How panhandlers use free credit cards

“I’ve been looking    for you,” said Laurie, smiling. I’d left her with a $75 card a few days earlier at her spot outside the south entrance to the Eaton Centre. She’s there most afternoons, in her motorized wheelchair.

“Here’s your card,” she said, pulling it from her wallet.

She bought groceries that would keep her diabetes under control. She put $15 on a pay-as-you-go cellphone. She confessed to buying cigarettes. She usually rolls her own but treated herself. She did all of her shopping at a gas station convenience store, spending all but 39 cents

I explained myself.

“I’ve been wondering when a reporter might find me,” she said, bright green eyes sparkling behind bifocal glasses.

Laurie, 44, is living on the streets in the west-end and couch surfing with friends, including her ex-husband. In addition to diabetes, she takes medication for manic depression and has been diagnosed as having fibromyalgia. She must use the chair to get around and takes about 30 pills a day. She’s on a list to get into a co-op.

She has two daughters in university. One hopes to be a doctor, the other something to do with math. On a good panhandling day, Laurie will spend money in an Internet café and Skype with her girls. On a “super-duper” good day, she’ll book herself into a cheap motel and watch TV.

Each morning, she works on her resume and sends it out to prospective employers. She has computer programming skills and can type “95 words a minute, at 98 per cent accuracy,” she said.

  Her last job was about 10 years ago. Before she had to start using a chair to get around. She was a waitress at a greasy spoon in King Street. Since then, she has lived off benefits.

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