She jogged past a pregnant woman asleep on a bench. What she did next will help hundreds

Howard Cohen
·8 min read

Jacqueline Nickelberry splits her time between Miami and New York so the retired lawyer and philanthropist has seen plenty of homeless people.

But during a pandemic, this is not like other times.

On a recent fitness run, Nickelberry saw a homeless woman she soon learned was eight months pregnant. The woman was sleeping on a concrete bench near downtown Miami while life, though altered by the coronavirus and its shutdowns, teemed around her.

Nickelberry’s inspiration, with help from others at an Overtown women’s shelter, has led to a global movement.

From L-R, Georgette Madison, Assistant Director of Purchasing at Lotus House, Marissa Phillips, Operations Manager, Jacqueline Nickelberry, a local philanthropist, Beatrice A. Gonzalez, Community Outreach Director and Constance Collins, President and Executive Director, pose for a photo while practicing social distancing in front of the Lotus House Wednesday, April 29, 2020.

Global Gift Registry

Thanks to Nickelberry’s call to action, and a resourceful team at Miami’s Lotus House, many women and their families are poised to benefit from a newly created Global Gift Registry. The idea: a baby shower gone large.

Through the program, donors can select an item from the gift registry on Target like non-perishable food, water, baby supplies including strollers, wipes and clothes ranging from $5.99 to $100, and gift cards and utensils. The donated gifts will be shipped to Lotus House.

In its first four days, after launching on April 26, nearly 1,000 gifts have been purchased. The Lotus shower still welcomes support. The need is that great.

“As you can imagine, things at Lotus House are busier than normal these days as we have been navigating our new normal during this pandemic and incorporating community feedings for the community of Overtown three times a week, above and beyond our daily operations,” said Beatrice Gonzalez, community outreach director for the shelter.

“We are so grateful for Jackie’s support of Lotus House and this virtual ‘shower’ has already yielded hundreds of donations currently on their way to the shelter,” said Gonzalez, who helped organize the registry. “This will be life- changing for us and the women, youth and children we are so blessed to shelter.”

The initiative originated from that March 28 run. Nickelberry remembers winding her way through Brickell Village up to Coral Gables and back into Miami. She did what many runners do: She kept her mind occupied.

COVID-19 had led to many shelters in Miami turning away the homeless, she said. The coronavirus pandemic was escalating back home, too, where Nickelberry sits on the board of the Harlem School of the Arts and chairs its development committee to work with school-age children.

“I had plenty of time to reflect on the coronavirus,” she said. “I had seen all these news reports on how cities wanted to close schools but couldn’t because of the homeless population. New York had 114,000 homeless kids. I was thinking of that and then I saw a pregnant woman sleeping on one of the cement benches outside Cipriani.”

Initially, Nickelberry ran past her.

The homeless plight: being invisible

“I am a New Yorker. I am guilty of homeless people being invisible. You see them and become numb to their pain,” Nickelberry said. “But what struck me is she was in a place no other homeless people were and people were working out all around her and getting coffee and some were sunbathing and people bought out their dumbbells and here’s this pregnant woman lying on the bench.”

NIckelberry doubled back and approached the woman to ask her if she was OK. Could she get her anything?

The woman told her she would like to be in a shelter but could not get into one due to the health crisis. For two days, Nickelberry and her husband brought her food. Some towels. Soap. Water. Wipes.

Nickelberry called shelters. Reached out to her contacts, including Kristi House, a child advocacy center in Miami that she supports.

Nickelberry snapped a photo of the woman and her makeshift “living room” from a nearby building. What Nickelberry saw in the far away, grainy image still breaks her heart.

Jacqueline Nickelberry took this photo from a nearby building of a pregnant homeless woman she had met on March 28, 2020. She helped get the woman into Lotus House. The cement bench with the items on it is where they met. The turquoise squares on the bench are the towels Nickelberry brought to her on the first night. The black bag had the supplies and food Nickelberry brought for her for two days. The woman’s identity is obscured and she isn’t being identified.

The gift of shea butter

“She slept for two days on the cement bench while I tried to locate a shelter with an open bed,” NIckelberry said. ‘The turquoise squares on the cement bench are the towels we brought down the first night to her to make her more comfortable. My heart further broke as I watched each morning as she carefully folded those towels and put them in corner as if she was making her ‘bed.’”

