There's a Lesson in Here Somewhere
There’s a Lesson in Here Somewhere is a podcast hosted by Jamie Serino and Carlos Arcila that features exceptional people that have compelling stories to tell. Whether it’s a unique perspective, an act of kindness, an inspirational achievement, a hardship overcome, or bearing witness to a captivating event, these are stories that must be heard, and from which we can draw important lessons.
There's a Lesson in Here Somewhere
How One Man Rescued a Homeless Couple from the Streets
On this episode of There’s a Lesson in Here Somewhere, Minister Tashkovich shares the impactful and emotional story of helping a homeless couple off the streets. A former Minister for Foreign Investment of Macedonia, Minister Tashkovich reflects on Doris Buffet's philosophy of providing a "hand up, not a handout," and delves into the tedious process of navigating bureaucratic hurdles and system challenges to secure basic needs for Nikole and Joseph. This moving episode reveals the broader issues faced by the homeless, including mental health and addiction, and underscores the importance of compassion, trust, and determination in transforming lives. Minister Tashkovich’s story is an inspiring journey with twists and turns through personal and societal challenges, and is a must-listen for anyone interested in leadership and humanitarian efforts.
For more details, please check out Minister Tashkovich's great blog posts about Nicole & Joseph: Gligor Tashkovich – Together in Dignity – Medium and Nikole’s Affirmation of Life. By Gligor Tashkovich | by ATD Fourth World | Together in Dignity | Medium
You're listening to. There's a Lesson in here, Somewhere, a podcast featuring compelling conversations with exceptional people. Whether it's an inspirational achievement, a hardship overcome or simply a unique perspective, these are stories we can all learn from. Here are your hosts, Jamie Serino and Carlos Arcila.
Jamie Serino:Hello everyone and welcome. There's a lesson in here somewhere. I'm here today with Minister Tashkovich and he has quite a story to tell, so thanks for joining us. I'm going to do a very brief introduction of Minister Taskovich and I'm going to ask him to sort of complete it, because this is a full life. This is a person who has done a lot and does a lot, from being in the government in Macedonia to, as we will hear, helping a homeless couple on the street, taking them off the street, and that'll be the focus of today's story. We'll hear how he worked with two people that were homeless and helped get them off the street, and we'll hear about the hurdles that he had to overcome to do that. So, M minister, I'd like to turn it over to you to complete the background and your introduction, and then we can get into your story.
Minister Tashkovich :Great. Thank you, jamie. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to see you again and to work with you on this. I've been fortunate to live in, work in, travel to or through 110 countries and territories around the world. I've done this principally because I was part of the team from 84 to 88, which built the Internet from Western Europe Berlin Wall was still up through the North American down to Australia, new Zealand. I also do a lot of work in election monitoring. So I'm on a roster from the State Department, which accounts me, to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitors elections in sort of Eastern European, central Asian countries, caucasus countries and so on, and I've given lots of lectures around the world and I also at one point started the Western Union Money Transfer Service for Macedonia, promoted it to the diaspora and traveled all around the world for that.
Minister Tashkovich :So between all these things I've traveled a fair amount yeah um uh, I worked at one point for uh uh cloud schwab at the world economic forum in geneva, the famous davos meetings. Um I also uh with my late godfather. We built um godfather, we uh built um uh mts, mobile telesystems, the uh, now today the largest cell phone system in the former soviet union. Um, and what else can I say? I don't know. I I've just, I've worked all over the place so I can uh. People approach me and ask me for help when they run out of their own resources, and so um I'm. I help people almost every day all around the world who have some kind of a problem and they just need to think it through how to solve it.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, sounds like it. You're like a Superman of sorts.
Jamie Serino:Minister Tashkovich: Or a last resort, as the case may be! !
Jamie Serino:a last resort, as the case may be! Jamie Serino: or a last resort. Well, tell us a little bit about when you did join the government in Macedonia and some of the work that
Jamie Serino:you
Jamie Serino:did
Jamie Serino:there
Jamie Serino:.
