Help Get Irunda Woodworth off the street
Donation protected
My mother, Irunda Woodworth, who people have affectionately referred to as "Kiki", has fallen on hard times. She’s a 50 years old mother of 8 beautiful children, some of whom are barely entering elementary school. If you know her, you know that she’s a kind and vibrant woman with an enormous heart and an even bigger personality. I know many of you who find yourself reading this have called her “mom” yourselves in the past. She was always the cool mom. She has opened up her home to many who've been in need over the years, which is partially why she’s homeless now.
She has been missing since November but was recently spotted on the local news in San Diego giving an eyewitness account to a shooting. Friends of hers were murdered, presumably visiting her, at the park she’s been living in. I’m relieved to know she’s alive, but I’m absolutely devastated that she’s homeless and living in a dangerous place. While I have a good idea of where she’s camped, I do not have the resources to help her once I make contact. It breaks my heart that I'm not in a position to do more. Some of my siblings are too young to know what’s going on, but none of us want the next news we hear of her to be even worse than what’s happened. We are her only known, living family.
To my knowledge, she is not on hard drugs.
She is lucid and of sound mind.
Her empathy is still intact.
She's just... broken.
She’s gone through a gauntlet of trauma these past few years and it’s had a profoundly negative effect on her sense of well being. She hasn’t had the space to deal with any of what she’s gone through and unfortunately dropping out completely is the only relief she seems to have gotten. The money I'm raising is to provide her with interim support and stability while we figure out what long term solutions may be available. She has insurance through the military but needs a new military ID card. She needs a place to stay for a while and since I'm not positive what state shes in, it's best for her to pay to be somewhere. she'll also need clothes and basic life necessities.
That's the jist of it, but if you are interested in the why and how I've written more below.
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I’m not proud to have to do this and I quite frankly don’t have the emotional energy to tell a sad story for money. I don’t like to pander but I don't know what else to do. I’m pretty embarrassed that I haven’t been able to earn the funds to help her on my own. I feel like I’ve failed. Having done the research and knowing the particulars of my mom’s situation raising money is the only path to a real solution. The reality is that while there are programs in place to help homeless women, the system is overburdened and it’s easy to fall through the cracks. I need to raise just enough money to stabilize her while we look for long term solutions. She fortunately has great insurance coverage through the military thanks to my step dad, but She needs a new military ID card. It is my hope that through her insurance I can find some sort of care for her. My mom isn’t “Crazy” but she is in need of mental health services for issues related to trauma, and the reality is that there is 0 mental health infrastructure in this country. In the interim she’ll need a safe place to stay, food, clothing, for an indeterminate period of time. She has a small dog, Fanny, who is now in my care but needs some veterinary assistant that I can’t afford right now. I would like to put her up somewhere while I dedicate some time to helping her. Honestly, I might need a hand with my bills if I’m going to take this on. I haven’t been very productive these past few weeks and my own mental health has taken a hit. In addition to all of this, my mom is adopted and perhaps finding her biological family would be a solution. I’m flying in the dark here, I don’t know what the right move is, I just know I need help. She could potentially stay with my sister out of state if need be.
More than simply raising money, this fundraiser is to show her that people care, and that she isn’t alone. I think she’s felt alone for a very long time and this may be what rouses her into a stronger state.
Irunda is extremely intelligent, articulate, kind, and incredibly strong. She’s never had any help but has always found a way to help others and done whatever she felt was necessary to raise her kids. I know with the right opportunities and a chance to get on track she’ll do great. My mother has no family that she knows of other than the people who she physically brought into this world through birth, myself and my younger siblings. There is only so much we can do.
The “story” of how things got this way is complex, a lot has happened over the years and I truly do not know where to begin. I want to avoid making any of this a sob story but I suppose that this is the nature of this platform. Here are the facts:
Irunda Woodworth is a 50 year old mother of 8, of which I am the eldest. Us kids are her only family, and half of us are still in grade school. My mom found out she was adopted at age 30, which as you might imagine was a devastating discovery. Her name at birth was Nichole Rene Cooks, but other than that she has no information about the circumstances of her birth of her biological parents. Her adopted parents -my grandparents, were from a far different time, reared in the Jim Crow era south. Her father was born in 1910 and died years before I was born. My Grandmother was born in 1926 -her health had been in decline for at least for my entire life. My mom served as her caretaker up until she died in 2007. My mom has one living brother who’s also adopted, my uncle Aaron. He suffers from severe trauma related mental illness, stemming from the rather extreme abuse he endured at the hands of their adopted family (who one generation removed from slavery employed some brutal “disciplinary”tactics.) -My mom took care of him as well up until we lost track of him a few years ago. She’s legally married but seperated from my stepfather who lives in Virginia with my four youngest siblings. We’re literally all she has and as the eldest I feel the most responsible.
