The homeless who call New Jersey's Pinelands home

IN THE SOUTH Jersey woods, among the snakes and blood-sucking ticks, Pete Chineri found a sense of peace that had eluded him for two decades.

He lived in a tent for more than seven months, deep in the Pinelands of Burlington County, just a stone's throw from Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base. He had moved there from his car, one of the last items he lost.

"I had a good job selling electronics, but sometimes I'd go off into space," said Chineri, 49, a former Air Force sergeant. "I started having uncontrolled emotional outbursts and got fired from my jobs, even a pizza job."

Diagnosed as bipolar, Chineri wound up living in a "tent city" in the woods of Pemberton Township. He was among almost two dozen men and women found last year by the township police living in the woods or in other secluded locations.

"I really thought it was peaceful and quiet back there," said Chineri, pulling his shoulder-length hair behind his ears.

That peace was shattered on Mother's Day 2007, when Donald MacPherson, a homeless man living in the woods, was shot in the head behind the Christian Caring Center on Lakehurst Road. Police cleared out many of the tent cities afterward, but people still live in the woods.

"It's frustrating, because many of them are living out there by choice," said Pemberton Township Police Chief Robert Lewandowski.

"As long as we don't get too many complaints about them out by the shopping centers, we're not going to go in there and get them all out."

In a study conducted by the police department shortly after the shooting, a tent city behind the Christian Caring Center was one of 15 sites where homeless people were found living; almost all were wooded areas.

According to county officials, a survey last year put the number of homeless people at 896. By contrast, Camden County had 541.

Pemberton Township Councilwoman Diane Stinney said she doesn't think the township has a bigger homeless problem than any other municipality. She noted that, in the report, most homeless people with whom police had regular encounters had lengthy criminal records.

"I can't do anything with someone who, by choice, wants to lay out in the woods," said Stinney. "I can offer every resource to them. We have township, church and community civic services available."

The study named four organizations - three churches and the nonprofit Christian Caring Center - that deal with the homeless in Pemberton Township. Police suggested that the township work with the center in particular "to have them provide their services in a manner that does not facilitate or enable antisocial behavior."

A center that offers hope

Madelyn Mears-Sheldon, the center's director, knows that some view her as an enabler, but she says that her center is the starting point for many to get their lives back on track.

Chineri began coming to the center to take showers, and now he's on medication and in the final stages of forming his own nonprofit agency.

"We want to get them to the point where there's hope," Mears-Sheldon said. "When there's no hope, it's over."

On a recent Friday, dozens of people entered and exited the cramped, split-level home that functions as a prayer center, thrift store, kitchen and resource center. Mears-Sheldon says that the center served 4,202 individuals and families from all over South Jersey last year. Not all are homeless.

"The majority of them are families who are working and just not making enough," she said. "Last year, 34 percent of them were working. The average homeless person is not in the woods using drugs."

When folks won't come in from the woods, Mears-Sheldon, 50, goes in to get them. She uses food to break the ice and slowly tries to work them back to the point at which they can receive treatment.

In the woods, without a tent

The tent city behind the Christian Caring Center has been empty since the shooting. All that remains are the pallets used to keep tents out of the soggy marshland and trail markers that lead to the center's parking lot.

But people are still living in the woods elsewhere in Pemberton Township.

Suzanne, 39, sleeps out in the elements without a tent, a sleeping bag her only protection. She said that she's been homeless off and on since she was 15, working construction or in local blueberry fields to compensate for her meager Social Security check.

Suzanne, who didn't want to give her last name, said that it can be dangerous in the woods but that she steers clear of trouble as much as she can.

"It all depends on how you act out there," she said, rubbing her choppy salt-and-pepper hair. "I tend to stay away from drug people. Most of the problems people have in life come from envy, and no one envies the homeless."

The other day, a few yards into a patch of woods, past some briars and crumpled beer cans, Mears-Sheldon cupped her hands around her mouth and emitted an audible beacon of hope.

"Hello," she called out, as flies and gnats buzzed around her head.

She walked down worn trails, beneath a canopy of cedar trees, and repeated herself. Her 19-year-old son, Harry, pitched in. No one answered.

Back in a shopping-center parking lot, 15 warm turkey dinners sat in Styrofoam trays in the trunk of her teal Chevy Lumina van.

Such a scene is repeated every Friday and Wednesday afternoon, when Mears-Sheldon and a small group of volunteers load up the van with donated meals and take them out to the township's homeless population. They hit wooded areas with makeshift shelters, church parking lots, cheap hotels.

"Man, without Madelyn, we'd all be gone," said Barry Lippincott, 49, a former cook at nearby Fort Dix who is living in a subsidized hotel just across from the base. "It's a beautiful thing, what she does."

It's not always beautiful. Mears-Sheldon has had to turn over drunks in the woods so they wouldn't choke on their own vomit, and last year's shooting still has everyone on edge.

Some homeless people have taken the food but not the help, and have died alone, out among the trees. Others, though, have followed Mears-Sheldon and have become her biggest success stories.

Bill Britton, 58, spent several years living in the woods when he lost his job and home. The winters, he said, "hammered me."

"My hands and feet got frostbite out there," he said.

Suffering from cataracts and agoraphobia - an irrational fear of open or public spaces - since his youth, Britton had panic attacks and bouts of depression for most of his life. He was injured at work when roof trusses collapsed on him a few years back, and his life spiraled further out of control as a result.

"I sold my house and spent all my money on shrinks," he said. "I just couldn't get back on my feet after that."

But Britton did get back on his feet, thanks to Mears-Sheldon, and now works at the center and has stable housing at a nearby men's shelter.

Mears-Sheldon said she simply tries to help anyone she can, regardless of their addictions, with the belief that anyone can turn his life around at any moment.

After all, her husband did.

From woods to wedding

Rick Sheldon didn't sweep Madelyn off her feet when she met him living in a cardboard box in the woods almost a decade ago. He was an alcoholic and former drug dealer who'd had a few stints in jail. He decided to make a change one night, and he eventually won her over.

"He really started to walk his sobriety," she said. "He became the strongest man of God I ever met."

The couple live in nearby Tabernacle with 13 children, some of whom are foster children.

Mears-Sheldon says more and more people are sliding toward homelessness, given the state of the economy.

"It just gets more and more complicated," she said. "It's a struggle every day to find these people housing and get them employment."

That's why she spends the bulk of her days on the phone with various government agencies or filling out paperwork.

"I'd love to work myself out of a job," she said. "But there's new people every day."

For information about the Christian Caring Center in Pemberton Township, visit www.christian-caring-center.org.