NEWS
Marine, who calls himself “just an old drunk,” is thankful the Allens of Aurora have opened their lives to him
(Scott Strazzante, Chicago Tribune)
June 19, 2011 | By Ted Gregory, Tribune reporter
As Jimi Allen walked clients to the door of his photo and design business in a dodgy section of downtown Aurora, he saw a raggedly dressed man stumble toward them.
“He was,” Allen said, “one of those impossible drunks,” someone he’d seen skulking around for years. Determined to stop him from harassing his visitors as they headed to their car, Allen stepped outside and shouted, hoping to frighten him.
Instead, the man scowled and trudged toward Allen. For a few seconds the two stood toe to toe.
Then Jimi Allen did something extraordinary, almost ludicrous. He invited this homeless stranger into his life.
“It was so bizarre,” Allen said recently. “I ended up putting my arm around him. I just remember thinking he needed to be loved. He was an underdog and I’ve always loved underdogs.”
Five years later, their relationship is far from the success story that makes for tidy Hollywood endings — unless success is measured in baby steps, and persistence and hope are factored into the equation. Tony Hernandez, a 60-year-old Marine veteran who says he hears voices, still guzzles cheap wine. He roams the streets, occasionally gets bloodied in fights and otherwise teeters on the brink of ruin.
But he does have a place to stay and says he consumes half the alcohol he once did. He also has a savings account with $5,200 accumulated from regular Social Security disability and military pension payments, a bicycle and, more or less, a schedule — all established and managed by Allen and his wife, Kate Allen.
Hernandez agreed to turn over his checks to the Allens, who use them to pay his expenses, including rent for the one-room apartment where he lives near the Fox River. There, against one wall and under a print of a tropical sunset, is a shrine of 22 empty bottles of Wild Irish Rose.
Hernandez is “a good man, very clean, nice man,” the building manager said in broken English one muggy afternoon. Tilting his thumb toward his mouth, he smiled and said, “Drink a little too much.”
Hernandez said he realizes how much he needs the Allens’ help, and no matter how drunk he’s gotten over the years, he said he is comfortable with letting them handle his finances. The Allens said he has never demanded they give him more money than they allot.
They have simple goals for Hernandez: Stop drinking and start reading. With the money they’ve helped him save, they hope he’ll be able to buy a home. They joke that having Hernandez in their lives is like having a 15-year-old son.
More people like the Allens are extending themselves for the homeless these days, primarily because public funding for shelters is decreasing, say experts such as Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. At the same time, many are experiencing “compassion fatigue,” he said.
Despite some trying moments, that hasn’t happened to the Allens, who said their friendship with Hernandez grew gradually.
“I couldn’t of my own cognition have said, ‘Let’s go out and build a relationship with Tony Hernandez,’” said Jimi Allen. “It just happened.”
Not exactly.
Jimi and Kate Allen already had a deep commitment to help others, a core value of their devout Christianity, when Hernandez staggered through their parking lot.
Kate Allen spent her childhood in Bolivia, where her parents were missionaries. After college, she taught English in the Czech Republic for more than two years, she said.
Jimi Allen said he was once spiritually bankrupt but now liberally weaves biblical references into his conversation and studies the holy book daily.
“They are both just such awesome, compassionate, creative people,” said Randy Schoof, pastor of Warehouse Church, a non-denominational institution around the corner from the Allens’ studio. The couple have been attending Warehouse for more than four years.
“Jimi and Kate could be making high corporate dollars,” Schoof added, “but they do what they do so they can invest themselves in the lives of people like Tony.”
By conventional standards, it would seem an unwise, even dangerous investment.
Antonio Hernandez was born April 19, 1951, in Waxahachie, Texas, to a farm laborer and a housekeeper, according to his birth certificate, which the Allens acquired and keep with Hernandez’s military discharge papers, a detailed ledger of his finances and other documents in neat files.
The family moved to the Aurora area when Hernandez was a child, he said.
