STEVE DONALDSON’S
IMPROBABLE CRUSADE
TO END HOMELESSNESS
BY SAKI KNAFO
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBERT SNOW
Y THE TIME Albert
Swiger encountered a cop named
Steve Donaldson
in the suburbs of
Tampa in 2010,
Swiger had more than 200 arrests on his record. He’d been
arrested for burglary, for armed
robbery, for assault and battery.
He’d been arrested for grand auto
theft, shoplifting and disorderly
conduct. Month after month,
year after year, the mug shots had
documented his transformation
from an angry young misfit to a
dull-eyed middle-aged convict. He
sported a shaved head and a scraggly goatee —“the jailhouse look,”
he said. All told, he had spent
nearly half his life in jail, starting when he robbed a convenience
store at gunpoint at the age of 14.
About 10 years ago, when he was
34, he’d decided he’d had enough
of the criminal life and he checked
himself into a rehab center and
kicked his addiction to painkillers.
He landed a steady job in construction, met a girl, fell in love and
moved into her apartment in Hudson, Florida. After a few months
they decided to start a family. But
when the baby was born, the relationship fell apart. Looking back,
Swiger talks about postpartum
depression and wonders whether
things might have turned out differently if he’d stayed around. Not
long after he walked out, he called