Minister Tashkovich :It's actually a funny story. I was. I guess it was around July 4th or so, 2006. I was aware that there were parliamentary elections in Macedonia. For people who are listeners, who are not familiar with parliamentary democracies, the winner the president of the party that has the most seats in a newly elected parliament generally has the right given to him or her from the president of the country to form a government. If that particular party has less than half the number of seats, they have to cobble together a coalition government. We've seen it over the years in places like Bulgaria or Belgium or even Israel, and if they have an outright majority, then they can govern as they please. So my friend Nikola was the president of his party. They'd been in the opposition for the last four years. He had the election. I heard he won. So I gave him a quick phone call to say hey, congratulations, I know you're really busy, but 30 seconds Congratulations, you did it. I told you back in Toronto at our breakfast meeting in 1999 that you get this. And now here you are. You know, good on you. And and that was it. It was 30 second call. And then two weeks later I started getting around around from people in diaspora all around the world, who knew me because of both the Western Union work I did in promoting Macedonian connectivity there back in was it 97 or so? But also my late father had been head of the co-head of the diaspora. And so they're like Gligor, why is your, your, why are you on the front page of the newspaper today? And it says well, I don't know, I don't read the newspapers, what are you talking about? And they, there was this um picture taken of me in front of a us military tank, um, at a, a military base, us military base up near Seattle, washington, special forces training. I've gone through with the as a guest of the secretary of defense and I so he was there. And then there was a sort of screaming above the fold, page one headline that said Tashkovich imminently to be named deputy prime minister in this article. And I was a bit mystified because I'd worked in Macedonia from 92, 2002. It was now 2006. And I knew all the journalists and they knew me and they knew how to reach me and my email hadn't changed and my phone numbers hadn't changed and I knew that they'd been. Many of them had been through training sponsored by USAID to To to do proper journalism, western style, right? Which means that if you're writing a front page article about somebody, you have to at least pretend to contact them, right? You say we tried to contact Mr Tashkovich but he wasn't available or he didn't answer his phone or whatever or they did but they knew how to reach me and so it was all very strange and I kind of laughed it off and went off to a dinner with my fraternity brothers whoever, they made fun of me all night. And I kind of laughed it off and went off to a dinner with my fraternity brothers where they made fun of me all night, and this article appeared in one or more of nine newspapers which cut across different ethnicities and different parts of the political spectrum for the next three weeks. Wow. And finally, on August 6th, the morning of August 6th 2006, I get a phone call from Nicola and he says Igor, I want to talk to you about joining my government. I'm like really no blank Sherlock, I had no idea. That's funny and so. So then I said look. So then I said, look, what's the salary? And he said well, I'm sorry, we can't pay a Western salary. You have to take what all the ministers make, and that would be 800 euros a month. I was like that won't pay the rent for one week in New York City. You have to be better than that, and so we cut a deal where he would cover the fixed costs of my not being here. Uh, and and off I went. Uh, oh, except I'm leaving out one, one important story, because some of your readers who are um, involved internationally will wonder about this. The first call after I hung up was not to my mother to say that I've gotten this, uh, fantastic job, uh, but but um, to the Department, to the legal office, because I knew I needed their blessing as a US citizen to take a job running a foreign country. And in fact I was number six in protocol, after the prime minister. There were four deputy prime ministers, each representing a different member of the coalition government, and I was first among equals, among all the other ministers. Wow, and what happened? Oh, and I had this phone call with this guy, this lawyer, and I explained to him. I said look, you know you really should approve this because I've done so much for the country and you know I'll do a great job. I'm really excited about this. And he said, oh, in the most condescending voice possible. He said oh, Mr Tashkovich, I'm looking at a piece of paper on my desk and this piece of paper is entitled Potentially Expatriating Acts and there are 30 ways you can lose your citizenship. Oh, my god, and number one on that list is taking an oath of office to a foreign country. Wow. And I said yes, sir, I know that. That's why I'm calling you. And I said, if you can see, on the wall behind me you can't in this video, but if you could. I was talking to the lawyer. I said you'll see a plaque with an invitation to the opening of the ribbon cutting ceremony of the new embassy and a piece of the red ribbon, Because I was the one who cut the ribbon to open up the embassy. I said that's how connected. I was embassy.
