With a vest and a voice, helpers escort kids through San Francisco’s broken Tenderloin streets
SAN FRANCISCO– Dressed in a cheerful safety vest with the words “Safe Passage” on the back, Tatiana Alabsi walks through San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood to the only public elementary school, navigating broken bottles and stained sleeping bags through tired streets that occasionally stink of urine .
Along the way in one of America’s most notorious neighborhoods, she calls on people to politely warn people huddled on the sidewalks, some of whom are holding strips of aluminum foil labeled with illegal drugs.
“Good afternoon, happy Monday!” Alabsi says to two men, one slumped over in a wheelchair and wearing soft hospital socks and one slipper. Her voice is cheerful, a soothing contrast to the misery on display in the 50-block neighborhood known for its crime, squalor and reckless abandon. “School time. Children will be coming soon.”
Further on, Alabsi passes a man dancing in the middle of the street with his arms in the air as a beeping fire truck speeds by. She stops to gently touch the shoulder of a man lying in a fetal position on the sidewalk, his head inches from the tires of a parked car.
“Is everything all right?” she asks, before suggesting they move somewhere out of the sun. “There will be children coming soon.”
A few minutes later, Alabsi arrives at Tenderloin Community Elementary School, where she finds herself among several adults escorting dozens of children to after-school programs. The students hang up their backpacks with Spider Man and the sisters from “Frozen” on them, then form two boisterous lines that follow Alabsi like ducks through broken streets.
The little ones hold the hands of trusted volunteers.
Long known for its brazen open-air drug markets, chronic addiction, mental illness and homelessness, the Tenderloin neighborhood is also home to the highest concentration of children in San Francisco, an estimated 3,000 children, largely from immigrant families.
The neighborhood is rich in social services and low-income housing, but San Francisco police have also seized nearly 200 pounds of narcotics since last May. Of the record 806 overdose deaths last year, about 20% occurred in the tenderloin.
But amid the chaos is a vibrant community, knitted together by different languages, that has found ways to protect and offer hope to the most vulnerable, something many say the city has failed to do. Officials have sent toilets, declared a state of emergency for the mayor and promised to crack down on drugs, but change is only a glacial situation.
A group of mothers fed up with drug dealers started the effort in 2008 after a child went temporarily missing. The Safe Passage program is now part of the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, a nonprofit organization funded in part by Tenderloin property owners who also clean sidewalks, staff parks and host community events.
Alabsi started volunteering after the Russian native moved to the United States from Yemen with her husband and sought asylum a decade ago. They joined her husband’s mother and his siblings, who had settled in the Tenderloin.
Life was not easy in their new homeland. Alabsi, 54, and her husband Jalal, both doctors, were several years away from starting their careers. The mum-of-two grew desperate when her youngest son started counting the piles of poo he saw from his pram on their walks home from daycare.
Then she heard about Safe Passage. At her husband’s insistence, she signed up as a volunteer to spare the children the worst on their walk after school.
Many people, Alabsi says, respond politely, putting away their drugs or pushing their belongings aside when she reminds them that school is over. But others ignore the request. Some even get angry.
“It is better to smile kindly and say good afternoon or good morning, to show people that I am friendly,” said a smiling Alabsi, who is fluent in Arabic and Russian and speaks English with an accent. “I’m not a monster.”
The program’s safety inspectors guide students along the cleanest and quietest routes, redirecting them in a way that prevents people from behaving unpredictably or overdosing. Sometimes stewards use their bodies to prevent the children from seeing things they shouldn’t, such as a woman sitting between two cars who can no longer control her bowels.
On a recent afternoon, two girls with ponytails walked through an intersection, talking about becoming TikTok stars one day, seemingly oblivious to a couple hunched over at a bus stop across the street, struggling to light up. As they walked, Alabsi blocked their view of the smeared feces.
The girls, one in first grade and the other in second grade, were headed to the Cross Cultural Family Center, one of six nonprofits that provide after-school programs for K-12 children.
Alabsi and her immediate family have moved from the Tenderloin, but are still an integral part of it. Their son is in the fourth grade of primary school and Alabsi now manages the Safe Passage program.
She likes the mix of Latin, Asian, Arabic and American cultures in the tenderloin. The big hearts of residents striving for a better life are what “makes it special,” she said.
On a recent Saturday, Alabsi was working an Eid party at the neighborhood recreation center. She monitored the block, which was closed to traffic that day, as she greeted her sisters-in-law, who had attended the festivities with their children.
When the party ended at 4 p.m., she left with her soccer-loving son Sami to drop off her vest and radio at the office. They chatted in Russian as they walked past tents, sleeping bags and blankets, an abandoned microwave and lawn chair and a human-shaped lump under a blanket with shoes peeking out.
From loud speakers, the doo-wop of The Moonglows singing ‘Sincerely’ sounded beautifully over the sandy streets. A flyer with photos of a missing daughter hung on a post: “Mimi please call home,” read the April message. “You are so loved.”
“We can change the world in a better way by our presence, by our example, by our positive attitude,” Alabsi said. “Every year it gets a little better and better and better.”
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Associated Press journalist Terry Chea contributed to this report.