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At the Los Angeles Free Clinic, former runaways are employed to work the streets, offering help, defusing tensions and trying to rescue the newcomers. "You can tell them by their clean shoes and backpacks and that scared look on their faces," says an outreach worker named Seven. In San Francisco, the Larkin Street Youth Center served 2,000 teenagers last year, 80% of them from out of town. Once the youths are lured in the door by free food, a friendly atmosphere and a no-questions-asked policy, counselors try to find them shelters, drug treatment and job training. More than 60% of youths ages 12 to 17 who seek help at the center are diverted from the street. At Options House, a shelter in Hollywood, 40% of youths counseled are reunited with their families. But family reunion is not always desirable. Says executive director Leslie Forbes: "Sometimes we'll call the families, and they'll say, 'So you've got the little bastard? Well, you can keep him!' " That leaves group homes, foster care or the streets. "Either they get connected to a service quickly, or they get connected with other hardened kids," says Michele Kipke, director of adolescent medicine at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles.
Runaways who really don't want to be found quickly adopt street names, often such crude synonyms as Lunatic, Fury, Speedster or Dopey. "Never tell anybody anything, that's my rule," says a 16-year-old from Ukiah in northwestern California. The slim, blond youth -- call him Billy -- says he spent a year living in a stairwell near the Scientology center on Hollywood Boulevard after his parents kicked him out of the house: another story of drugs and alcohol and late-night fights. On a good day, Billy earns $10 panhandling; he stuffs the money in his shoe. That is where he also hides a stolen, neatly folded birth certificate from Texas that he says a friend gave him, along with a Social Security card. "I want to use these to get some credit and a driver's license, but I'm worried the guy may be dead," he says. A manager at a local Denny's lets him use the rest room once a day to clean up. That was the first place he went after he hustled his body on Santa Monica Boulevard, earning $60. "You don't know how scary that is," he says, avoiding eye contact. "You don't know if you're going to be shot, stabbed or taken to Mexico."
Billy sits perfectly still for a minute, then pulls out a wallet-size photo from his pocket and stares at it. It is a picture of his two-year-old son Matthew, dressed in a red plaid outfit and sitting in front of a Christmas tree, cheeks rolled back in an explosive smile. The child is with Billy's former girlfriend back in Ukiah. "Isn't he the cutest thing you've ever seen? I'm going back to him just as soon as I can get it together."
It is the loneliness that hurts most for the kids. Holidays are especially cruel. Haunted by advertisements celebrating family life, many youths venture home in December, hoping perhaps Dad isn't such a beast after all. "They end up fighting over the holidays, and by January they're off again," says Knight. "I know three kids who got on the bus on New Year's Eve."