“Don’t give up.” Three simple words. Easy to say, yet difficult to live by when life deals a bad hand. To Street Roots vendor Vern Hannigan, a familiar presence outside Trader Joe’s on Northwest Glisan Street and 21st Avenue, they are synonymous with turning his life around after living on the streets for years.

“I spent about 10 years just living basically on the corner down by the bus stop on (Northwest Everett Street and Second Avenue),” Vern, who experiences chronic headaches after a serious work accident left him with a plate and screws in his neck, said. “Whether I worked or not, that's where I came and slept.”

Selling Street Roots, along with Vern’s perseverance, helped him find stability and community, things he yearned for since his childhood. Despite being poor, his mom and stepdad did their best to provide for Vern and his baby stepbrother, but relocating frequently, as the family did, was detrimental to making connections.

“I never really had any friends because I was always that new guy,” Vern said. “At some point, I gave up on trying to make friends because I knew we were going to pack up and leave. It hit my psyche.”

Getting introduced to drugs at a young age didn’t help either, though he eventually kicked those habits.

With the help of Transition Projects, he ultimately signed up for housing.

“I stayed at the Bud Clark Commons for four months, going through their program,” Vern said. “Then they gave me a housing voucher. I lived in a place across the river for a year, then I moved here for roughly nine years.”

By “here,” he meant a room two floors above the Street Roots office on Northwest Davis Street. He’d come to the right place, but it took time to take the next step.

Eventually, curiosity opened the door to the world beyond the familiar block in Old Town he rarely left.

“I would come down and see the line of people and talk to the vendors, and got to know, (former vendor program director) DeVon (Pouncey),” Vern said. “One day, he asked me, ‘You wanna get a badge and sell some papers?’”

Vern gave it a try and soon claimed his spot at the Slabtown Trader Joe’s. He’s worked the spot for the past six years, serving customers who don’t just buy papers, but also delight in Hannigan’s gift for gab that emerges when he feels he can trust folks.

“Trader Joe's is a place where people tend to shop daily, so I see a lot of them often,” Vern said. “Forty or 50 walk by on a regular basis, just saying hello or stopping on their way to work to have a nice conversation for a couple of minutes.”

As an avid reader of fiction and a dedicated green thumb who tends his own garden with cacti, azaleas, blueberries and even pineapple plants — “they're kinda like my children,” he beamed — he has no trouble making small talk. And small talk can lead to big things, like an apartment near PSU, with the help of someone who overheard him discuss his desire to find better housing.

While getting up and leaving his place can still be challenging, Vern, who celebrates his birthday in July, has no intent of giving up. Selling newspapers offers stability and purpose and helps him connect with others, which he missed earlier in life. It also gives him hope to help establish a street paper in Hawai’i someday.

“Once you get to know what I'm about, what Street Roots is about, it changes the story a little bit for people,” he said. “This is an amazing organization.”

Vern sells Street Roots 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. most days at Trader Joe’s on 2122 NW Glisan St. You can also support Vern through @StreetRoots Venmo by entering his name and badge number (518) in the notes.

To see and hear Vern Hannigan tell his story and play the didgeridoo, scan the QR code on the right or visit https://youtu.be/SFHull4djeQ.

Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.