An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny

“Why did I stop and go back to Maurice? It is easier for me to tell you why I ignored him in the first place. I ignored him, very simply, because he wasn’t in my schedule.”

Schroff reflects on the ways in which New Yorkers—and many others—become hardened to homelessness and suffering. Even the sight of a homeless, panhandling child was not enough to immediately stop her in her tracks. Schroff takes great stock in her professional identity and does not want to be inconvenienced. She explains how noticing poverty and suffering previous to meeting Maurice was an inconvenience.

“I stopped thinking about Stan. I hate to believe my compassion for him and others like him was a casual thing, but if I’m really honest with myself, I’d have to say that it was. I cared but I didn’t care enough to make a real change in my life to help. I was not some heroic do-gooder. I learned, like most New Yorkers, to tune out the nuisance.”

Prior to her relationship with Maurice, Schroff has a casual connection with another homeless person, Stan, a middle-aged man that she regularly brings a cup of coffee to. After several weeks of doing this, one day Stan isn’t on his usual grate and he never is again. For a time, Schroff wonders about him but not in a serious way, never enough to inquire about what became of him. She thinks this is a by-product of living in a busy, individualistic society and that she has been trained not to care.

“There was something else I didn’t know about Maurice as I sat across from him that day. I didn’t know that in the pocket of his sweatpants he had a knife.”

There are many things that Schroff cannot fathom about Maurice’s life. One of them is the amount of violence he must endure, both the reality of it at home and the looming threat of it on the streets. While Schroff only sees a small child, really Maurice is a world-wise resident of the streets.