There is a lot I can go into, but suffice to say my mom wasn’t always homeless, or even unemployed. Until recently she had a house through section 8. My step dad left with the rest of the kids cross country due to the rising cost of living here in California and because of their declining marriage. After he and the kids left, mom allowed some family friends to stay at the house who needed help. My mom left for a couple of weeks to try and find work out of state, only to return to a home that had been ransacked and badly damaged by the people she’d taken in. The house had turned into a darelect squatters den and everything of value that we owned was stolen. At that point I stepped in to help salvage what I could of our belongings from the literal wreckage of our home, only to find that the landlord had served my mom an eviction notice.
I helped store and secure what was left of our things and found homes for 2 of my mom’s 3 dogs. My Mom and her remaining pup, Fanny, went to stay with her friend Ron in north county San Diego. On new year’s day of 2019, my mom found Ron dead in his room. He was a kind man who cared for my mom deeply. After that my mom continued to stay at Ron’s place. Communication between us became spotty, but from what I understood she was staying there and with friends. It wasn’t until last summer that I found out how she’d been living. I received a call from a social worker through the naval medical center’s mental healthcare department. My mom had been taken into custody after attempting to cross the highway with her dog, in an apparent suicide attempt. She made the attempt near an overpass where she’d been living. A good friend of mine drove me down to San Diego to see my mom. I was told that I also needed to pick Fanny up from the humane society because the facility she was in didn’t allow animals for their own safety. I met with my mom and a social worker at the naval medical center in balboa. She was completely coherent but visibly hurt. All she could talk about was the injustice she felt she’d experienced, letting people into her home who destroyed her life.
The social worker told me that she would be housed there as long as possible and that they would look into long term placement options for her, I was relieved. This felt to me like a bottom that we could build from and like there was help. I took Fanny up here with me to LA but have had to keep her at my side at all times due to her extreme separation anxiety. Thankfully some friends helped me with doggy supplies, but she has some other health issues that need to be addressed, mainly some teeth that need to be pulled.
I had an opportunity to travel to Thailand to train in muay thai last september, which I took feeling that I had done all I could and my mom was on a path to stability. Unfortunately I was wrong, and unknown to me, my mother was released from “treatment” back onto the streets. When I got back from my trip in December, I couldn’t get ahold of her and had no idea what had happened. She hasn't had a phone, but I can usually get ahold of her through facebook, but wasn’t getting a response. After a few weeks of silence I decided to file a missing person’s report. The detective told me that if she had any contact with the police they would let me know. I received a call two weeks ago saying she was cited by an officer for being nude in a tent near Southcrest park in San Diego. Some family friends searched the area with no luck, and even if we found her, we weren’t sure what we could do. Then on the morning of February 11th, I received a call from my sister who heard from a family friend that my mom had been spotted on the local news. She was a witness to a fatal shooting of two teenagers where she had been staying, apparently friends of hers. I googled the video and sure enough it’s her, she appeared deeply saddened by the loss of her friends and it’s really hard to see her like that. I never thought id see my mom as a homeless lady on the news, grieving over lives lost. The other homeless people who were interviewed said they avoid the park at night at all costs because it’s known to be violent after dark.
I’m scared for my mom’s physical safety. I don’t know what to do. I have limited space where I am and live with roommates so I don’t know if I can realistically house her. Right now I need help. Not just donations but information, opportunities for her, resources. My siblings; Jessica, Taylor, Jordan, Michael, Samantha, Charlotte, and Nicholas need a mom who’s safe and stable. They don’t deserve for her to be on the streets.
I know many in the LA underground music scene have hung out with my mom while she was campaigning for me during my ordeal in Mexico, and a lot of you called her “mom”. She was the lady who’d make you guys grilled cheese sandwiches after an all nighter and made sure you drank water between drinks. I truly believe that if she knew that some of the lives she’d touched over the years had her back, it would invigorate her soul to push through this trying time. The truth is that this isn’t something that can be fixed by throwing money at it, but a showing of love and support and acceptance is everything.
I pass by homeless people every day and like many of you have to put blinders on because its just so overwhelming. I see these people on the streets and figure that they’re in the position they’re in is due to some broad reaching systemic issue like the lack of a mental health care infrastructure in our country, or as an attribute to an artificially inflated housing market, or as a result of a vanishing job market. Those factors are real, and they contribute in some ways to what we are going through. But I know now that there are so many stories of loss and heartbreak that go beyond these enormous and impersonal statistics. Sometimes the world is just too much. Any of us can be in this position and what separates us from a life on the payment is just one bad day. My mom has people, she just needs to know it.
