Title loan exec accused of sabotaging coffeehouse

Earlier this month, two so-called “missionaries” began rounding up homeless people and bringing them to Josiah’s Coffeehouse & Café in downtown where they would buy them food and beverages.

Groups as large as 50 people began descending on the tiny restaurant.

On Tuesday, restaurant owner Steve Hildebrand accused an executive of a title loan company of trying to sabotage his business by using professional protesters to infiltrate the city’s homeless community. Hildebrand said that Rod Aycox, the CEO of North American Title Loan Co., was trying to drive away his regular customers by overwhelming the restaurant.

Aycox did not immediately return a message.

Hildebrand is one of the leaders of a ballot initiative that would cap the fees and interest that payday and title loan companies charge at 36 percent.

Outside of his business Tuesday, police confronted one of the missionaries, a man who has gone by the name Deacon Pete. Deacon Pete said his real name is Floyd Pickett, from Peoria, Ill. Hildebrand released a news story showing that Pickett and Aycox are business associates.

Pickett denied that he knows anything about the payday and title loan industry, or that he’s associated with the industry. Instead, he said he goes from state to state to help feed the homeless. He declined to say who finances the effort.

But then he defended the industry, saying it provides credit to populations that couldn’t get loans from banks. He said the loan companies are there for people when emergencies arise, and he said that for every one person hurt by the industry, 10 have been helped.

“Thank God that I don’t need them,” Pickett said. “But they are a legitimate business. They’re needed.”

Hildebrand barred what he called professional protesters from his restaurant. That brought denouncements from about 15 people who gathered near Josiah’s Tuesday morning under the watch of three police officers. Several of the people who said they were homeless had cellphones.

Richard Ready said he came to Sioux Falls from Alabama about a month ago. He said he slept in a laundromat the night before. Ready said he’d been to Josiah’s about five times before being barred.

“This coffee in the morning has been a blessing to me,” he said.

Lamont Burks said that he lives in a homeless shelter. He said Pickett approached him about finding local homeless people who needed food and beverages. Burks said he had no idea where Pickett got his money.

“I’m just assisting him in getting up the people,” he said. “I’m not a sidekick.”

Pickett, Burks and several others outside Josiah’s are black, and Pickett accused Hildebrand of being a racist. He shrugged off the fact that Hildebrand was President Obama’s deputy campaign manager in 2008.

“That don’t impress me about him being with Obama,” he said. “He’s a racist and he should be known throughout the world.”

Hildebrand rejected the accusation, saying the issue is about predatory lenders, not race.

“These are the deepest, most evil people in America,” he said. “They prey on poor people.”

Hildebrand also said that it was some of his regular customers who first suggested to him that the throngs of homeless people were the work of the payday industry. For a couple of weeks, he believed the stories of the two missionaries who showed up out of nowhere.

“How naïve was I? I was like the last to know,” he said.

Former Mayor Dave Munson, one of the regulars, said the groups have “inundated” the restaurant over the last couple of weeks.

“It really made it tough if you wanted to order,” he said.

Roger Koch, who owns a nearby business, said it’s apparent that somebody is orchestrating the groups. He has seen the people gather in groups before they walk over to Josiah’s. He came down Tuesday to support Hildebrand.

“You can have a difference of opinion, but you don’t do things like this,” he said.