FORT WALTON BEACH — Police Cpl. Candy Galindo’s lips tighten as she pours out a beer she took from a homeless man sitting near the corner of U.S. Highway 98 and Beal Parkway.
Galindo, a Fort Walton Beach community redevelopment officer, poured out the same man’s beer the day before. She says that’s not unusual; most of her days are similar.
Galindo, known to the homeless as Miss Candy, is as much a presence downtown as the people she monitors, which consist of about 20 regulars who walk the streets with the smell of booze and hard living in their wake.
View a slideshow of Cpl. Galindo's day. >>
After dumping the beer, Galindo fills out a citation with a pen topped with a large fabric daisy. Then she hands the pen to the man for him to sign.
“Some of these people who have been out here for just a few months, they want to find a way out,” Galindo said.
“But the ones I deal with, the ones that have been out here for 13 years, they are OK with their way of life.
“What I try to do is keep the law, but I also try to make them see that they can do more for themselves,” she added. “I tell them to make a plan, save their money. This is not an easy lifestyle.”
Galindo has been with the Police Department since 1997 and has been a community policing officer for two years.
She is one of five officers who patrol the downtown area with a focus on residents and businesses.
Her job seems simple: She drives the same streets during her 12-hour shift, talks to the same people and walks the same paths.
“I go through a pair of boots a year,” Galindo said, laughing. “People started asking me how far I walked so I bought a pedometer. It’s about 10,000 steps a day.”
Three hours into her shift, she already has logged 6,152 steps. Before 9 a.m. she has roamed some wooded areas, trekked through a park and made several stops at the corners were people often are seen holding their “homeless, God bless” signs.
“Sometimes I want to see more of the city than just three corners,” Galindo said as she drove to the Economy Motel at U.S. 98 and Beal for the third time that morning, where she spotted the corner’s regular, Kenneth Shultz.
She says most of the homeless on the streets have a way out, but they choose not to take it. She says Shultz receives enough money each month to find a home and get a job.
“Instead, he’ll get a check and rent a room at the motel, invite a bunch of people, get alcohol and some drugs and it’s gone,” Galindo said as she watched Shultz quickly grab his items and walk off.. “The rest of society would have to have Charlie Sheen’s money to live like that.”
She says some people on the street make more than rookie police officers.
“It comes back to bad choices,” Galindo said. “They have to want to change.”
She can tell you the names of each homeless person, even without seeing their faces. She knows their walks, their hangouts and their stories.
But she says she never tries to be mean. Instead, she chats with each person, tells them where the free lunch is that day and makes sure they’re doing well.
Galindo has found ways of working with the homeless, from holding a sign asking those wanting to give them money to donate to a nonprofit instead, or sitting with a group of men playing cards on the street until they realize she’s not going anywhere and leave.
At one stop, she talks with a homeless woman named Loretta and asks about her 9 a.m. doctor’s appointment to make sure she makes it.
Loretta is sitting with a man named Doug who was so intoxicated the day before that Galindo had to call EMS.
She said she calls EMS for Doug about three times a week and already had issued him an open container citation before 7 a.m.
Galindo says she never harasses people and doesn’t want to put anyone in jail. She just wants what’s best for the people of Fort Walton Beach and for the homeless she encounters.
“Every day it’s different,” she said. “Sometimes it’s the same thing when I go from corner to corner to corner, but there‘s always something. And I get to know the people and I get a chance to hopefully inspire them to want more.”
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Angel McCurdy at 850-315-4432 or amccurdy@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @AngelMnwfdn.