Below are two updates I sent out to my friends during the first two weeks in January, 2008 (6 weeks after production began):  

Greetings to all and Happy New Year!

As many of you know, I've been in Philadelphia since the middle of November (for two weeks) and returned again December 12 (leaving Jan 21) to produce & direct a documentary on homeless veterans. I bought HD equipment, lights, mics, etc and called everyone I know in the Philadelphia area. It has been an amazing journey on many levels.  More info will follow once I return to LA and get settled. I will also upload and post information about the project on my website and will create a trailer for it on You Tube.

Through the making of this documentary, a Christmas miracle occurred, I was able to re-unite a local, Lansdale, PA (suburb of Philly) resident with her homeless brother, who is a veteran. She didn't know if he was even alive. The last time she saw him was 7 years ago. My sound person and I knew only his name. To help her out, I contacted a gentleman I knew at the VA and he told me that he might be able to find him through their outreach IF he had his social security number, but his sister had no record of it.

Weeks later, we were shooting with Sister Mary Scullion's Project H.O.M.E. Outreach, where we went out in the van with Sam Santiago, who connects daily with the homeless on the streets in the city. We interviewed a veteran that morning, and he was introduced to me as 'Robert'. After the interview, I asked him to sign a release. He was spelling out his last name as I was writing it down-- when suddenly it occurred to me that HE was the homeless brother of this Lansdale woman.

We were all elated and Robert broke down in tears. (All this is on camera.) When we got back to the van we called his sister on a cell phone and shot her reaction via speaker phone. Later that night, I shot her and her sister at their home and got the full history of  their story. We were all able (including Sam with outreach) to plan out and shoot a surprise reunion at Robert's 'spot' on the street with his two sisters the following morning. Talk about emotional.

This is a subject that has been close to my heart for a very long time. It crystallized in 1999, when I began research for a screenplay on the VA's website. There, I read that 1/3 of the homeless living on the street served in the Vietnam war. That was not only shocking to me, but was unacceptable for us as a nation. And in that moment the seed was planted to do something, within my creative ability, in order to give the homeless veteran a Voice. Since I have a masters degree (MFA) in documentary filmmaking, and have made and edited other documentaries, this seemed my best vehicle.