Thank you for listening.
She has been missing since November but was recently spotted on the local news in San Diego giving an eyewitness account to a shooting. Friends of hers were murdered, presumably visiting her, at the park she’s been living in. I’m relieved to know she’s alive, but I’m absolutely devastated that she’s homeless and living in a dangerous place. While I have a good idea of where she’s camped, I do not have the resources to help her once I make contact. It breaks my heart that I'm not in a position to do more. Some of my siblings are too young to know what’s going on, but none of us want the next news we hear of her to be even worse than what’s happened. We are her only known, living family.
To my knowledge, she is not on hard drugs.
She is lucid and of sound mind.
Her empathy is still intact.
She's just... broken.
She’s gone through a gauntlet of trauma these past few years and it’s had a profoundly negative effect on her sense of well being. She hasn’t had the space to deal with any of what she’s gone through and unfortunately dropping out completely is the only relief she seems to have gotten. The money I'm raising is to provide her with interim support and stability while we figure out what long term solutions may be available. She has insurance through the military but needs a new military ID card. She needs a place to stay for a while and since I'm not positive what state shes in, it's best for her to pay to be somewhere. she'll also need clothes and basic life necessities.
That's the jist of it, but if you are interested in the why and how I've written more below.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’m not proud to have to do this and I quite frankly don’t have the emotional energy to tell a sad story for money. I don’t like to pander but I don't know what else to do. I’m pretty embarrassed that I haven’t been able to earn the funds to help her on my own. I feel like I’ve failed. Having done the research and knowing the particulars of my mom’s situation raising money is the only path to a real solution. The reality is that while there are programs in place to help homeless women, the system is overburdened and it’s easy to fall through the cracks. I need to raise just enough money to stabilize her while we look for long term solutions. She fortunately has great insurance coverage through the military thanks to my step dad, but She needs a new military ID card. It is my hope that through her insurance I can find some sort of care for her. My mom isn’t “Crazy” but she is in need of mental health services for issues related to trauma, and the reality is that there is 0 mental health infrastructure in this country. In the interim she’ll need a safe place to stay, food, clothing, for an indeterminate period of time. She has a small dog, Fanny, who is now in my care but needs some veterinary assistant that I can’t afford right now. I would like to put her up somewhere while I dedicate some time to helping her. Honestly, I might need a hand with my bills if I’m going to take this on. I haven’t been very productive these past few weeks and my own mental health has taken a hit. In addition to all of this, my mom is adopted and perhaps finding her biological family would be a solution. I’m flying in the dark here, I don’t know what the right move is, I just know I need help. She could potentially stay with my sister out of state if need be.
More than simply raising money, this fundraiser is to show her that people care, and that she isn’t alone. I think she’s felt alone for a very long time and this may be what rouses her into a stronger state.
Irunda is extremely intelligent, articulate, kind, and incredibly strong. She’s never had any help but has always found a way to help others and done whatever she felt was necessary to raise her kids. I know with the right opportunities and a chance to get on track she’ll do great. My mother has no family that she knows of other than the people who she physically brought into this world through birth, myself and my younger siblings. There is only so much we can do.
The “story” of how things got this way is complex, a lot has happened over the years and I truly do not know where to begin. I want to avoid making any of this a sob story but I suppose that this is the nature of this platform. Here are the facts:
Irunda Woodworth is a 50 year old mother of 8, of which I am the eldest. Us kids are her only family, and half of us are still in grade school. My mom found out she was adopted at age 30, which as you might imagine was a devastating discovery. Her name at birth was Nichole Rene Cooks, but other than that she has no information about the circumstances of her birth of her biological parents. Her adopted parents -my grandparents, were from a far different time, reared in the Jim Crow era south. Her father was born in 1910 and died years before I was born. My Grandmother was born in 1926 -her health had been in decline for at least for my entire life. My mom served as her caretaker up until she died in 2007. My mom has one living brother who’s also adopted, my uncle Aaron. He suffers from severe trauma related mental illness, stemming from the rather extreme abuse he endured at the hands of their adopted family (who one generation removed from slavery employed some brutal “disciplinary”tactics.) -My mom took care of him as well up until we lost track of him a few years ago. She’s legally married but seperated from my stepfather who lives in Virginia with my four youngest siblings. We’re literally all she has and as the eldest I feel the most responsible.
