The man in the riverbed

I came across this story when I first moved to Arizona to finish my degree at ASU. I would travel back and forth from Arizona to my hometown in Fullerton, California for a couple of weekends in order to work on this story. I did this on my own time as I was looking for stories in a riverbed that had a growing homeless population. At the time there were not many feature stories about the issue. As far as I know I am the only one who found Joel and told his story….

Since the Spring of 2016, Joel Sheehan has provided a free laundry service to more than 120 homeless people living in the Santa Ana Riverbed in Orange County, California.

Every Saturday Joel picks up and drops off clean laundry to the homeless living in the riverbed.

He washes, drys and folds their laundry into a laundry basket he provides using his personal laundry equipment.

Joel does not receive any compensation for his service, he does it out of love and to share the gospel through serving.