Opinion/Stead: The Cape is about to lose a couple whose compassion touched many lives

I met him because of car insurance, but it wasn’t due to an accident.

Years ago, an auto policy client of mine invited me to give an insurance quote on a building. It was on Main Street in Hyannis and would be used as a new kind of safe haven for an unmet need. It was going to be called CHAMP House — Community Home for Adolescent Mentor Program. I went over to look at the building and got to meet the man whose brainchild it was. His name was Paul Hebert.

Paul explained that he was trying to provide a safe space for young adults — so-called "throwaway kids" — who were not yet 18 and so could not go to a shelter or program. Their age made them exceptionally vulnerable to all imaginable harms, no matter how tough they thought they were. Each resident had their own space, something they may never have known before, and clean clothes, books and food.

I asked why not girls as well, and he was chagrined to have to say that to start, it must be a single-gender facility and they were working with young men, but he had hopes of a similar place in the near future for young women as well.

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We visited and said hello to a couple of the occupants there. They were dry, safe and fed. Paul, with his gentle quiet voice, asked how they were doing, was there anything they needed, did they have any plans for tomorrow? They were not overly talkative and somewhat wary, but they were relaxed and calm. I got a surplus lines insurance quote for the building. The CHAMP program was so self-evident in its operations, meeting a dire, if unexpected, need.

Naturally, the state shut it down almost immediately.

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It’s not like the state had any other solution or anything. It was just that those under 18 had to be Department of Children and Family cases and could not be helped by an individual charity without professional case management and oversight. The potential for abuse in non-governmental efforts was rife; once in the government system, they could never be lost or abused as there was paperwork to prevent that. It was far better that the adolescents return to the streets until a case worker could be found to maybe place them in foster care when and if a slot opened up. Bad things can’t happen if you are on a waiting list. In fact, to this day, there are no same-day emergency shelters for young people or women with children in Barnstable County.

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But Paul Hebert — and his wife and lifetime partner Carolyn — would not be discouraged by that mindset.

CHAMP and their efforts thrived. They expanded and recalibrated their programs and efforts. They worked with local charities, local governments, local service organizations. In fact, they created local service organizations. The Miracle Kitchen, the NOAH Shelter (now called St. Joseph's Homeless Shelter), the Gleaners, and many other programs were created or influenced by them. Their ethos of individual help in return for efforts by individuals to better and heal themselves, survive.

I sometimes think about those young men I was briefly introduced to in the 1990s. They’d be past 50 now if the perils of their younger life didn’t catch up with them sooner. Their early years of rejection and couch surfing could easily make them bitter. But all of them learned something that may have been unexpected in their lives — that there were people on earth, maybe not enough but they existed, like Paul Hebert. There was human decency in the world, even if it could not be tolerated by a cold entity that could only measure others in terms of median area income, accepted disabilities and statistics of need.

And we can all reassure ourselves that even though Paul and Carolyn are moving away, there really are decent and caring people in the world. Just like the boys, we know it is true because we met them once.

Cynthia Stead is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times and can be contacted at cestead@gmail.com. 

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Paul Hebert is leaving Cape Cod but his legacy of compassion remains