On a steamy Sunday morning last month, Leea Mechling hopped into a white Chevrolet pickup and stopped at Whataburger to get breakfast for an old friend. She reasoned her childhood buddy, Coy Featherston, might want coffee and a breakfast taco whenever she found him.

Mechling had learned that Featherston, once a skilled athlete who played running back for Darrell Royal's Longhorns and went on to set up stage lights for Hall of Fame rocker Frank Zappa, had been living out of an overflowing grocery cart and sleeping in the doorway of a church near the University of Texas.

She was among a handful of Corpus Christi natives now living in Austin who were rattled when they opened the American-Statesman on Sept. 11 and saw a front-page photo of Featherston, disheveled with a scraggly white beard, recognizable only because his name was in the photo caption.

Driving down an alleyway, Mechling found Featherston four days later feeding pigeons outside of St. Austin Catholic Parish. She pulled him in for a hug and invited him into her pickup.

Featherston stayed with her briefly in Buda before settling in with Don Vanderburg, another friend from Corpus Christi who is now living in Lago Vista. Featherston, who had been homeless for the past 20 years or so, has slept indoors on a mattress every night since then. Concerns about his mental health prompted his friends to donate money and schedule a psychological evaluation for him.

"It's on the upswing at present," Featherston said last week by phone from Vanderburg's home. "Hopefully, it'll get better. I have a lot of encouragement from a lot of folks I've known for years and years. How do you stay away from friends? And you know they're friends because they're helping you."

A GoFundMe drive, launched by one of Featherston's friends, has brought in more than $8,000. The money will go toward essentials while complications with Featherston's Social Security and Medicare benefits get ironed out. Other friends have chipped in with clothing and a bicycle.

The "Corpus compatriots," as Mechling called them, all grew up with the 68-year-old Featherston, whom they remember as a popular student at King High School who was always quick with a joke.

"It has been such a group effort," Mechling said. "Even people we don't know have slipped me a $20 bill to give to him."

Many of the people who have pitched in are fixtures in Austin's food and culture scene. Mechling, who spent three days canvassing West Campus before she found Featherston, is the executive director of the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture. Debbie Davis, owner of Counter Cafe, had gotten word about where Featherston was staying and relayed it to friends. Joe Sublett, a Grammy Award-winning saxophone player, sent money for new shoes. Linda Wuensche, who worked the box office at the old Armadillo World Headquarters, where Featherston also was employed, donated money.

Vanderburg, who long ago in Corpus Christi invited Featherston to play guitar in his band, recently invited him to stay in a spare bedroom in his home.

"When you know someone out on the street, it kind of flips your idea of what's really going on in this town with homelessness," said Patrick Judd, who created the GoFundMe page that has generated nearly 400 shares on social media. "You think he's living his life like everybody else, but then you find out the whole floor's been pulled out from under him."

The photo that inspired the group to act ran with a front-page story about whether the Austin City Council should prohibit homeless people from camping in West Campus. A few months earlier, the council rescinded the city's ban on such camps across the city, sparking a rise in tent encampments and a spirited discussion on how to handle the roughly 1,000 transient people in Austin who sleep under overpasses, on sidewalks or on park benches.

City Council members have discussed new restrictions but have yet to finalize any.

This month, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an ultimatum, threatening state intervention if Austin fails to "demonstrate consequential improvement in the Austin homelessness crisis" by Nov. 1. A second letter followed Thursday with the governor directing Mayor Steve Adler to reinstate the camping ban.

Featherston, summarizing the views of many Austinites, called the homeless debate "a tough one." On the day his photo was taken, Featherston, searching for a dry area as rain fell, pushed a shopping cart along the Drag that he had saddled with a dozen or so grocery bags, a broom and a construction hard hat. He said he had been staying at the corner of Guadalupe and West 21st streets since he returned to Austin in December after living on the streets of Georgia since the late 1990s.

Team rosters show Featherston played for the Longhorns in 1972 and 1973, when UT captured two Southwest Conference titles. Stuck on the depth chart behind star back Roosevelt Leaks, Featherston, listed at 5-feet-9 inches tall and weighing 180 pounds, never earned a varsity letter. Within a year, he had left school and began touring with the legendary Zappa, rising to lighting director.

Featherston is referenced in Zappa's song "Goblin Girl," from the 1981 album "You Are What You Is," in a line that says, "But Coy leaves the green gels in the truss."

"Zappa treated him very well, paid him good money," Vanderburg said.

But Featherston aged out of the position, Vanderburg said, and was making more money than Zappa's record label wanted to pay. After touring with Zappa for 15 years, Featherston lost his job in 1989. Vanderburg said it was the event that contributed most to Featherston losing his way.

But, now, thanks to a photograph and many acts of generosity, Featherston is rebounding.

"I kind of had a feeling it would do something," Featherston said of the photo. "It's been good for me. I wasn't really into doing the whole street thing here."