Martin County's homeless problem is a tough nut to quantify, let alone crack.

Officially, 311 homeless people were tallied in the annual "point-in-time" count this year — nearly half the 610 counted just two years earlier.

But the Martin County School District, which may have a better handle on the issue, has identified 439 homeless kids this year.

Whatever the "real" number — and we'll never know it — the frustrating thing is that with no emergency homeless shelters in Martin County and a piecemeal approach to the problem by government and private charities, there's no "solution" to the problem, no big fix.

There are only small solutions, individual success stories.

And with that, meet Bobby Wilk.

More: As homeless scatter, eulogizing a "nobody" | Gil Smart

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You might have seen him panhandling along U.S. 1. He's been homeless and addicted for most of the past three decades.

Gaunt and haggard, his shock of blonde hair hanging loose, he went by the nickname "Shaggy." He sold drugs to afford his own, lived in the woods around Stuart and by his own account did some 20 stints in the Martin County Jail.

"I was worthless," he said.

Flash forward to now. Bobby just marked 90 days clean. Not only that, he's making a huge difference in the lives of other homeless addicts in Martin County, via his volunteer work at LAHIA, Love and Hope in Action on Salerno Road in Stuart, a faith-based charity which feeds the hungry, serves the homeless — and helped Bobby save himself.

Indeed, in its December letter to supporters, LAHIA touted Bobby's turnaround as "one of the most incredible transformations" ever seen. But when he first started showing up at LAHIA last year, he wasn't there to change. He wanted food.

And to sell drugs to the other "clients."

But then he met Director of Client Services Michelle Miller and some of the other staffers. They did something that freaked him out: They told him they loved him, and they prayed with him.

"I'd seen so much out there in the woods, I thought: There can't be no God," he said.

But he began to pray himself. And "he started making comments like, 'I don't want to do this anymore, but I don't know how to stop,' " said Miller.

"It's hard making that first step," Wilk said.

But in September — after he'd been arrested again, for possession of drug paraphernalia — Wilk said he looked at his last three pieces of crack and said: "This is the last time I'm going to do this drug."

It was. He went to detox.

Shaggy died.

"I killed him," said Wilk.

Addiction's a chronic disease, and the fight's never really over. So Wilk's immersed himself at LAHIA, becoming an indispensable full-time volunteer.

He helped found a Narcotics Anonymous group which meets at LAHIA Mondays: "If you're an addict and you live in the woods around Port Salerno, the nearest NA meetings are in Port St. Lucie or Jensen Beach," said Bobby. "And most addicts don't have a car."

Now, he said, "people I used to sell drugs to are coming here for meetings."

He does maintenance, works in the kitchen, is building a dock on LAHIA's small pond and repairing cars. He's skilled at defusing tense situations involving other clients.

Miller said he's taught the staff much about the nature of addiction. But, she said, there's some resentment among other clients over Bobby's success.

"People who are jealous say, 'Oh you think you're so much better than us now,' " said Miller.

Then again, one woman who'd known Bobby for 20 years approached him and asked about coming to an NA meeting.

"She said, 'I didn't think you were going to do it, but you're really doing it,' " he said.

God and the team at LAHIA, he said, saw something in him he never detected in himself. Now he's made it his mission "to instill that hope in people like me."

Paying it back; paying it forward.

And I have to say, most of the stories I've written about the homeless don't have such a happy ending.

Recovery's a long road, so planting the flag and declaring victory always tempts fate. But what intrigued me most about Wilk's story was that he proved something I first wrote nearly two years ago, after I met another homeless man, Austin Cottle, who spent years in the woods near the Stuart Walmart before he died of pneumonia.

After I met him and wrote about him I heard from several readers who asked me why I'd wasted my time. After all, they said, he was a nobody — just as Bobby Wilk describes his former self.

Wilk's transformation, still in process, proves that to be untrue. Everybody is somebody, with a past.

And a future, too.

Gil Smart is a TCPalm columnist and a member of the Editorial Board. His columns reflect his opinion. Readers may reach him at gil.smart@tcpalm.com, by phone at 772-223-4741 or via Twitter at @TCPalmGilSmart.