A homeless man catches my eye walking along the side of Laguna Canyon Road, where I am stopped in late afternoon traffic. He has headphones over his ears and appears to be almost dancing as he glides in and out of the bushes that grow at the edge of the asphalt. He’s carrying a sage green backpack that looks heavy, the straps digging into the man’s white t-shirt. Heavy combat boots – odd for the heat of the season, and even odder worn with a pair of board shorts – weigh down his legs as he scuffles through the weedy shrubs. He has a red bandana wrapped around his head.

He’s probably heading toward the Alternate Sleeping Location (ASL) to secure a spot for the evening. The site, managed by the Friendship Shelter, is controversial in town. It was a mandated solution to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU to stop the arrests of homeless on the beach, while not supplying a viable alternative for shelter. The ASL provides showers, meals, laundry services and sleeping mats for 45 people. Meanwhile, the homeless population in Laguna continues to increase, with some claiming that the ASL is responsible. It’s a mess really. None of us want our beaches covered with homeless sleeping bags, drunken and obscenity spewing encounters, or beggars in front of Starbucks. Truth is we want the Boardwalk and the parks to be cleared of their uncomfortable presence, and all of “them” to magically vanish.

This homeless man looks youngish – not like some of the grey-haired and weathered locals that hang out at Main Beach. He wanders toward a fire crew clearing brush at the base of the hillside, either singing or talking to himself. When he pauses, I realize that I know him.

He’s no stranger. He’s my son, Austin.

A wave of electricity jolts my hands, which suddenly clench the steering wheel, as if seared into place. This is the first time I’ve seen him, I mean actually seen him, as a wandering homeless person. Looked at him as one of “them” – someone that many would like to run out of town. I quickly realize that my mind-dribble had already been wondering if this man smelled bad, was wearing dirty clothes or planning to stay in Laguna.

My thoughts tilt upside down. Not my son, right? The boy who grew up here, surfing in the ocean, going to school. It’s a painful reminder of where we are as a family, of what the past has led to in this present. Mom-son. Housed-unhoused.

Should I stop and ask him if he wants a ride?

Should I honk the horn and wave, as I would any other friend?

Why can’t I figure out what is the right thing to do?

Businesses don’t hire felons. Not MacDonald’s or Taco Bell, not Ralph’s, not the local motel for a janitor job. He applied to them all. I helped him fill out the applications. He answered the questions honestly. He was been turned down by everyone. His record for selling cocaine preceded him, held him in a place of stasis. How do you climb out of the gutter when the slopes crumble with each attempted handhold?

Let me back up: My kid, this man I see on the side of the road, was once an honors student and a star athlete. He had a photographic mind. He had three full-ride scholarships at state universities lined up and was being scouted by a major league baseball team.

But then a skimboarding accident shredded all the tendons in his left foot, and ended the future he had planned. He spent three months on my couch in recovery, and never again found his footing.

He messed up. He developed a drug addiction. Then he sold drugs, and he got caught. And he bounced in and out of Theo Lacy and Orange County Jail like a ping pong ball, because each time he was stopped for, say, driving 75 mph in a 60 mph zone, it was considered a parole violation and they threw him back in jail.

And the felony conviction? That’s the same sentencing as for crimes of murder, rape, burglary, arson, sex crimes against a child under 14 and gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. I try and understand how the sale of a drug – a negotiation between two willing people – is the same as murder. It’s just beyond me.

His last arrest landed him in prison. He was on parole, randomly drug tested and staying clean. His girlfriend? Not so much. She loaned him her car and then reported it stolen. The police agreed that he had not stolen her vehicle, but because he was on parole, they initiated a search. A pound of her cocaine in the trunk and it was handcuffs and a new jail cell before Austin could blink. The sentence was three years in Wasco State Prison, up in Kern County.

When I went to visit him, I was stunned to discover he had been placed in Administrative Segregation (Ad Seg) – another name for solitary. He told me it was fight or be beaten, and he chose to fight. His reward? A dark dungeon of a cell, where his only human contact was a guard who brought and took away his food. He was granted one hour per week outside in a chain-link cage.

During our visit, my mouth chattered on while my mind raced, trying to analyze the glaze in his eyes. He drifted in and out of our conversation, slumped in his chair and almost dropped the phone.

“Austin!” I screamed at him. “Come back to me!”

He straightened, blinked, smiled.

“There’s this ant.” He leaned forward in his seat closer to the glass, lowering his voice almost to a whisper. “He walks back and forth across my floor. He comes in through a hole in the wall to visit me. And a small spider. And sometimes a fly. I don’t kill any of them. I just watch them.”

And it struck me, like a bat blow to the gut, that something was profoundly wrong with his mind. This prison, this solitary confinement, was systematically destroying what was left of the boy I had raised, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I wanted to grab him, not let him go back to wherever they were keeping him, whatever they were doing to him. I wanted to carry him out of there on my shoulders, plop him down on the sand, and let the ocean wash over and heal him.

After the solitary confinement experience, he received a diagnosis of schizophrenia. It’s a life sentence. Medications worked until they didn’t, and have now lost all efficacy. He doesn’t choose homelessness; it chooses him. I have run out of ways to help him and now he has no job prospects, no way to rent a home, and struggles with voices that scream in his head, tricking him with their distortion of reality. He cusses and yells, just like many other homeless wanderers. He scares some people, much like other misplaced persons. Sometimes he scares me. And yet Austin still follows baseball like a rabid fan, can give you statistics of players and team standings, and loves to surf when he has the chance.

That’s him in the red bandana, skipping down the street, bopping to some kind of music in his headphones. That’s my son Austin, and at least tonight, due to the diligence and hard work of the Friendship Shelter, I know one thing for sure: He has a place to sleep.