Beneath the flashy Strip and the vast suburbs of the arid Las Vegas Valley are hundreds of miles of flood-control tunnels thought to shelter about 300 lost souls.
LAS VEGAS — He lived in the shadows, if you could call it living.
For nearly four years, Glenn Harrington spent most days foraging for money, smoking marijuana and methamphetamine and searching for a place to crash: a buddy's couch, a deck chair at the Tropicana pool, behind a sign. Last year, after police busted him and a friend at the sign, a homeless guy directed them to the tunnels.
Beneath the flashy Strip and the vast suburbs of the arid Las Vegas Valley are hundreds of miles of flood-control tunnels thought to shelter about 300 lost souls.
The pitch-black passages stay dry most of the year but are a breeding ground for mosquitoes and, where shallow pools of water collect, even crayfish. They reek of sodden trash and urine.
But a person can disappear in the tunnels. And Harrington wanted to disappear.
Steve and Kathryn, who gave no last name, rest in their queen-size bed in one of the tunnel system's more elaborate encampments. They have rebuffed offers of assistance.
So, he and his friend Thomas Kruse last fall headed to a culvert that leads into the tunnels. They slumbered outside for a few nights. They plied the handful of tunnel residents with weed and, eventually, were given the OK to move in.Harrington paid two guys $20 each to lug a red leather sofa from a nearby apartment complex into an offshoot of the main corridor, nicknamed the Caesars tunnel. His new neighbors included a couple who had hauled in a studio apartment's worth of furniture.
Harrington, 44, is a slight, affable man with brown eyes, receding dark hair and a nervous laugh. The youngest in a family of eight children from Buffalo, N.Y., he joined his mom and a sister in Vegas almost three decades ago. He worked at casinos and once was an assistant food and beverage manager. He had a girlfriend and a daughter, Caylee, and liked the desert's ceaseless sunshine.
But the relationship was tempestuous. For years, Harrington had taken and quit jobs — and occasionally left town — on a whim. He often ended up on the sofa of a sister, playing the kind uncle to her children and pleading for money, then vanishing.
He says his girlfriend, also wrestling with addictions, left him and their daughter; her mother eventually took Caylee, then 3, back to Montana. He fought for custody, but lost, and returned to Vegas a woeful man. He started blowing money on drugs and slot machines and ended up on the streets.
Other tunnel residents tell similar stories, if they share them at all. A tacit code in the tunnels: Your past sins may remain unspoken.
Glenn Harrington left tunnel life with the help of the nonprofit HELP of Southern Nevada. Here, he was preparing to move to a subsidized apartment.
Harrington slept fitfully in the surroundings, wracked by fears: surging stormwater, bugs inching across his face, a fellow itinerant stealing the black duffel bag containing his only change of clothes. He soon was squabbling with neighbors.
Book opened eyes
A few years back, a book about the storm-drain society caught the attention of homeless-outreach workers at the nonprofit HELP of Southern Nevada. The group intensified its efforts in March, when former corrections officer Rich Penska and others armed with flashlights and offers of housing and medical help began heading underground several times a month.
They repeatedly visited the Caesars tunnel and chatted with Steve and Kathryn, an amiable couple who had survived there for more than a year. They showed off their living quarters: a hotel-size bed, a flowered bedspread, sheets swiped from a laundry service. Dean Koontz books. Perfume bottles. Discarded tickets for shows Kathryn dreamed of seeing.
The pleas to Steve and Kathryn pinged off the walls, but Harrington listened.
A plea for help
Duffel bag in hand, he planted himself outside the Caesars tunnel on a sweltering June day. His neighbors had been mocking him: Was he too good for the tunnels?
Days earlier, he had approached Penska. Get me out of here, Harrington had begged.
Penska, 49, and the father of two adult sons, also grew up in Buffalo. He sized up Harrington, who swore he wasn't using drugs. Penska assumed — correctly — that was bunk, but that didn't mean the plea wasn't sincere.
Harrington's friend Kruse, 52, recently had accepted help from the group after getting sloshed, falling down a hill and breaking his ankle. Another man from the Caesars tunnel also had moved out. Penska realized Harrington was struggling more than Steve and Kathryn, who made subsistence living look oddly effortless. On top of that, the couple feared that Steve would be locked up on outstanding drug charges if they accepted housing. (That's why they asked that their last names not be used.)
Penska shuttled Harrington to a recovery facility, where he bunked with seven men and received intensive counseling.
As time passed and his head cleared, he started to catalog things his old neighbors were missing. A refrigerator. Old Spice deodorant. Hot food, hot showers, hot coffee. A sense of dignity.
He ultimately moved to a two-man room, occasionally visited Kruse, who had moved into an apartment, and counted down the days until Penska and other counselors determined he, too, was ready for his own place.
Harrington occasionally talked to Caylee, now 9 and still living with her grandmother in Montana. He decorated his half of the room with pictures of her in a pink princess dress.
One October morning, Penska took Harrington to his new apartment. He tossed garbage bags full of stuff and his old duffel bag into Penska's SUV and hugged his housemates goodbye.
Harrington hadn't called any place his own in almost five years. But now a county program was helping him cover $650 a month in rent and utilities. He was eager to look for restaurant work.
He and Penska pulled up to the beige stucco complex, with huge palms and azure pools. The manager handed Harrington keys and a checklist explaining the complex's rules.
He opened the door to apartment 44. He opened the refrigerator and freezer. His surroundings were austere: dark-brown carpet, a bed with no frame, a TV with no stand, a slightly musty odor.
But Penska, who also received a key, had set the table with a pair of white plates and cups, and that small gesture seemed to make Harrington feel at home.
Penska knew many things could go wrong. Harrington could suffer tragedy and seek solace in meth; he could start feeling euphoric and crack open some beers. He could slide back onto the streets.
Kruse came by. For Penska, it was an affecting scene: The old neighbors sat on Harrington's black sofa, laughing, their faces warm with sunlight. The tunnels seemed a long time ago.
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