Bobby Depper slips his arm through the straps of a backpack. Then another. And another, until five are piled on his back like a stack of pancakes. It's a 30-minute walk to the train station, then a 35-minute ride to north Houston. Depper doesn't fidget with the bags or sit down on the empty train. He just grabs a handrail and waits for his work to begin.

Off the train, Depper bounds toward a strip of grass between a Wal-Mart and a parking lot, where a group of men sit on the ground beneath a cluster of trees. This is how he spends his days: Searching for homeless people, giving them backpacks and, if they're willing, treating them to a meal. He has given away hundreds of backpacks in the last several months. Demand never dwindles.

How to donate Bobby Depper needs sleeping bags, backpacks, hygiene supplies, fast food gift cards and other items that can be found on his Amazon Wish List, which can be viewed here. Donations can be sent to: Bobby Depper, 3262 Westheimer #335, Houston, TX 77098. Find Bobby Depper on Facebook here.

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Depper remembers when he needed a backpack.

Five years ago, he slept beneath a pile of newspapers in a Dumpster behind a Dallas restaurant, his clothes and medicine water-logged.

"I was just so angry, and I said, if [God] is real, I guess I'll shout out at him. If he's real, I guess he'll hear me now," Depper recalls. When he woke the next morning, he couldn't see out of his right eye. He crawled out of the garbage and asked the restaurant's valet for spare change so he could catch a bus to the hospital. Depper was an addict at the time, so parts of the morning are hazy. But he says he'll never forget what happened next. A man stepped out of a car in the valet line.

"He said not to give me any change, and I thought 'How could anyone say that?' " Depper recalls. "But then I turned around and he was handing me a $100 bill."

The man was Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, who asked Depper to "pay it forward."

Romo remembers giving the $100 bill to Depper. It's the kind of thing the quarterback does sometimes, though Cowboys spokesman Rich Dalrymple said Romo "isn't really comfortable talking about it publicly."

It was a quiet act for Romo. But for Depper, it was a flashing neon sign from God.

Depper grew up in foster care in Illinois, picking a city on the map to run to when he turned 18. He hopped a train to Clarksville, Tenn. and began a three-decade stint of drifting around the country. Homeless and sick, after contracting HIV a decade ago, Depper said he felt like giving up that night in Dallas. But in the morning, he found faith. Depper continued to drift, living in Iowa before moving to Houston this spring, but he has found an anchor in his mission.

Grassroots, but gilded

Depper's quest is tethered to Christianity. His favorite bible verse is Matthew 25:40, in which Jesus says that what is done to the least of his brothers is done to him. When someone says they need help finding a job, Depper gives him the phone number of a friend who's hiring. He has purchased shoes and socks for men and women he met on sidewalks, and school supplies for a father and his 8-year-old son. Earlier this fall, when he met a young man who needed a pair of pants for a job interview, Depper took him to Wal-Mart.

Depper's is a grass-roots effort. Prayer groups at the Church of St. John the Divine in River Oaks, one of Houston's wealthiest, donated many of the backpacks stored on shelves in Depper's apartment. The bedroom is so crowded with supplies that Depper sleeps on the couch in the living room. He came upon St. John's by accident. The Episcopal church sits across the street from a UPS Store on Westheimer, where Depper keeps a mailbox to receive packages from friends and supporters who donate gift cards and other items. He attended his first service there in the late spring.

"When I first met Bobby, I did a sermon about him and my reaction to him," says Rev. Dr. Douglas Richnow, a pastor at the church.

"We have homeless people come in all the time, and they always have a story, that 'If I could just have some money, I could get to New Jersey and bury my mother.' You become jaded, and you have to reach beyond that to serve the community," Richnow says. "And when I saw Bobby, I thought here's this guy who's going to ask me for money. But all he did was hand me a card that says, 'Please be my friend on Facebook.' And I followed him on Facebook and I saw what he was doing. So I used Bobby as an example of how sometimes we can be so jaded with our experiences that we're not really letting God see through our eyes."

