Elaine Heyl stopped by an outreach center in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood on Friday and gave photos and her family's address in the South to one of the staffers there.
"She gave me two pictures ... and she gave me her family's address in South Carolina and said, 'If I were to die at any point, this is where you send my information,'" Elvis Rosado, of Prevention Point Philadelphia recalled Monday.
Rosado never imagined he'd have to mail the package so soon.
Hours later, early Saturday morning, as Heyl sat in her wheelchair at Mascher Street and Lehigh Avenue -- the corner where the woman, a homeless Iraq War veteran, was a permanent fixture for years -- a man police say was driving drunk down Lehigh Avenue crashed into her.
Heyl, known as Lanie to most, died a short time later at the hospital. She was 37.
Rosado said he knew Heyl, an Air Force veteran who he said served in Iraq, from working at Prevention Point on Kensington Avenue, a center that provides a health clinic and other outreach services to people facing homelessness and addiction. He said she battled post-traumatic stress disorder and was never able to get the help she needed.
"She was trying really hard to get help, but unfortunately, the system is kind of slow, so she started to self-medicate," Rosado said. "Unfortunately, self-medication turned to addiction."
Heyl, whose mother lives in South Carolina and said she was too shocked at her daughter's tragic death to share more about her on Monday, was well-loved in Kensington, where everyone seemed to know her. She often sat in her wheelchair in the wide median on Lehigh Avenue at Mascher Street, set between a brick building on the south side and a playground on the north side, all hours of the day and night.
"I told her, 'Why do you [stay] here?'" said Angie Gonzalez, a neighbor who lives at the corner and would often talk with Heyl and bring her food. "She said, 'I feel safe here. I went to other places and I got robbed and raped.'"
Heyl was confined to a wheelchair because she lost her leg to frostbite a few years ago, Rosado said, when she fell asleep outside in the cold.
At the corner Heyl called home now, the only trace left of her is a memorial that grew since her death early Saturday. The makeshift shrine bears a drawing in black ink of a woman in a wheelchair. An American flag fastened to the wall of the building above it blew in the breeze Monday as people who knew her continued to stop by the memorial, and a cornucopia of flowers, candles, balloons and teddy bears decorated the sidewalk below it.
Gonzalez, 32, wiped tears from her eyes as she stood by the memorial on the southwest corner of Mascher and Lehigh Monday afternoon.
"I love her so much," Gonzalez wept.
Heyl, too, made an impression on Kathy Given, who does homeless outreach in the neighborhood.
"She's a very kind soul," Given said. "She really is a wonderful person and really deserves to be recognized for who she really was."
The man police say struck Heyl, identified as 29-year-old Andrew Acito, of Glenolden, Delaware County, left her to die, authorities said, continuing down Lehigh Avenue in his Ford F-250 pickup truck as if he'd just run over a piece of scrap on the road. He then struck a second person, an 18-year-old woman, and sped through a red light at B and Lehigh before police stopped him.
Police arrested Acito at the scene. He's charged with DUI, homicide by vehicle, manslaughter and related offenses. Police said the second pedestrian he struck suffered minor injuries and is expected to recover.
Rosado said that when she was alive, Heyl tried hard to get help. She would often stop by Prevention Point, where she had her mail delivered after she became homeless, to visit staffers and get whatever she needed. He said on Friday he gave her $5 and a gift card to get something to eat after she stopped by to drop off the photos and her family's address.
Heyl struggled. She wanted to be better, but she couldn't get housing through the Department of Veterans Affairs because of her addiction, Rosado said.
"It's a catch-22 with the system because, you figure, she was offered help through the VA recently, in the last two years, but they said to her a lot of times, 'If you stop using and get yourself in order, we can help,'" he said. "But the problem was she was using because she couldn't get help. The PTSD has to be addressed in order to stop using, and she can't stop using because she needs the help. So that kept her out there. They couldn't help."
Rosado said as far as he knew, Heyl had been battling addiction for four or five years. He said she used to use whatever money she had to rent a place to stay, but as her condition worsened, she wasn't able to rent and began staying outside, at Mascher and Lehigh.
"She was amazing. She had an amazing heart, she was an amazing woman," Rosado said. "She deserved better."
Photo Credit: Morgan Zalot / NBC10 Inset Photo Provided by Friends
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