ago, Brockway was living in Somerville with his pregnant fiancée and looking forward to being a father. But two weeks before Rebecca was born, Brockway fell off a roof and sustained serious injuries, including a fractured skull and a broken arm and leg.

After the accident, financial and medical difficulties consumed Brockway's life.

"I was on workman's comp, which basically put me in a hole. One week it'd be the rent, then the telephone and the cable," he said. "We were doing OK, but then my fiancée lost her job.

"From then, it was just everything. We owed money. We ended up losing the apartment," he added. Brockway's disability check amounted to $200 a week, half of what he was making as a roofer.

Brockway and his fiancée split and he found himself, daughter in tow, with nowhere to sleep in May 2002. The duo spent a few nights in a Department of Transitional Assistance hotel in Revere, before short stays at family shelters in Waltham and Brookline.

Three months after losing their apartment, Brockway and his daughter got a space at Hildebrande, and he could not be happier.

"Hildebrande's cool. They're not on your back all the time. They let you do your own work," he said. "The people are nice. They understand and they don't look down on you or anything."

But with such a young child, the stability of being in the same place for several months has been the most important part.

"It's harder on her than on me, just adjusting. Hopefully this will be the last stop before we move into our own home," Brockway said.

Now living on $350 a month from DTA, Brockway, who still suffers from migraines and chronic pain from the accident, is waiting to hear back about a Section 8 voucher for a two-bedroom apartment he found in North Cambridge, a place he plans to put down roots and put the last year behind him.

"I'm lucky because she's young. I think years from now she won't remember it," he said.

Confessions of a chronically homeless man

As a high school senior, Jack was drafted by both the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs, but the second baseman opted for an education.

Then after a year at Boston College on a baseball scholarship, he enlisted in the 101st Airborne Division and spent three years in combat in Vietnam, a decision he now regrets.

"I joined the service, why I don't know. It cost me my career," said Jack, 58, who asked not to have his last name printed in the paper.

After returning from the service, Jack married, but in 1971 his wife and 4-year-old son were killed in a car accident in California. A new, sad chapter of Jack's life began with that accident and he is just now getting back on track.

When his family was killed, Jack turned to the bottle for comfort. "I just disappeared. I didn't care," he said.

When he resurfaced, Jack has several run-ins with the law, doing six stints in jail in the 1970s and 1980s. He served seven years for his first and most serious offense.

"The first time, I tried to kill three [guys]. They tried to hurt a family member of a relative, so I took it upon myself [to retaliate]," he said nonchalantly. "I crippled all three, one at a time. Nothing to be proud of."

The rest of his arrests were for more minor offenses such as breaking and entering and stealing cars, he said.

When he was not behind bars, Jack bounced from job to job, working at times as a bartender or on maintenance crews. All his jobs had one thing in common: easy access to alcohol.

"I chose to work in a bar seven days a week and drink seven days a week," he said.

Jobs were not the only things he couldn't keep, and Jack bounced from shelter to shelter and in and out of sobriety for the better part of 30 years. He is what homeless advocates call a chronically homeless man.

"I made the rounds the wrong way," he said.

But today, Jack doesn't sleep in a shelter; he works in one. He's been sober for 18 months and has been living in a one-bedroom apartment in Inman Square since hooking up with Shelter Inc.'s Shelter Plus Care Program.

"For the first time I have my own place. Shelter Plus has been wonderful to me. I'm paying my own bills and it feels great," he said.

Jack works 20 hours and volunteers an additional 15 hours a week at Bread and Jams, a homeless drop-in center in the basement of Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Harvard Square.

With an Irish lassie to keep him company and enough money in the bank to attend a couple of Red Sox games a year, Jack hopes the only reminder of his time on the street will be his nose, enlarged from excessive alcohol consumption and a couple of misplaced fists.

"I've got everything I want now. I have my happiness back," he said.

Contemplating, he amended that statement: "I always had it, I just hid it."

A grandmother on the street

Although she never knew him, Gloria Maguire knows well the bridge under which Bob Gurney succumbed to the cold last month.

Maguire, 53, used to sleep under the same highway underpass where Gurney was found dead during the bitter cold spell Boston experienced in January. But Maguire only slept there during the summer.

A mother of four children and grandmother of three, Maguire has been homeless since April 2002, first bouncing in and out of emergency shelters and now calling the Cambridge Shelter home.

A cafeteria worker, Maguire became homeless when her daughter kicked her out of her Dorchester home because Maguire was unemployed and not helping with the bills.

"It just got to be too much. So I left. It was a big blowout," she said. "But I mean, now we're the best of friends."

During the seven months she was on the streets, Maguire would alternate between sleeping at the Pine Street Inn, at the Woods Mullen Shelter, in the Boston Common and under the Southeast Expressway Bridge. Being a woman made life on the street more risky, she said.

"From a woman, they expect something," she said. "You have to be on your lookout whenever you meet someone."

But life on the street is not as isolating as one might think. Homeless people tend to stick together, returning to the same place night after night and forming a close-knit community. If there were a half-dozen people under a bridge, Maguire said, one would go to the Pine Street Inn to get blankets for everyone else while they watched his stuff. If someone had a little extra cash, they would share, knowing the favor would be returned when the roles were reversed.

It was everyone else they had to watch out for. "You meet people, well-dressed people, ask for a cigarette and they were rude," she said.

Now living at the Cambridge Shelter, Maguire speaks fondly and seemingly without regret about her time on the street. It's what took her off the street that makes her cringe.

Having secured a job working in the cafeteria of a bank in Waltham, Maguire was on her way to work at 4 a.m. on Oct. 14 when two men jumped out of the bushes near the Pine Street Inn and brutally raped her.

"One got me from the front. One got me from the back. It was a hell of an experience," she said, her tired eyes unflinchingly stern.

After the attack, the recovering alcoholic with seven years of sobriety fell off the wagon.

Maguire spent three months at the Betty Snee House in Boston, where she was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and treated for severe anemia. Maguire secured a room at the Cambridge Shelter, run by Shelter Inc., at the beginning of January and has since gotten a Section 8 voucher.

She is looking for a one-bedroom in Dorchester, South Boston or Quincy so she can be near her daughter and granddaughter, and is proud to report four months of sobriety.