A black bag next to the turquoise towels contained the supplies and food the couple brought to the woman for two days. One of the items in the black bag: a new bar of shea butter soap.

“This woman and I spoke quite a bit over the two days while I brought her food and we searched for a bed in a shelter,” NIckelberry said. “We got to know each other. I shared some information about myself. She told me things about her family and what she wanted in life. She shared her desire to go to school, get her own apartment and be a good mom to her unborn son.

“One time she said, ‘I’m proud of you for trying to help me. Don’t feel bad. You’re doing a great job.’ The irony that she was trying to make me feel better when she was the one sleeping outside,” Nickelberry said.

And then she got the call she had hoped for. One of Nickelberry’s contacts at the Kristi House reached out to Constance Collins, president of The Lotus House.

Collins told Nickelberry she had a bed for the pregnant woman.

But how to get her there during a pandemic? The police don’t drive the homeless to shelters. Do you book an Uber? Public transportation? What about the coronavirus?

Taken to Lotus House

The answer came to Collins. She got in her own car and picked up the woman to take her to The Lotus House.

“I literally sobbed,” Nickelberry said. “It was such a moment to see Constance drive up in her Hyundai and she greets her with as much dignity as you would greet Barack Obama.”

Collins told her she was going to “a great place.” She told her, “I can’t hug you because of what is happening — we are social distancing.”

Nickelberry said the woman told her the name she had chosen for her unborn child. “She was so excited to use the soap in the care package. I brought down some of her favorite food — tuna and avocado.”

Despite the situation the soon-to-be mother found herself in on that hot Miami street, she hadn’t given up, Nickelberry said. “She’s a woman with hopes, with dreams.”

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a federal law that “prohibits the release of sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge.” So the Lotus House can’t provide details on the woman’s situation.

(L) Jacqueline Nickelberry, a New Yorker who splits her time in Miami, and Beatrice A. Gonzalez, community outreach director at Lotus House, stand outside of the residential center on Wednesday April 29, 2020. Nickelberry was on a run recently when she noticed a homeless woman sleeping on a bench. It turned out the woman was eight months pregnant and Nickelberry ended up connecting the woman to Lotus House. Her idea of a baby shower for the woman morphed into a bigger idea of a Shower for Lotus House. She launched it virtually and hundreds have donated.

Not even to Nickelberry. But that only fueled her resolve to do more. And with Gonzalez’s organizational help, the Shower for Lotus registry idea came to fruition to help not only the woman, but other families too.

“Before she got into Constance’s car to drive to her new home, she told me that she was most excited about taking a shower with the new bar of soap. Shea butter is one of her favorites,” Nickelberry said.

“The ‘shea butter’ comment has remained with me the past month as I tried to figure out a way to help in this moment,” Nickelberry said. “As a society, we are guilty of seeing homelessness, food scarcity, poor education, lack of healthcare as big, unsolvable systemic problems impacting our society.

“In reality, these are big problems but they are big problems impacting real people with hopes, dreams, likes and dislikes. We must stop treating those hurting as if they are invisible.”

Our common beliefs

This one chance encounter has now impacted a thousand people — and counting.

“No matter where you live, what political affiliation one has or the religion one observes, I think we can all agree that pregnant women should not sleep on the street,” said Nickelberry, who has also served on a committee with Miami-based Honey Shine, which helps mentor girls and young women.

What one person can do?

“Jackie has worked with us in initiating this amazing virtual shower and engaged women all over the world to partner in a shared mission during such an isolating time,” said Lotus House’s Gonzalez. “We expect homelessness to increase as more and more people are faced with job loss among an already financially uncertain landscape. We need our community’s support now more than ever.”

How to help

To make a purchase on the Lotus House Homeless Women’s Shelter Charity Registry visit LotusHouse.org/registry.

If you are a youth or domestic violence victim, you can call Lotus House at 305-438-0556 or email needshelter@lotushouse.org. Otherwise, call the Miami Homeless Program at 305-960-4980 before contacting Lotus.

General information at Lotus House: 305-438-0556.