Denver, CO
These childhood best friends are trying to survive together in Denver after their lives derailed
Michael Webb and James Peters, best friends since third grade, sit on their e-bikes and lean against the brick wall of a vacant storefront.
They glare at the Capitol Hill King Soopers where, they say, workers just kicked them out.
“I’m too depressed to talk,” Peters says.
The whole ordeal started at 6:07 a.m., the day before, on a Monday. Peters had put all of his change — all the money he has in this world — into the store’s Coinstar machine.
The machine printed out a receipt, and he took it to the counter to collect his $111.
“But it was 6:07 a.m., and they don’t cash the vouchers until 8 a.m.,” Peters says.
He had a court appointment in Aurora that morning, so he left the store and came back on Tuesday with Webb. But when they arrived, a worker explained that they were too late. They should have come back on Monday — receipts need to be redeemed the day they’re printed.
The men felt the store was robbing them of $111 they desperately needed, and there was nothing they could do about it.
Peters’ temper boiled, and the store employees kicked him out for good.
Staff at the store declined to comment on this story.
“They robbed my brother,” says Webb, who called Coinstar on behalf of his friend. “I was on hold forever, but when they answered this super nice woman gave me a code and just made sure the transaction was right.”
Since Peters had been 86’d from the store, Webb went into King Soopers with the receipt and the code. Six people, he says, surrounded him to kick him out. He ignored them and walked to the counter.
“The poor man working there was going, ‘Oh my God, this guy’s back,’” Webb says. “But I gave him the code, and we got the money.”
The $111 was in their hands again. To them, it was a fortune. And it was so little at the same time.
“How is this all the money I’ve got in the world,” wonders Peters.
Not that long ago, Peters was thriving. Now, he’s crashed.
Peters is a master tiler and the owner of Trinity Tiling. For 19 years, he’s done custom tiling jobs for Denver homeowners.
Owning his own business, he made more money than he needed.
“Two, three years ago, I was renting a house out in Aurora in Southshore — $3,300 a month,” he says. “And that was chump change to me at the time — like easy. I had 10 grand for first and last month’s rent and a deposit. I was living like a baller, as they would say, and now I find myself all the way at the bottom.”
When he had the money, he spent it furiously. Then, he split with his wife. The pandemic and inflation disrupted the construction industry. Customers quit calling for tiling jobs.
These days, his business hardly earns a dime.
“I bill at $125, and with that, I can barely afford overhead to live in my parents’ basement for free,” Peters says.
His has his belongings locked in a storage unit. A rodent has the full run of the place.
“It’s in there eating through the golf club bags and eating the seat off my dirt bikes and my boots for my wakeboards and bindings and snowboard boots,” Peters says. “It’s all just trashed.”
For that kind of storage, he pays $400 a month — a bill he’s not been able to afford.
“I’m so broke right now because I haven’t had work,” Peters says. “I can’t even get into my storage unit right now. So it’s like, all my s*** is in the hands of God — me getting money before the first of next month. Is all my s*** going to be gone? Or am I going to live to die another day with that deal?”
Over the years, he’s struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, and he recently relapsed after five years of sobriety.
“I don’t even eat anymore,” he says. “I don’t work out anymore. I don’t do s***. Literally, I’m giving up on life. That’s how bad it’s been. I’m still alive, unfortunately, but I almost accomplished my mission the other day with an overdose. But my baby’s mama called 911, and they came and got me and took me to the hospital.”
For the third time in his life, he kicked fentanyl cold turkey, sweating and suffering in his bed alone.
He’s been sober for a week.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Webb says. “I don’t have anybody else.”
Webb, too, has struggled with addiction, though his housing situation has been improving.
When he was 12 years old, he says, he accidentally burned down a post office.
“That pretty much screwed my life up from the get-go,” he says. “Drugs and alcohol happened very early after that.”
He’s lived all over Colorado, from Parker to Castle Rock to Loveland to Fort Collins. But Denver felt most like home, and all his life, he’s wanted to live downtown.
“I always wanted to live downtown, until I was homeless downtown, and that’s not how I wanted to live down here,” he says.
When he was 25 years old, he lived outside under an overhang at the Althea Center for Engaged Spirituality, a church at 13th Avenue and Williams Street.
During the day, he would hide his belongings in a nearby bush while he worked in construction cleanup for $50 a day at Ready Labor. At night, he’d drink at the Satire. Then he’d go back to the church to sleep, hoping his belongings would still be there. Often, they weren’t.
