EVANSTON — After more than 25 years on the streets, Stephen Boling is getting a new start in life. 

Boling has been a homeless veteran for about a quarter century, traveling all over the United States doing odd jobs and creating a piecemeal life day by day. This year, though, he is turning over a new leaf and wants to find stability. 

With the help of the Evanston Police Department and Volunteers of America, he hopes to be able to do just that. 

Boling, who grew up in southern California, has been homeless since 1992 after getting out of the military. He said he had a happy childhood, spending a lot of time camping with his family and learning to love life outdoors. He entered the military right out of high school with plans to marry his high school sweetheart, Terri Dart, on his 30-day leave — but then tragedy struck when she died just before the wedding.

“Two days before I got home, she woke up screaming with a terrible headache,” he said. “They took her to the hospital and found out she had a brain tumor and tried to operate.” 

He said he started drinking heavily for awhile and hasn’t settled down since. 

“She played piano, and she was really talented for as young as she was,” he remembered. “I really haven’t found anybody in my life since then. Never been married, never had kids.” 

Through his years in the military, Boling spent three years in Germany and three in Georgia, driving trucks and working on vehicles. 

When he got out, Boling headed to Las Vegas in 1992 to try to find work. However, while staying the night at a hotel, he accidentally left his car lights on and the battery died. The man who came out to help connected the jumper cables wrong, which fried the car’s computer chip, so Boling was left with little recourse but to hitchhike into Las Vegas — which ended up being an adventure in itself when a Mexican man who spoke no English gave Boling a ride. 

“... So we get in the car and he starts doing 120 miles an hour down the freeway, and I’m like, ‘We’re gonna get pulled over doing this,’” Boling said. “Sure enough, we get pulled over. The car was stolen and he had a couple of pounds of cocaine and drugs.”

Boling was allowed to ride into town with a truck driver, but he had officially begun his homeless life. 

Over the last decades, he has acquired day labor jobs on and off, including moving furniture, doing construction, landscaping and driving a truck. He has also stayed with people, gone to shelters and even gotten apartments short-term, and traveled all over the country via hitchhiking and even train jumping.

In the meantime, he found faith in God, whom he credits with caring for him during his adventures. 

One Saturday, he said, he was spending the night at a homeless shelter in Ogden, Utah. There was a foot of snow outside and he was very sick, but because the shelter was closed on Sundays, he knew he would be sent back out in the snow early the next morning. That day, though, he attended a church service at the shelter, where he was told that if he prayed and believed, his prayer would be answered. 

In hope, Boling prayed he would be healthy on Sunday — and by the time he awoke and was sent out at 5:30 a.m., he said he was fully recovered. 

He has believed in God ever since, he said. This faith has sustained him through the tough times as well — but not everyone has that anchor in faith to guide them through the pitfalls of situations such as homelessness.

“I myself, because my belief in God, I think God really took care of me,” he said. “But there’s a lot of homeless people that are just drug addicts, and go and shoplift and stuff, and so I could see, you know, homeless people getting a bad reputation.”

As he tried to make ends meet, it was sometimes difficult or impossible to get a job because he had no address, phone or Wyoming ID, so he would sometimes go “fly a sign” asking for help. He said he could usually make about $20 in an hour and a half by holding a sign, which would be all he needed for the day. 

Boling has faced other struggles, too, including when he once left his belongings under a bush. He returned to find someone had stolen his backpack, which was also where Boling was keeping his dentures at the time. (He will be getting new dentures with the help of the Volunteers of America.)

He even wintered in Evanston in 2007 and 2016, hunkering down with a tent in the woods by the Bear River, relying on heavy layers to stay warm when temperatures hit -30 degrees Fahrenheit and holding a sign to get what he needed to survive. 

However, this past winter he caught pneumonia. He ended up in the hospital for two days, and then ended up with a five-day jail stay for public intoxication. Boling said the jail time helped him to finish recovering from the pneumonia, though, and that he’s always been treated with utmost respect by the local police. 

“It’s not against the law to be homeless,” Evanston police Sgt. Don Shillcox said. “[Boling has] always been cooperative, other than the time [he] got drunk. ... We’ve had encounters with Stephen, but mostly making him move on from under a bridge or off a trail. Nothing serious.” 

Turning a new leaf

But as Shillcox saw Boling around, he started wondering what Boling’s plans were and if he would be able to find a safe place to spend the winter. 

“I was worried about him getting stuck here for another winter, because it’s colder than hell out here, you know?” Shillcox said, turning to address Boling. “I mean, I didn’t even like getting out of my truck when it’s so cold, and you were out there sleeping in it.”

Boling’s dream is to make it to Jackson, but he said he likes the Evanston area and wants to have a more stable life at this point. 

With help from Shillcox and Evanston Chamber of Commerce executive director Marian McLean, Boling was connected with Volunteers of America. After service coordinator Sandy DaRif verified Boling’s status as a veteran, Boling was almost immediately provided with housing and help. 

DaRif, who services Teton, Sublette, Lincoln, Uinta and Sweetwater counties, said Volunteers of America is a nationwide nonprofit organization that, in Wyoming, qualifies for a grant to help veterans who are homeless or at imminent risk of becoming homeless. 

She said Volunteers of America works with a variety of organizations, including Wyoming Workforce Services, police departments and the Department of Family Services. 

“Officer Shillcox ... and the chamber of commerce in Evanston called me and said, ‘We believe we have a veteran who has been around our area and surviving but not requesting any assistance until now,’” DaRif said. 

She said Boling has been moving around for more than 20 years, never fitting in or finding sustainable work. With the help of the grant, she was able to find out what Boling needs to help get him on his feet.  

To get him set up, DaRif arranged to get him general housing, a bed and bedding, a vacuum cleaner, a mop, kitchen utensils and cooking supplies (dishes, glasses, pots, pans and silverware) so he has some tools to help him succeed. 

“We try and relate to that, and see if we can help him in a way that he wants to be helped,” she said. “We are a person-centered program. It’s not what we want; it’s what they need to finally be successful. … That’s our goal.” 

Boling’s is not going to be an effortless, change, though, after so many years with nothing to tie him down to one place.

“I’m finding it is a big transition, because I’m used to being outdoors and seeing the countryside and not being inside four walls,” Boling said. 

However, he said he is looking forward to the simple pleasures of life, including getting a TV so he can watch sports — particularly baseball and football. He added that he would also like to do some fishing and maybe even hunting (although he might stick to rabbit hunting given the difficulty of deer and elk hunting).