The story of two San Francisco residents brought together by a crime is illustrative of a city divided by deep inequality and homelessness

She was a crack addict who had spent much of her life on the streets or in jail. Her victim was a former Fulbright fellow, Harvard Law School graduate and rising star in San Francisco’s political firmament.

The encounter two years ago between LaSonya Wells, who is black, and Scott Wiener, the white then-supervisor of San Francisco’s upscale, gay Castro district, was portrayed as illustrative of a city divided by deep inequality and homelessness.

“Race, class collide,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle, after Wells snatched the well-known politician’s iPhone and accompanied him to an ATM demanding payment in return for the smartphone.

Wells was charged with kidnapping Wiener for ransom. But beyond her rap sheet is a dramatic and complex story that defies the stereotype of a drug-addicted homeless woman. On Sunday she is due to be released from jail, changed by the crime she committed.

Her public defender, Yali Corea-Levy, sees their story as an allegory of today’s San Francisco, where homeless people congregate in the shadow of city hall, and encampments sprawl along sidewalks in gentrifying neighborhoods. Extreme wealth coming into the city has had a polarizing effect, he suggested. “And the middle class is dwindling. And now we have extreme interactions.”

Wells, 41, is short, plump and charismatic. Dressed in a bright-orange inmate uniform, she told her story recently in a white-walled interview room at the San Francisco County jail. She grew up in San Francisco, the child of a drug-addicted mother who was incapable of loving her. “I would run away for weeks at a time hoping my mother would look for me,” she said. Often Wells skipped school because “I was always dirty. Kids were cruel and I was violent.”

By the age of 10, she was living on the streets and in unlocked cars. At 12, she was selling crack from her mother’s dealer. She met her father only once. He told her “how pretty I was” and gave her $80. Later that night, he took the money back. “Give it to me baby,” she recalls him saying. “I need it for something.”

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Wells lifted her blouse to show a bullet scar. “I’ve been raped, stabbed, shot, kidnapped, put in trunks of cars,” she said. She estimates she has spent 14 years on the streets, sometimes sleeping wherever she collapsed. She has been convicted of 10 mostly drug-related felonies and has been in jail so frequently that she described it as “home to me. The streets is vacation”.



Wiener is preternaturally tall and thin. He is an introvert, a precise speaker driven by issues. At 47, he still has the look of a young man. In a conference room of his cavernous office in the California state building, he told how he grew up in a family of modest means among peach orchards and cornfields in Turnersville, New Jersey. His father was an optometrist and his mother a teacher. “My parents are two of the kindest people I’ve ever met,” he said. “They don’t understand when people are mean to other people.”

While Wells was selling crack on the streets of San Francisco, Wiener, a self-described “nerdy kid”, started a lawn-mowing business and flipped patties at Burger King. He faced challenges of his own. He was one of two Jewish students in his school, in a town where Wiener said “there was quite a bit of antisemitism.” And he knew no one who was gay. “I would have feared for my life if I came out in middle or high school,” he said.

Going to college was “not even a topic of discussion”. Wiener graduated from Duke University and Harvard Law School, and he received a Fulbright fellowship. Later, in San Francisco, he was elected a city supervisor representing the Castro district and other neighborhoods. He sees himself as “a voice for people who don’t have a voice”, especially underserved members of the LGBT community.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scott Wiener, now a state senator, at San Francisco city hall in 2016. Photograph: Andrew Burton/The Guardian

On 18 December 2015, Wiener’s and Wells’ paths crossed.

Wells was roaming the city’s Mission district when she spotted the wiry Wiener, heading to a campaign event, reading a blue-encased iPhone 6. Aided by two accomplices – one was her adult son – she snatched Wiener’s phone. They exchanged words. He recalled that she was “lucid, coherent and nasty”. She remembers being “out of my mind”.

She demanded $500 for the phone. He offered $200, but said he needed to go to an ATM. “If you try anything or yell out, I’ll mace you in the face,” Wiener recalled her saying. They had a gun, she said. At the cash machine, their images were captured by a camera – as Wiener had intended.

When police found Wells, she felt “relieved, because I wasn’t being arrested, I was being rescued,” she said. She was charged with kidnapping for ransom, and might have spent the remainder of her life in prison if Corea-Levy, the public defender, had not fought to have the charges reduced. She pled guilty to extortion and was sentenced to three years in jail.

At San Francisco County jail #2, she has blossomed. Wells says she does well in the structured environment. She received a high school diploma from the jail’s charter school, enrolled in college courses and wrote poetry and an autobiography. At her sentencing hearing in February, she recited a poem that read in part:

I wonder if sunset, better yet if sunrise and sunset respect each other even though they’ve never met. If volcanoes get stressed. If storms have regrets …

Spectators applauded. San Francisco superior court judge Jeffrey S Ross was so moved he asked, “Do you have a copy of that for those of us who would appreciate it? Or is it all in your heart and your brain?”

(In fact, the poem was written by a performance artist who recited the poem at San Francisco jails several years ago, though Wells does indeed have a notebook full of her own verse.)

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As Wells’ release looms, the encounter has receded for Weiner.

He has continued his political ascent – he’s now a California state senator, authoring social-justice legislation. “I really hope she can stay clean,” he said. “I don’t want her to become homeless, to go back into heavy drug use. My hope is that she can be on track and not victimize people.”

Indeed, the outlook for Wells is very different than that for Wiener. Once she’s freed, her chances of success will be tested. Unlike Wiener, education, drive and family ties have been intermittent. And in today’s San Francisco, with its unthinkable rents, there is little room for people in her situation.

Upon her release, she’ll be housed at a local organization that helps addicts and the recently incarcerated. “I’m nurturing the little girl inside me that I neglected, abandoned and abused,” she said. That may sound like she’s parroting a counselor’s evaluation, but she emphasizes she is not. And although she expressed similar sentiments the last time she left jail, she says this time is different.

“I can feel it in my gut, in my heart. I’m done. I’ve been through enough. I’m done living through hell,” Wells said.

Her attorney, Corea-Levy believes in her. “You would be surprised. People really do age out. I’ve seen people turn things around,” he said.