In 1968, at the age of 17, he had run away from home and been living on the streets for a year, but he got his parents’ approval to join the Marines, he said, and was stationed in Okinawa. His military records state he attained the rank of sergeant and served in transportation and shipping before receiving an honorable discharge in 1974.
Hernandez’s life came off the rails, he said, when he tried LSD shortly after he was discharged. But he admits he has been drinking heavily since his teens. The voices he sometimes hears occur when he is sober. Sometimes, he said, the voices “are yelling at me, or trying to remind me of something I did and don’t want to remember.”
Today, Hernandez is lean and weathered, about 5 feet 7 inches, with probing brown eyes and a soft, almost lyrical voice of murmurs and sputters. He said he has spent hitches in jail, has an ex-wife and a couple of children but never sees them or his siblings. Hernandez has been arrested dozens of times, suspected of violations that include public intoxication, trespassing, retail theft and a couple of burglaries, according to Kane County court records.
Hernandez said he respects and loves Jimi and Kate and attended their wedding in 2010, sitting with them at the main table at the reception. He isn’t sure he’d be alive if it weren’t for them.
He is sure, he said, that he’d be drinking a lot more. At the same time, he acknowledged that he won’t stop hitting the bottle.
“I feel bad about everything they do for me, ashamed,” Hernandez said. “I’m just an old drunk.”
The National Coalition for the Homeless reports that, conservatively, 107,000 veterans like Hernandez are homeless on any given night, and that 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness each year.
Donovan, the group’s executive director, acknowledged that some may view what the Allens are doing as foolish, but he admires their effort.
“Extraordinary acts of compassion,” Donovan said, “are often rewarded by extraordinary acts of protection. … Who knows what will happen, but God love ‘em for trying.”
When pressed about why they’re committed to Hernandez, the Allens disputed the notion that he is a lost cause or failure. They noted that he keeps his room neat at the Fox River Hotel, and his lower liquor intake shows, “He’s not bent on dying anymore,” Jimi Allen said.
Hernandez gets joy from riding his bicycle, from being able to see clearly when he puts on a pair of non-prescription glasses the couple found for him, even from watching them copy computer files, he said.
Kate Allen acknowledged that Hernandez is “sort of Jimi’s deal,” although she manages his files, including his savings account.
Keeping track of their unlikely friend’s life while working full time can be a struggle, she said. But both of them view it as an exercise in selflessness — the value of placing someone else first.
Their commitment is flexible and can involve taking Hernandez for a meal or to church or to their home. He visits their studio every morning and, if sober, volunteers to take out the trash or sweep. Then he and Kate Allen figure out how much money he’ll need that day for food, laundry and supplies.
If he shows up drunk, he doesn’t get any money. That’s when he sometimes whines and complains, even becomes a little agitated, the Allens said. But they insisted he never turns violent.
Still, he can complicate their lives in harrowing ways.
In the bitter cold of February, he bumped into a childhood friend who didn’t have a place to stay, Jimi Allen said. They started drinking, and Hernandez invited his old buddy to crash at his place. For reasons that remain foggy, the friend trashed Hernandez’s apartment, then left, Allen said.
The next morning, the friend’s body was found in a garbage bin, outside a dollar store. Police questioned Hernandez and determined the man died of a heart attack, Jimi Allen said.
Then came Easter, when the Allens took Hernandez to church. He suffered a seizure and had to be taken to the hospital by paramedics. Also in April, he got a new bike but crashed it while drunk, gouging both elbows and breaking a finger, Jimi Allen said. For now, the bike is parked in the studio.
And one day early this month, he showed up clutching his side.
“I got a little salty with somebody last night,” Hernandez said, recounting how he had told people waiting in front of him at an ice cream stand to hurry up. Two men took issue with his drunken demeanor and beat him, he said.
His latest test of the Allens’ friendship occurred on a recent Sunday, when the couple found him outside the church looking so sick that they helped him into their van, where he promptly vomited.