Minister Tashkovich :I said that's how connected I was. And for the first couple of years no report left that embassy without my final review, because the people who came there and knew nothing about the country were definitely afraid of getting it wrong and trusted my advice as an American citizen. So you know, and in all these reports, if you go back and look at them, from the 90s, they say economic development will bring political stability. So here I am in a position that they figured out they needed, which I can perform and you should approve it, yeah. And then he goes to me oh, mr Tosca, first you must commit the potentially expatriating act and then you will decide, wow. And I was like that sounds like russian roulette. I don't like those odds very much. Thank you, goodbye, click.
Minister Tashkovich :And I remember calling around. I only had two weeks. I remember calling around trying to figure out how I was going to get this sorted out. So I didn't like lose my citizenship and I got nowhere. I called, uh, schumer's office in the senate. No dice, they didn't even call back I. I called my house, my representative in the house, carolyn Maloney, but she was the co-chair of the Greek caucus at a time when Macedon and Greece weren't talking to each other so there was no chance of getting their help at all. And I called her and no one could help me. I was completely SOL.
Minister Tashkovich :And finally, the day before, maybe two days before I had to go, I remember that Google had just been invented, like just gone public, right, and there was quite a few search engines at the time, you know things like Netscape and Capricorn and other things. But I was like, all right, let's try this. So I typed loss of nationality, supreme Court, and clicked go search whatever. Google and son of a gun. There were 10 hits and the first hit was a supreme court case from 1988 and the uh, the operative part of the case said, and I quote absent a declaration of intent by the person committing the expatriating act comma the State Department may decide unquote.
Minister Tashkovich :So what that meant was, if I declared that I was doing this and did not intend to lose my citizenship, they could not decide otherwise. And so I wrote this airtight paragraph. I had looked over by a white case immigration lawyer, they changed one or two words and I flew to Macedonia. I went to the US embassy, I swore my statement in front of the consular officer, sat through two days of confirmation hearings came back, swore some more documents. A couple of weeks later they sent me letters saying as long as I maintained a residence in America, I paid my taxes, voted you know normal kind of things that prove that you're functionally an American. They would approve this.
Jamie Serino:And so that's what I did, and that was that. So either you're going to tell me how to like pay all your unpaid parking tickets, or something like that, you know. I didn't have a car, so that was easy. I thought you were going to tell me how to like pay all your unpaid parking tickets, or something like that.
Jamie Serino:I didn't have a car, so that was easy. It's so nice not having a car. When I was living in an urban environment I didn't own a car, so I could dive into this. And there's so much and I heard some of the story there of the amazing work that you did for that country and, like you said, economic stability brings political stability. So your story there is a great one, but we're going to talk about something else from your life that you did, so we'll quickly kind of just transition into that.
Jamie Serino:So at some point so when you and I reconnected, you began to tell me about what the work you were doing with a couple that was homeless and living on the street and not sure where to begin. I'll just maybe throw it over to you to you know, maybe how did you first run into them and what got that conversation going and what was going through your head? Uh, cause, you know we all pass homeless people and you engaged and you know, and you have quite a story to tell. So, um, I'll turn it over to you to see, like where, where's great.
Minister Tashkovich :The beginning was um in 20.
Minister Tashkovich :This was a sunny day in early 2014 maybe late 20s, no, I think, probably early 2014 gets a little fuzzy after a decade, um, and I came around the corner dressed in sort of a suit and bow tie, wearing a heavy blue overcoat. So maybe it's been on the chilly side, maybe it was in the forties or fifties or something, but it was sunny. I remember that and I was. I'd been to a cozy. That's a franchise, a sort of fresh bread salad soup place here in Northeast. I'm not sure if it's nationwide or not. I'm basically carrying my lunch.
Minister Tashkovich :It was midday and I come around the corner of East 57th Street, madison. My door to my office building was just 50, 100 feet down the street. It wasn't very far at all. On that corner, the southeast corner of East 57th and madison, there was a street homeless couple, and by street homeless, just to find that properly, it's people who don't have a shelter to go to at night. Many people who beg on the streets have a place to go to an evening in the bed to sleep on of whatever, in whatever condition it might be, but they have one nonetheless.