'A dollar can kill'

Houston is home to the 10th largest homeless population in the country, with close to 4,000 individuals living on the street, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Many are drawn to the city by the warm weather. That's what brought Depper here.

When he first arrived in the back of an old pickup, he stashed a backpack full of his belongings under a bridge and set out to find a room in a boarding house. He's a little more comfortably situated now, in a one-bedroom apartment in Midtown. But he's rarely home.

By day, he paces the city, his skin tanned and rough from hours in the sun. A subtle limp breaks his gait at times, thanks to a blister burning underfoot.

He's wiry, a tightly wound ball of energy who stops when he passes people who look like they might need help. In those moments, Depper pivots and chases after them, the bottoms of his hiking boots slapping against the sidewalk. Then he'll reach out a long, skinny arm for a handshake and hold their gaze as he talks, his left eye communicating enough to compensate for the right one, which never recovered from that night in the Dallas waste container. He offers lunch or dinner, dining with his new friends at places like Taco Bell, Subway or Whataburger, where they pray before eating and discuss what might break their cycle of homelessness. Because the meals are paid for by gift cards, no money is involved.

"A dollar can kill," Depper says over and over: in his one-bedroom apartment on Mason Street; on the train; as he walks through a parking lot.

One dollar can buy a quick hit, which can kill in an instant or keep someone "a prisoner to drugs," he says. It's a cycle that once trapped Depper, though the only drugs he takes now are his medications. After battling HIV for the better part of a decade, he said his viral load is now undetectable. In the evenings, Depper starts the process all over again, stuffing new backpacks with Bibles, toothbrushes, deodorant, water bottles, washcloths, canned foods and other necessities for life on the street.

Small gestures

For Depper's 44th birthday in June, the church hosted a backpack-stuffing party for him, filling 300 bags. Parishioners often stop by to visit with him, dropping off staples for the backpacks and bringing him the occasional lunch.

"I met Bobby through one of our pastors' wives, and our church has done a really good job of stepping out of our comfort zone and welcoming Bobby and his friends," says River Oaks resident Lori Britton, as she sat in Depper's apartment this fall. A parishioner at St. Johns, Britton is one of several people who have come to Depper's aid since he first arrived in Houston. The church helped Depper find his current apartment and paid for three months' rent. Recently, Depper has been visiting several different churches on Sundays to reach out to more congregations and expand his network of good deeds. Several of the people he knows on the street have begun attending St. John's 9 a.m. services on Sunday, sitting side by side with some of Houston's wealthiest families.

"He began showing up every week and bringing 20 or 30 of the street people," says Cheryl Johnson Todd, who attends St. Johns and has volunteered to help Depper many times. "They'd come and we'd give them cards that said they were Bobby's friend. And if you're wearing a name tag that says 'Bobby's friend,' you get a free breakfast and lunch."

These small acts barely register on the balance sheets for the church, which boasts an annual budget of $7 million. But a drop in the bucket for St. John's has made waves in Depper's world.

Depper says homeless people can benefit from small gestures.

"It's easy to see if someone's not doing well, based on the way they're dressed, the way they're carrying themselves," he says.

"And I just walk up and say, 'Are you hungry?' And you'd be surprised. Their face lights up that someone even asked that. Because I'm sure for the last eight blocks, people were ignoring them or giving them ugly looks, telling them to go away, calling them names. Or wanting to call the police because they were asking for a sandwich. Or digging out of the Dumpster or the trash can for the fries you just threw away … I know what it's like to be ignored, what that feels like. And no one wants that. That's why God puts people like me out there."

Moments later, Depper comes upon two men at a street corner carrying all their possessions in deteriorating shopping bags. They beam when Depper approaches them, loaded down with backpacks.

One of the men says, "I was just thinking, 'Lord, I need a backpack.' "