There is a lot I can go into, but suffice to say my mom wasn’t always homeless, or even unemployed. Until recently she had a house through section 8. My step dad left with the rest of the kids cross country due to the rising cost of living here in California and because of their declining marriage. After he and the kids left, mom allowed some family friends to stay at the house who needed help. My mom left for a couple of weeks to try and find work out of state, only to return to a home that had been ransacked and badly damaged by the people she’d taken in. The house had turned into a darelect squatters den and everything of value that we owned was stolen. At that point I stepped in to help salvage what I could of our belongings from the literal wreckage of our home, only to find that the landlord had served my mom an eviction notice.
I helped store and secure what was left of our things and found homes for 2 of my mom’s 3 dogs. My Mom and her remaining pup, Fanny, went to stay with her friend Ron in north county San Diego. On new year’s day of 2019, my mom found Ron dead in his room. He was a kind man who cared for my mom deeply. After that my mom continued to stay at Ron’s place. Communication between us became spotty, but from what I understood she was staying there and with friends. It wasn’t until last summer that I found out how she’d been living. I received a call from a social worker through the naval medical center’s mental healthcare department. My mom had been taken into custody after attempting to cross the highway with her dog, in an apparent suicide attempt. She made the attempt near an overpass where she’d been living. A good friend of mine drove me down to San Diego to see my mom. I was told that I also needed to pick Fanny up from the humane society because the facility she was in didn’t allow animals for their own safety. I met with my mom and a social worker at the naval medical center in balboa. She was completely coherent but visibly hurt. All she could talk about was the injustice she felt she’d experienced, letting people into her home who destroyed her life.
The social worker told me that she would be housed there as long as possible and that they would look into long term placement options for her, I was relieved. This felt to me like a bottom that we could build from and like there was help. I took Fanny up here with me to LA but have had to keep her at my side at all times due to her extreme separation anxiety. Thankfully some friends helped me with doggy supplies, but she has some other health issues that need to be addressed, mainly some teeth that need to be pulled.
I had an opportunity to travel to Thailand to train in muay thai last september, which I took feeling that I had done all I could and my mom was on a path to stability. Unfortunately I was wrong, and unknown to me, my mother was released from “treatment” back onto the streets. When I got back from my trip in December, I couldn’t get ahold of her and had no idea what had happened. She hasn't had a phone, but I can usually get ahold of her through facebook, but wasn’t getting a response. After a few weeks of silence I decided to file a missing person’s report. The detective told me that if she had any contact with the police they would let me know. I received a call two weeks ago saying she was cited by an officer for being nude in a tent near Southcrest park in San Diego. Some family friends searched the area with no luck, and even if we found her, we weren’t sure what we could do. Then on the morning of February 11th, I received a call from my sister who heard from a family friend that my mom had been spotted on the local news. She was a witness to a fatal shooting of two teenagers where she had been staying, apparently friends of hers. I googled the video and sure enough it’s her, she appeared deeply saddened by the loss of her friends and it’s really hard to see her like that. I never thought id see my mom as a homeless lady on the news, grieving over lives lost. The other homeless people who were interviewed said they avoid the park at night at all costs because it’s known to be violent after dark.
I’m scared for my mom’s physical safety. I don’t know what to do. I have limited space where I am and live with roommates so I don’t know if I can realistically house her. Right now I need help. Not just donations but information, opportunities for her, resources. My siblings; Jessica, Taylor, Jordan, Michael, Samantha, Charlotte, and Nicholas need a mom who’s safe and stable. They don’t deserve for her to be on the streets.
I know many in the LA underground music scene have hung out with my mom while she was campaigning for me during my ordeal in Mexico, and a lot of you called her “mom”. She was the lady who’d make you guys grilled cheese sandwiches after an all nighter and made sure you drank water between drinks. I truly believe that if she knew that some of the lives she’d touched over the years had her back, it would invigorate her soul to push through this trying time. The truth is that this isn’t something that can be fixed by throwing money at it, but a showing of love and support and acceptance is everything.
I pass by homeless people every day and like many of you have to put blinders on because its just so overwhelming. I see these people on the streets and figure that they’re in the position they’re in is due to some broad reaching systemic issue like the lack of a mental health care infrastructure in our country, or as an attribute to an artificially inflated housing market, or as a result of a vanishing job market. Those factors are real, and they contribute in some ways to what we are going through. But I know now that there are so many stories of loss and heartbreak that go beyond these enormous and impersonal statistics. Sometimes the world is just too much. Any of us can be in this position and what separates us from a life on the payment is just one bad day. My mom has people, she just needs to know it.
Thank you for listening.
Organizer
Gladden Rangel
Organizer
Los Angeles, CA