Minister Tashkovich :Nicole and Joseph lived on the streets, they slept on the streets, they had no place to go. And you might ask why? And the answer is because, although they had a domestic registered partnership, when you live on the streets, um, it is literally impossible to keep any papers you might have dry, let alone intact. Um, and even even I'd given them some uh kind of gallon size, hefty ziploc, ziploc bags or something like that, and that lasted, made them last a little bit longer, but not much longer yeah, maybe so, so you, so you regularly saw this couple yes, I did, okay, um, and I didn't engage with them, although I guess at one point my maybe back like in 2013 or something oops, we lost you or something, oops, we lost you.
Minister Tashkovich :There you are Back in, say, 2013,. I was crossing the street and I looked down on the top of Nicole, who was begging for money, and I saw that she had a terrible skin rash on the back of her neck and I knew all she needed was some bacitracin to clear it up in a week or something, but she needed to get it. And I knew all she needed was some vasotrace and it would clear it up in a week or something, but she needed to get it and I knew she couldn't afford it. So I remember buying it for her and giving it to her and explaining to her what it was for and how to use it and how it would help this rash she had in her neck. It was pretty gruesome, and so maybe I'd done one or two things like that earlier on, but we didn't have any sort of ongoing hi, how are you have a great day, kind of right, right, uh. So I come around the corner.
Minister Tashkovich :It's now, you know, maybe three, six months later, after the faster tracing thing. And um, uh, it's busy, it's, you know, coming up on high noon, so a lot of people are crossing madison and 57th street. It's a double length street. It's, uh, you know, a lot of people, probably even tens of thousands of people, cross there. Yeah, over the course of the day, at least before the pandemic, um and uh, nicole and joseph were sitting on overturned white corrugated usps mail sorting boxes just off off the intersection. Uh, joseph was listening to a radio. Uh, nicole could never sit long for long because of a back injury, so she'd always be jumping up and walking around and stuff like that. But as I came around the corner, she got up off the box and I should actually explain, describe her to your listeners. Um, about 5'1", 5'2" maybe.
Jamie Serino:About what age would you say?
Minister Tashkovich :Oh, I can tell you 37.
Jamie Serino:Okay.
Minister Tashkovich :Reddish hair curly and yeah. So she came up to me, stopped me in the middle of the street, mid-stride, and took her finger and right up to sort of my mid-chest, without actually touching me. And she looked up at me and she said apropos of nothing, I don't want your money. She said, I want your brains. And I was a bit taken aback because I mean, it's a clever pickup line, but I didn't, I didn't see that in the future. Uh and I, I didn't really know how to respond.
Minister Tashkovich :So there was a pause and then she started telling me about all the indignities she and Joseph had suffered over the many years she'd been. They'd been on the street, um, and while she's telling me these stories, for example, what was one of them? She would hope that they would earn $2.34 from begging on the street in order to go to the Duane Reade, which is always a very overpriced pharmacy here in Manhattan, and buy a container of Kraft macaroni and cheese. Then go to Starbucks, or they could get free hot water and make mac and cheese and eat that. Or how they would go to the dollar store and get these alcohol wipes and again go back to Starbucks and clean up in the Starbucks bathroom, using alcohol wipes every day and stuff like this. So um she, uh. And so while she's telling me these stories, I could hear the voice of doris buffett in my mind's eye. Or?
Intro:mind's ear, I guess in my mind's ear uh, doris buffett, who passed away in 2020.
Minister Tashkovich :Uh, she was the older sister of warrenett and I met her in 2004, quite by accident story I'll save for another time and she I helped give away her money between 2004 and 2008. And she always reminded me the end of every phone conversation. She used to call me by my nickname, which is letter g in double quotes. She'd be like now g. She says don't forget, I give hand ups, not handouts. Right, she's very important to her, um. And so here was this woman in front of me, as I later learned, age 37, literally asking for a handout, specifically, not a handout, and I didn't really see how I could turn her down.
Jamie Serino:And so this was months after you gave her the bacitracin. Yes, so you gave her the bacitracin and she didn't question that. You just said here you better put this on your neck Right, and you didn't have any exchange. No. And months later she came up this on your neck Right and you didn't have any exchange no. Once later she came up to me.
