After being placed with his aunt at age six, he bounced across the country—from Vermont to Massachusetts to Parkwood, Washington—where he was sent to live with a father he barely knew. That relationship dissolved fast, and Star left home at 15. Since then, he’s been everywhere in the U.S. except Hawaii, traveling via freight trains and hitchhiking with friends and his now-wife.
He’s struggled with homelessness off and on since his teens. Before COVID, he had a job in foundation construction in Idaho, a studio apartment in Spokane, and sobriety. But the pandemic cost him his job, then his housing, and eventually his stability. He’s been drinking again, and grappling with liver failure and pancreatitis.
