Willie Jones

I met Willie one afternoon last spring making my way off the 554 bus in the international district.  I couldn't help but notice his super custom letterman jacket that he was wearing and it turned out that  we ended up getting off at the same spot.

I commented on his jacket and he was extremely pleased then proceeded to invite me over to his house to see the rest of his collection.
 I was on my way out of town so I told him that when I got back that I would look him up and take him up on his offer.
It was a brief encounter, we exchanged numbers and then parted ways.

Summer passed and now fall is beginning to slowly turn into winter here in the Northwest.
I happened to be leaving the Seattle Public Library one afternoon making my way down towards 1st avenue when I ran into Willie Jones again by accident.  He was at the Corner of 3rd and Colombia selling Real Change.

It had been almost 4 months since I had seen Willie last and to my surprise he remembered me. 
The Real Change is the only "Street newspaper", sold in Washington state allowing the homeless and low-income people to work towards rebuilding their lives.

Willie became a vendor back in 2006 for Real Change and is one of their top sellers He received vendor of the year for 2013 and credits his accomplishments at the paper for staying clean and sober for the past 5 years.

He's working on getting his degree in business at B.C.C as well which he hopes will help with future business ventures that he's working on.

We caught up briefly and decided to meet up on a Friday around 6 after he got off of work.

Since it wasn't raining on Friday to my surprise Willie decided to bring his collection of jackets to work with him strapped onto a wheel chair.
When I showed up he had his jackets hanging on all four corners of 3rd and Colombia.
It was quite the site I must say.