Minister Tashkovich :She remembered me.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, okay.
Minister Tashkovich :Yeah, and probably saw me coming to and fro. I mean, I wasn't in the office every day, I was in the office maybe one to three times a week, but they were always there. They lived there, yeah, on the corner. So live there, yeah, on the corner. So yeah, uh, so uh.
Minister Tashkovich :I took nicole off to one side because there were lots of people trying. We were like literally right in the middle of sidewalk trying to kind of zip by. And I try to think quickly what could I ask someone with an eighth grade education? How could nicole have skin in the game if I were to get her off the street, if I were to help her with her request? Right, cause it's got a partnership, yep, and I, I, I, I thought quickly and I came up with two ideas the and.
Minister Tashkovich :So I said Nicole, if you do these two things, I'll get anything you need. She said, sure, what's that? And I said number one you must never lie to me. And that was important because I was aware that people who were street homeless lied with some regularity. So I said if I ever catch you in the lie, we're done. You must never lie to me, there are no second chances. She said I can do that. And the second thing I said was you must promptly return all text messages or phone calls when I reach out to you. And I thought for someone with an education that was easier both things easy to comprehend reach out to you and I thought for someone with education that was these are both things easy to comprehend and easy to do, okay, and so you and I talked a little bit about this and I immediately asked okay, so she had a cell phone.
Minister Tashkovich :Yes, if they look closely at all the additions on their cell phone bill, I think it's roughly a dollar charge. It goes to some kind of universal service fund and with that money you're basically subsidizing smartphone usage by people who are homeless, among probably other things.
Jamie Serino:But for sure that. So a homeless person can go. Where would they go? They can get a free cell phone, Correct?
Minister Tashkovich :So here in Manhattan we have something called the Human Resources Administration and they have HRA job centers and they're all across the five boroughs and you go to any one of those um usually closest to where you live um, and outside of that there's some guy with a fold-up table giving out cell phones against your hra.
Jamie Serino:Picture id okay, all right, all right, so so after you had that sort of all right.
Minister Tashkovich :Here are your two conditions. How did she respond? She's in full agreement. But subsequently, perhaps later that afternoon, otherwise it was next day I kind of kneeled down to speak to joseph and he said to me, mr g, he said you're wasting your time. I am 28 years old. My mother died when she was 32. I have no intention of outliving my mother. And I said come on, jose, don't talk like that. You've got your whole life ahead of you. We'll get you back, you know, back into being a productive member of society and you'll go on to do great things. And I tried to encourage him and he was optimistic by and large for the most part, but he was held back by his um development issues, and by that I mean well, I think what I have to explain here is that, um, I didn't realize this at the time, but early on I escorted them to a meeting with a psychologist that was assigned to them by HRA.
Minister Tashkovich :They had to go and I was present during the meeting when the psychologist was talking about various and sundry items, nothing particularly. I didn't pick up anything in particular. But when it was over they waited outside and I went in to see the psychologist and she said I have been doing this work or you know, 20 or 30 years. She said I have never seen a couple more codependent than the colon Josephph, and I didn't even know what that meant. Uh, so much and I didn't know what she was looking for. I didn't understand it in the context, but fast forward, uh, sometime later perhaps it was two years later or so um, let me think of.
Minister Tashkovich :The story was j and Nicole were coming back to the shelter I'd arranged for them in the Bronx, um, and they were attacked. It was it's a dangerous part, bronx is very dangerous Um, and there was a big slice on Joseph's arm, the knife. Yeah, nicole was very, very good at first aid. She always had a bottle of hydrogen peroxide not far away from her and she got Joseph all bandaged up and they went to sleep back in the shelter room and at 4.30 in the morning some police officers with their badges obscured knocked on the door and arrested Nicole for a subway jumping infraction from six years earlier, because what happened was as a result of getting them quote into the system and getting them a shelter room. Eventually all the computers started whirring and comparing notes and stuff like that and they realized there was an outstanding warrant for her arrest over a $2 subway.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, they were getting into the system Right. So to rewind a little bit now you're sort of making this agreement with nicole and now in your mind are you also saying, all right, well, I'm also kind of making this agreement with joseph, right, are you right? Right, so, and then she agrees. So then you're like all right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna help these two people. Um, I don't know if you had the complete plan in your mind yet or you were just oh no, no idea.