“We all want Oprah Winfrey change,” Jimi Allen said. “It’s not going to happen with Tony. He’s just struggling to make some strides, to reconcile his frustration.”
What he and his wife are doing, they said, is more like tilling the soil and hoping for a better future.
“You plant and one day you’ll see the fruit,” he said.
Jimi Allen and staff were honored with the Entrepreneurial Excellence Award for Young Entrepreneur. The Entrepreneurial Excellence Awards are presented to executives who have achieved prominence in both their professional and personal lives.
Jimi Allen Productions' MoGa was featured in an article this weekend titled "Moving Pictures". Read the story.
Get up close and personal with MoGa, a portable 10-panel photo gallery created by Jimi Allen Productions of Aurora. The display will be featured at a show open to the public at no charge in the Paramount Theatre’s Grand Gallery the end of this month.
The show kicks off on Friday, March 27, from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m., as part of Aurora Downtown’s multimedia ArtWalk. This participatory event is produced by the Cultural Creatives, an ad hoc group of downtown artists, business and property owners who have a common interest in promoting the creative arts in Aurora by encouraging an arts-friendly environment.
For Jimi Allen Productions, the event continues on Saturday, March 28, from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m., with an all-day exhibit and reception in the Grand Gallery at the Paramount. Visitors will experience a variety of compelling images. Three examples of MoGa, the new mobile gallery from Jimi Allen, will be showcased on the main floor, one of which is the worldwide touring exhibit of photos from China for TEAM, The Evangelical Alliance Mission. Larger-than-life portraits of Pakistani youth also will be open for viewing on the second floor.
©2010 Jimi Allen Productions / (630) 801 1644 / info@jimiallen.com
(Scott Strazzante, Chicago Tribune)
June 19, 2011 | By Ted Gregory, Tribune reporter
As Jimi Allen walked clients to the door of his photo and design business in a dodgy section of downtown Aurora, he saw a raggedly dressed man stumble toward them.
“He was,” Allen said, “one of those impossible drunks,” someone he’d seen skulking around for years. Determined to stop him from harassing his visitors as they headed to their car, Allen stepped outside and shouted, hoping to frighten him.
Instead, the man scowled and trudged toward Allen. For a few seconds the two stood toe to toe.
Then Jimi Allen did something extraordinary, almost ludicrous. He invited this homeless stranger into his life.
“It was so bizarre,” Allen said recently. “I ended up putting my arm around him. I just remember thinking he needed to be loved. He was an underdog and I’ve always loved underdogs.”
Five years later, their relationship is far from the success story that makes for tidy Hollywood endings — unless success is measured in baby steps, and persistence and hope are factored into the equation. Tony Hernandez, a 60-year-old Marine veteran who says he hears voices, still guzzles cheap wine. He roams the streets, occasionally gets bloodied in fights and otherwise teeters on the brink of ruin.
But he does have a place to stay and says he consumes half the alcohol he once did. He also has a savings account with $5,200 accumulated from regular Social Security disability and military pension payments, a bicycle and, more or less, a schedule — all established and managed by Allen and his wife, Kate Allen.
Hernandez agreed to turn over his checks to the Allens, who use them to pay his expenses, including rent for the one-room apartment where he lives near the Fox River. There, against one wall and under a print of a tropical sunset, is a shrine of 22 empty bottles of Wild Irish Rose.
Hernandez is “a good man, very clean, nice man,” the building manager said in broken English one muggy afternoon. Tilting his thumb toward his mouth, he smiled and said, “Drink a little too much.”
Hernandez said he realizes how much he needs the Allens’ help, and no matter how drunk he’s gotten over the years, he said he is comfortable with letting them handle his finances. The Allens said he has never demanded they give him more money than they allot.
They have simple goals for Hernandez: Stop drinking and start reading. With the money they’ve helped him save, they hope he’ll be able to buy a home. They joke that having Hernandez in their lives is like having a 15-year-old son.
