King Richard

Here at the Pitch, we met Richard Tripp eleven years ago, when he was a cab driver living under the Broadway bridge. We were young and naïve then, and stunned by his story: Homeless people who tried to stay in shelters were getting stabbed, beaten up, ripped off. Shelter operators were hoarding donations for themselves. Tripp introduced us to men who told us it was “safer, less hassle to live in a camp on the river.”

Our story, “Shelter Skelter,” ran in March 1991, but I don’t know if it made a difference. And I’ve since learned that Tripp’s complaining about homeless shelters is one of the oldest stories in the book.

Tripp, meanwhile, figured that if the city’s official do-gooders weren’t taking care of poor people, he’d do it himself. He still drives his cab but also runs his own charity out of a donated hovel near 23rd and Jackson. Behind plastic-covered windows are piles of old clothes and canned food. The only piece of furniture in the living room is a freezer filled with Honey Baked hams and loaves of bread. With the help of some churches, every spring and fall Tripp holds a big potluck and hands out the clothing.

That hasn’t kept him out of trouble, though. A few years ago, when he was still drinking, Tripp woke up one morning, coughed and saw blood. “I took a cold drink of water, and there was blood everywhere,” he says. “My esophagus had blew up.” He drove himself to Truman Medical Center and then passed out for 38 days. When he came to, a doctor was standing over him. “She says, ‘Mr. Tripp, you shouldn’t be here. You should be dead. If you ever come in my emergency room again smelling of alcohol, you’re going to wake up, and I’ll have put body parts where they shouldn’t be.'”

He quit drinking. And funny things started happening. A couple of days later, back in his cab, he picked up a fare who turned out to be Mark Victor Hansen, guru of the Chicken Soup for the Soul empire. Hansen remembered that ride with Tripp in 1996’s A Cup of Chicken Soup for the Soul. “[Tripp] said, ‘I take care of the invisible 10,000 Kansas City homeless out there.’ I could sense the emotion in his words. My eyes started tearing up.”

My eyes start rolling at Hansen’s chicken feed, but Tripp has figured out how to milk it. He sometimes appears at Hansen’s big motivational conventions, where he plugs his Web site to get help-the-homeless events started around the country. He makes little money on the speaker circuit, but he likes “getting those people to get down and help their brothers and sisters on the street.”

Tripp knows how to run his mouth, after all, and it makes people want to help.

Except that he’s not getting enough help with this year’s Spring Break for the Homeless, a dinner and giveaway set for March 30. Tired of what he calls the “Band-Aid” approach, Tripp wanted to hold a job fair this time. He had an ally in businessman John Isenberg, who heard Tripp speak at Temple B’nai Jehudah a few years ago. Isenberg contacted the chamber of commerce, hoping some members would be willing to stop by at Spring Break for the Homeless and talk to Tripp’s constituency.

Isenberg isn’t asking his fellow businessmen to offer homeless people jobs. “If we can have some employers who’d just be there to have discussions with people, we could make a difference in their lives,” he says.

As of earlier this week, though, Isenberg and Tripp hadn’t had any takers.

So a different approach might be in order. I thought of Tripp while watching testimony at the city council on March 6. Council members are trying to balance the city budget, and they’re considering cuts to agencies that serve the city’s poorest families. That night, Sister Berta Sailer from Operation Breakthrough gave them a lesson in politics.

“Vulnerable children are an easy place to cut,” she said. “Many of their mothers are not voters. Many of their mothers are too involved in survival issues to even worry about who’s in office. Is that right? No — we try to encourage moms to be voters, but if you have nowhere to live and no food for your children, who’s running for any position really doesn’t make a lot of difference to you.” So, she told the council, “You must be the voice for our kids and their families. Otherwise there is no voice.”

A few days later, council members Bonnie Sue Cooper, Paul Danaher, Jim Rowland, Becky Nace, Troy Nash and Terry Riley proposed putting services for poor people back into the budget and deleting money for things like a federal lobbyist and a municipal judge. At the March 20 budget hearing, Alvin Brooks emphatically added his name to their ranks.

Sister Berta’s testimony had apparently softened a few hearts, but she looked tired, like she could use help. I wondered what the debate would have been like if someone like Richard Tripp — a guy who knows how to get all sorts of people to one table — had been on the council.

Tripp, who’s not afraid of anything, flinches at the suggestion. “No, no, I’m not that,” Tripp says. “I’m still basically just a cab driver. I’m a ninth-grade dropout. I grew up in that cab from a kid to a man. When people elect somebody, they expect somebody with all the qualifications. All I’ve got is common street sense.”

That sounds like a fine qualification. And he’s got plenty of “cross-over” political appeal: While his themes are pure liberal, Tripp’s self-empowerment spiel is hardcore conservative. Besides, didn’t most of us learn well before ninth grade that in this country, anyone can run for office? And win?

I’ve seen what Tripp can do when he’s mad enough, and I’m still idealistic enough to imagine the hilarious spectacle of a few chamber members having to ask him for their next tax break. Instead, they might just want to show their faces on March 30, between noon and four at 2107 Central.