Robert Thornton couldn’t have foreseen where his move to Arizona would ultimately take him.
Born in Northern California, Thornton moved to the sunny state of Arizona to chase his baseball dreams only to suffer a career-ending injury.
He dreamed of making it to the major leagues. However, to his surprise, he now inspires people far from the field, supplying showers, haircuts, and hygiene care for individuals experiencing homelessness in Phoenix.
After getting inspiration from a drawing he saw during a visit to his parents’ home, Thornton created Paper Clouds Apparel, a clothing company that teamed up with special needs kids by selling T-shirts with their art to raise money for special needs causes.
That objective began to shift the more he got to see Phoenix. “I think when you drive around Phoenix enough, you’ll clearly see that we have a massive amount of people experiencing homelessness,” Thornton said.
He recalled the time he saw a gentleman at an intersection wearing a black T-shirt so worn down it began turning brown as the pivotal moment he thought to himself, “You have an apparel company, you need to do something.”
At the beginning, Thornton said he only planned on giving out fresh shirts and a letter of encouragement to individuals living on the streets; however, after getting to know them on a deeper level, he decided he needed to do more.
It started with him listening to their needs and doing his best to supply them as much as possible. This grew to include socks, underwear, hygiene supplies and eventually showers.
“I ended up carrying a massive number of supplies to each person that I would meet and then, a lot of the times when I would ask what they needed they would say a shower,” he said, pushing him to create a mobile shower station.
Two years after this initial idea, his vision became a reality. A once empty cargo trailer transformed into Thornton’s mobile shower shed on Aug. 30, 2020, marking the beginning of the nonprofit Cloud Covered Streets.
As the Phoenix population experiences a rise in unhoused folks — registering close to 10,000 at the beginning of 2023 — Thornton’s organization is providing services that these individuals sometimes have no access to.
How Cloud Covered Streets works
The mission is to give individuals hope that their current situation in life doesn’t have to be there forever. “Our mission is so that everyone that comes and sees us leaves knowing someone cares about them,” Thornton said.
Combating the negativity they experience every day is also a huge part of it.
“Something common that we see with people who have been living on the streets is that people say terrible things to them all of the time and treat them really poorly and then they start to believe those things and believe they deserve that life,” he said.
The shower trailer goes to different parts of the city three days a week, typically setting up shop outside churches and offering services from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
They provide people the opportunity to have a 15-minute warm shower. A washing machine and dryer are available in the trailer for people to wash their clothes. Folks waiting their turn outside of the trailer can have a meal while they wait.
Sometimes, Thornton said, they partner with a hairstylist to provide folks with free haircuts as well.
After their shower and haircut, they are provided a clean towel, underwear, socks, shorts, shirts and sports bras for women. They also receive a hygiene bag that includes deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo and sunscreen.
A shower and haircut may not seem like much, but, according to Thornton, it can make all the difference when so many people experiencing homelessness struggle with skincare issues and low self-esteem. There’s a huge difference, he said, between the person who shows up and the person who leaves after using the services.
“Every time we are out, we get folks that are timid and apprehensive. And then at the very end, after everything, they leave a different person with hope in their eyes,” said Jay Allan, operations manager at Cloud Covered Streets, who has known Thornton for many years and has worked with the organization since February.
Since Aug. 31, 2020, Thornton and his organization have provided over 18,000 showers, 6,000 haircuts and 3,000 loads of laundry. However, he says the number he is most proud of is the 75 individuals who have come back and said they found a job after using their services.
‘We are all human beings’
Though Thornton has never experienced homelessness, he said empathy and compassion for others motivates his work.
“People experiencing homelessness are the same as you and I, we are all human beings,” says Thornton.
As he converses with more and more folks who come to the trailer, he realizes that many people were born into a life where they never really had a shot. He believes many people, despite their best efforts, are affected by life circumstances that are out of their control.
Daryl Jackson, a current employee of Cloud Covered Streets, is one of them.
Jackson met Thornton over a year ago when he started using the services offered by Cloud Covered Streets, which enabled him to get back on his feet and get a job. Even when he no longer needed to use the trailer, he and Thornton kept in touch.
Jackson was later diagnosed with colon cancer and was unable to continue working. Thornton brought him on as an employee when he was healthy enough to resume work.
“I am just one step away from being unemployed, but he has made it possible to have a roof over my head and keep up with my treatments,” Jackson said.
You don’t meet a lot of people like Thornton, he added, having now experienced what it’s like to be helped by him and work with him.
“It takes one thing to say, ‘I want to help people’ but a lot more to go out and do it, like Robert did … It’s more than being a people person it’s about loving people in general. Not everyone is naturally friendly and welcoming, but (Thornton) being that way rubs off on us and we strive to be like him,” Jackson said.
His work ethic is another quality that stands out, according to Allan.
“He’s one of the hardest working guys I know, he tirelessly makes this happen and he’s at it every day. To a degree I’m impressed he is able to keep it together and maintain his compassion even through all the obstacles he’s been through,” Allan said.
Changing the narrative
Thornton hopes to expand Cloud Covered Streets into a one-stop shop for people who need help getting off the streets.
“We are working on being able to provide more, adding people from housing services and rehab clinics so we can provide as much as we can and help as many people as we can so that if they want to take that first step into getting off of the streets, we have people that can provide those services,” he said.
Ultimately, however, one of Thornton’s hopes for the future of Cloud Covered Streets is to reshape the way people experiencing homelessness are viewed by others.
People tend to belittle the unhoused community without knowing them or understanding why they are in their current situation, according to Thornton. “People don’t understand how easy it is to become homeless and how difficult we’ve made it for people to get back on their feet.”
By sharing their names and stories, Thornton hopes to demonstrate a sense of humanity and encourage people to treat folks experiencing homelessness as equals.
“I want to change the stereotype that the masses have about what people are like that are experiencing homelessness. I would love for people to come out and volunteer with us and get to know the people we serve because once again these people are someone’s son, brother, sister or parent. These are human beings, and if we could all be a little bit nicer to each other the world would be a better place for everybody.”