More people like the Allens are extending themselves for the homeless these days, primarily because public funding for shelters is decreasing, say experts such as Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. At the same time, many are experiencing “compassion fatigue,” he said.
Despite some trying moments, that hasn’t happened to the Allens, who said their friendship with Hernandez grew gradually.
“I couldn’t of my own cognition have said, ‘Let’s go out and build a relationship with Tony Hernandez,’” said Jimi Allen. “It just happened.”
Not exactly.
Jimi and Kate Allen already had a deep commitment to help others, a core value of their devout Christianity, when Hernandez staggered through their parking lot.
Kate Allen spent her childhood in Bolivia, where her parents were missionaries. After college, she taught English in the Czech Republic for more than two years, she said.
Jimi Allen said he was once spiritually bankrupt but now liberally weaves biblical references into his conversation and studies the holy book daily.
“They are both just such awesome, compassionate, creative people,” said Randy Schoof, pastor of Warehouse Church, a non-denominational institution around the corner from the Allens’ studio. The couple have been attending Warehouse for more than four years.
“Jimi and Kate could be making high corporate dollars,” Schoof added, “but they do what they do so they can invest themselves in the lives of people like Tony.”
By conventional standards, it would seem an unwise, even dangerous investment.
Antonio Hernandez was born April 19, 1951, in Waxahachie, Texas, to a farm laborer and a housekeeper, according to his birth certificate, which the Allens acquired and keep with Hernandez’s military discharge papers, a detailed ledger of his finances and other documents in neat files.
The family moved to the Aurora area when Hernandez was a child, he said.
In 1968, at the age of 17, he had run away from home and been living on the streets for a year, but he got his parents’ approval to join the Marines, he said, and was stationed in Okinawa. His military records state he attained the rank of sergeant and served in transportation and shipping before receiving an honorable discharge in 1974.
Hernandez’s life came off the rails, he said, when he tried LSD shortly after he was discharged. But he admits he has been drinking heavily since his teens. The voices he sometimes hears occur when he is sober. Sometimes, he said, the voices “are yelling at me, or trying to remind me of something I did and don’t want to remember.”
Today, Hernandez is lean and weathered, about 5 feet 7 inches, with probing brown eyes and a soft, almost lyrical voice of murmurs and sputters. He said he has spent hitches in jail, has an ex-wife and a couple of children but never sees them or his siblings. Hernandez has been arrested dozens of times, suspected of violations that include public intoxication, trespassing, retail theft and a couple of burglaries, according to Kane County court records.
Hernandez said he respects and loves Jimi and Kate and attended their wedding in 2010, sitting with them at the main table at the reception. He isn’t sure he’d be alive if it weren’t for them.
He is sure, he said, that he’d be drinking a lot more. At the same time, he acknowledged that he won’t stop hitting the bottle.
“I feel bad about everything they do for me, ashamed,” Hernandez said. “I’m just an old drunk.”
The National Coalition for the Homeless reports that, conservatively, 107,000 veterans like Hernandez are homeless on any given night, and that 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness each year.
Donovan, the group’s executive director, acknowledged that some may view what the Allens are doing as foolish, but he admires their effort.
“Extraordinary acts of compassion,” Donovan said, “are often rewarded by extraordinary acts of protection. … Who knows what will happen, but God love ‘em for trying.”
When pressed about why they’re committed to Hernandez, the Allens disputed the notion that he is a lost cause or failure. They noted that he keeps his room neat at the Fox River Hotel, and his lower liquor intake shows, “He’s not bent on dying anymore,” Jimi Allen said.
Hernandez gets joy from riding his bicycle, from being able to see clearly when he puts on a pair of non-prescription glasses the couple found for him, even from watching them copy computer files, he said.
Kate Allen acknowledged that Hernandez is “sort of Jimi’s deal,” although she manages his files, including his savings account.
