Area homeless growing in numbers

U.S. Marine veteran Mary Ann Campbell recently moved out of a tent in the woods behind Piney Green Shopping Center into a travel trailer in Hubert.

She is happy to call the Ramsey Mobile Home Park trailer home after years of scrounging for food and sleeping in the open.

"When my marriage broke up, I broke down," she said. "I had it all at one point, but then it all fell apart."

Campbell is a diagnosed schizophrenic who went off her medications prior to living on the streets, according to medical records she shared with The Daily News. She fought a long battle to receive veteran's disability benefits, and when she finally started to receive them she slowly began to piece her life back together.

"People would look down on me when they found out I didn't have somewhere to live," she said.

It takes about $1,200 to $1,500 to get into even the worst of apartments or trailers in the Jacksonville area, said Sandra Wyrick, executive director of Onslow County Ministries.

"People can't save that kind of money on a minimum wage job," she said. "The number of meals in the soup kitchen has recently doubled. It is scary the number of homeless people we have around."

Onslow County is home to about 1,600 homeless people, of whom more than 500 are children, she said.

OCM runs a homeless shelter that can house around 200 people.

The rest of the homeless in the area float between living with family, staying with friends and the worst-case scenario: surviving in the woods.

"People have no control over it," Wyrick said. "With the economy, many have lost jobs, or the jobs available are minimum wage."

Robert "Diesel" Rogers, who shares Campbell's travel trailer, used to live "outdoors" as well.

He has a long criminal history according to the N.C. Department of Correction. That history, in addition to a brain-damaging blow to the head he received while being robbed in Mississippi, makes it hard for him to find well-paying employment.

"I don't remember what happened," he said, touching the area of his head caved in by a baseball bat.

Both Campbell and Rogers knew, and often stayed in the woods with, Mike Kozak, the 41-year-old homeless man who was beaten to death and gutted last year.

"Mike was a good person," Campbell said. "What happened to him was sad."

The circumstances behind one of Kozak's killers is the same story shared by many homeless in the area.

Jay Oldaker, 28, pleaded guilty in February to killing Kozak. He will be sentenced after he testifies against his co-defendants. Oldaker, like Kozak, and so many other homeless people, had a drinking problem.

Retired Marine Capt. Winston Anding owns lots in the Bellawoods subdivisions, which is a few blocks or a walk down the railroad tracks from the Piney Green Shopping Center. He has put many of the homeless in the area to work clearing dilapidated trailers and doing odd jobs. He said he has been trying to help homeless people in the area get back on their feet since he retired in 1988.

One of the people he said he tried to help was Oldaker, who was convicted in 2006 of a driving while impaired charge, according to the DOC. Anding told The Daily News last week that he drove Oldaker to the required treatment assessment for his DWI conviction.

"One of the questions was ‘how much alcohol have you consumed at one time' and Jay checked one-fifth of liquor and that answer moved him into a longer class and meant he had to pay more money, like $2,000," Anding said.

He said Oldaker walked out and said, "I ain't gonna make it."

The next year and a half of Oldaker's life consisted of living with other people, living in the woods, and staying intoxicated. The first contact investigators had with Oldaker following Kozak's homicide was when they found him passed out drunk in the woods behind Piney Green Shopping Center, according to police reports.

Anding said many of the homeless who come through the area end up like either Kozak or Oldaker - dead or in prison.

"I've seen one or two out of hundreds make it," he said. "The rest drift on to Belgrade or Southwest, get killed or go to jail."

Contact senior reporter Lindell Kay at 910-219-8456. Read Lindell's blog at http://onslowcrime.encblogs.com.