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Now 38, he’s finally getting his life back together. He’s spent multiple stints in hardscrabble rehabs. He’s relapsed and suffered through withdrawals that led to brutal seizures. He found some stability in the Denver Rescue Mission’s New Life Program, where he stayed sober, kept a job and eventually earned a car upon graduating.
And he recently lived for nine months in a safe-occupancy site, where he slept in a heated tent with a refrigerator. Sure, he was still homeless, but at least he managed to find some stability.
Through government subsidies, he got a RadPower e-bike. Tired of driving, he sold his car and enjoyed cruising through the city. Then he crashed into a fire hydrant going 18 miles an hour and broke his leg — a tibial plateau fracture. He received 50 staples in his leg and needed to use a wheelchair.
In the spring, Webb connected with a volunteer at the Saint Francis Center who helped him find a studio at the Colburn Hotel and Apartments, the housing above the classic Denver dive Charlie Brown’s.
For the first time in his adult life, Webb is living near downtown, in a home in Capitol Hill. Peters moved his belongings in for him. Webb used crutches to get to his fourth-floor apartment. Without Peters, he doesn’t know how he would have pulled off the move.
“Man, he’s done a lot for me,” Webb says. “If I didn’t have him, I wouldn’t be around. I’d be gone. Not gone from Denver, gone from the world. It’s good to have a friend, a brother.”
Webb says Denver has programs that helped him out along the way.
“When I first became homeless, when I was 25, I really dug into resources and really researched,” Webb says.
There are many homeless people who go without food, and as he sees it, that’s entirely unnecessary.
“There’s all kinds of places that give out food and stuff,” he says.
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Medicaid saved him when he had to go into treatment for his alcoholism and when he broke his leg on his bike.
“If you’re homeless, you can get Medicaid,” Webb says. “And Medicaid is the best insurance that you can possibly have. I’ve had Medicaid. It’s saved my a** multiple times through alcoholism. I’ve been to treatment centers. Medicaid has saved my butt with medical stuff.”
Webb says the investment in his health is ultimately good for society.
“I’ve done a lot of work through my years,” he says. “I feel like I’ve worked enough to feel like I’m not ripping off the taxpayer. I pay taxes every year, so, I’m damned grateful for it … Denver’s been pretty terrible, but pretty good to me, honestly. Like, when it comes down to it, Denver’s been wonderful to me. I mean, I’m lucky to be where I’m at.”
But Medicaid hasn’t worked for Peters. His prior income has disqualified him from having the coverage.
Peters broke his leg in a motorcycle accident five years back.
It took him a year, walking on his broken leg, to finally seek treatment.
The doctors asked him, “How did you do that?”
“Drugs,” he replied.
He felt like he didn’t have any other choice and says he couldn’t afford “millions of dollars in medical debt.”
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” Webb says.
“I have two abscessed teeth,” Peters says. “And I can’t get approved for Medicaid because of my taxes in prior years.”
He reaches into the pocket of his cargo short looking for his Orajel, and realizes it’s missing. He can barely open his mouth.
“This guy’s worked his whole life, hard work,” Webb says. “He’s the hardest worker … It sucks. His teeth are blowing up, and he can’t get them fixed right now. There’s a lot wrong with this place. It’s hard to keep happy. It’s hard to smile all the time. It’s hard to be nice.”
But being nice matters to both men. It’s something they see less and less of in Denver since the pandemic.
As they speak about how the city’s becoming tense, a man at a bus stop down the street screams at a woman in her car. He’s mad she’s blocking a bus that’s nowhere in sight.
Even though Peters acknowledges the woman is parked illegally, he is appalled by the man’s behavior.
“Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt,” Peters says. “Be nice, too. You don’t know what they’re going through. They could be going through something 10 times worse than what you’re going through. They could have lost a parent this week and a parent last week. You don’t know. Be nice. Everyone doesn’t have to be so high-strung.”
Peters is strong. He knows how to defend himself and has saved Webb from the sort of scraps people struggling with addiction find themselves in all too often.
But, these days, Peters avoids confrontations. Even with the King Soopers workers who refused to give them their money, he and Webb helped each other stay grounded, he says. They worked to keep their cool as best they could, even as they felt robbed.
“Everyone looks at you like you want to fight,” Peters says. “It’s like, ‘I’ve got no interest in fighting. I want to buy donuts for my daughter and go back home.’”