Keeping track of their unlikely friend’s life while working full time can be a struggle, she said. But both of them view it as an exercise in selflessness — the value of placing someone else first.
Their commitment is flexible and can involve taking Hernandez for a meal or to church or to their home. He visits their studio every morning and, if sober, volunteers to take out the trash or sweep. Then he and Kate Allen figure out how much money he’ll need that day for food, laundry and supplies.
If he shows up drunk, he doesn’t get any money. That’s when he sometimes whines and complains, even becomes a little agitated, the Allens said. But they insisted he never turns violent.
Still, he can complicate their lives in harrowing ways.
In the bitter cold of February, he bumped into a childhood friend who didn’t have a place to stay, Jimi Allen said. They started drinking, and Hernandez invited his old buddy to crash at his place. For reasons that remain foggy, the friend trashed Hernandez’s apartment, then left, Allen said.
The next morning, the friend’s body was found in a garbage bin, outside a dollar store. Police questioned Hernandez and determined the man died of a heart attack, Jimi Allen said.
Then came Easter, when the Allens took Hernandez to church. He suffered a seizure and had to be taken to the hospital by paramedics. Also in April, he got a new bike but crashed it while drunk, gouging both elbows and breaking a finger, Jimi Allen said. For now, the bike is parked in the studio.
And one day early this month, he showed up clutching his side.
“I got a little salty with somebody last night,” Hernandez said, recounting how he had told people waiting in front of him at an ice cream stand to hurry up. Two men took issue with his drunken demeanor and beat him, he said.
His latest test of the Allens’ friendship occurred on a recent Sunday, when the couple found him outside the church looking so sick that they helped him into their van, where he promptly vomited.
“We all want Oprah Winfrey change,” Jimi Allen said. “It’s not going to happen with Tony. He’s just struggling to make some strides, to reconcile his frustration.”
What he and his wife are doing, they said, is more like tilling the soil and hoping for a better future.
“You plant and one day you’ll see the fruit,” he said.
The Promise of Wheaton
The Promise Campaign kicked off January 21st, 2010 and concludes at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Ballroom in Washington D.C. on April 22nd. Creating assets for this banquet series was a lot of work because 150 years of Wheaton is a big story to tell. We had a blast producing the video and custom table centerpieces gave a finishing touch to the MoGa component of the banquet. Cover shoot at the Farnsworth House
Entrepreneurial Excellence Award
September 24, 2009Jimi Allen and staff were honored with the Entrepreneurial Excellence Award for Young Entrepreneur. The Entrepreneurial Excellence Awards are presented to executives who have achieved prominence in both their professional and personal lives.
Beacon News
July 12, 2009Jimi Allen Productions' MoGa was featured in an article this weekend titled "Moving Pictures". Read the story.
Show at Paramount to Feature MoGa
March 12, 2009Get up close and personal with MoGa, a portable 10-panel photo gallery created by Jimi Allen Productions of Aurora. The display will be featured at a show open to the public at no charge in the Paramount Theatre’s Grand Gallery the end of this month.
The show kicks off on Friday, March 27, from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m., as part of Aurora Downtown’s multimedia ArtWalk. This participatory event is produced by the Cultural Creatives, an ad hoc group of downtown artists, business and property owners who have a common interest in promoting the creative arts in Aurora by encouraging an arts-friendly environment.
For Jimi Allen Productions, the event continues on Saturday, March 28, from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m., with an all-day exhibit and reception in the Grand Gallery at the Paramount. Visitors will experience a variety of compelling images. Three examples of MoGa, the new mobile gallery from Jimi Allen, will be showcased on the main floor, one of which is the worldwide touring exhibit of photos from China for TEAM, The Evangelical Alliance Mission. Larger-than-life portraits of Pakistani youth also will be open for viewing on the second floor.
©2010 Jimi Allen Productions / (630) 801 1644 / info@jimiallen.com