Minister Tashkovich :Yeah, I mean I said step by step. I said I'm fortunate enough to be well educated with two degrees. I said the system can't be that difficult to figure out. I get that you might not be able to figure out new education, but with two college degrees I would certainly hope I can figure out and guide them right, so?
Jamie Serino:so what was your first step then?
Minister Tashkovich :oh, getting them shelter, getting them off the streets, right. And they said they'd been to the intake center. It's over on uh east, roughly east 30th street and first avenue, maybe the east of first avenue, uh, just north of Bellevue. They'd been turned away eight or nine times because they couldn't prove that they had a registered domestic partnership. It wasn't enough to have an affidavit, it wasn't enough to make a sworn statement, it wasn't enough to have an affidavit, it wasn't enough to make a sworn statement, it wasn't enough to you know she didn't hit her ring or anything. I mean, they just they, according to the rules, unless you can prove that you have you either married, you have a registered domestic partnership, you were separated and put into you know male shelter and female shelter and they wanted to be together.
Jamie Serino:So later, as I say, and they wanted to be together. So, later, as I say, I'm sorry, but their will to want to be together was greater than their need for shelter. Because they could, because they were codependent yeah, because they were so not because I understood what that meant until much later.
Minister Tashkovich :I was yeah, yeah no, that that's.
Jamie Serino:That's really, really powerful. Um so and this also goes back to the paperwork thing you were talking about so if they would have just had paperwork about being married or a domestic partnership, then it would have been fine. It would have been easy, right?
Minister Tashkovich :So they didn't have that. Right, I took Nicole and we took Subway downtown and went to City Hall and found the place that issues the certificates and asked for theirs and they printed it right up on the printer. Took, literally, it was very fast, yeah. Then they said that will be $15.
Minister Tashkovich :And she took cash out of her pocket oh, I'm sorry, we don't accept cash. And I said you know well, she's homeless, she lives on the street, she needs us to get into homeless shelter. How do you do this? You don't accept cash. Oh, we take credit cards. I'm like, well, yeah, but the people who need this don't have credit cards. Yeah, right, and if they did, there's no money left in their account years later, right, I mean, so it's not realistic, yeah. And so he directed me to some underground office in some other building a few blocks away that would take her cash, give her a chip, show she paid it, bring the chip back to him and then she'd get the certificate. But I mean, it requires patience and diligence and follow through and all that. And when you, when you're, when your only concern is what I'm going to eat in several hours, that's a. That's a big bridge to cross.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, I know that's. The thing is that it does sound simple, but yet there are these hurdles, right?
Jamie Serino:but you even call them microaggressions, if you wanted to yeah, yeah, and it's almost like joseph heller kind of this labyrinth making you go through this uh, byzantine kind of kind of structure. Um, but to for us know, I appreciate that you're saying those things like for us it's like, oh, just go down to city hall, just do this, just do that. It's tough to put yourself in the mindset of someone who is homeless and maybe someone who maybe, if there is a disability there or something, and so okay, so you accomplished this for them. They had their certificate, so then you were able to bring it back and show them this is a married couple.
Minister Tashkovich :Right, and so that maybe that night or the next day I made a private trip over to the intake center and I said look, here's the situation. You've turned them away eight or nine times. You can't do it this time. We have all the documents you need. We went through the list. I was like, just do it quickly. Please show them the system actually works when they follow the rules right. And the next morning I said okay, guys, next morning, this is it we're gonna do.
Minister Tashkovich :It also was the morning uh, the pope visited manhattan and he was taking his Popemobile up to Madison Avenue, right by where they were to go into Central Park, and the police, which doesn't have the ability to move people with squatters' rights even on city streets, asked them.
Minister Tashkovich :Very nicely, they moved to different corners so that they could provide security to the Popemobile and they went down to 56th Street, just a block or so away, and they had been spending the last couple of days kind of sorting through their belongings and figuring out what to take, what not to take and what to throw away, which is most of it. And we were ready to go and just at that juncture I saw a brand new London style yellow cab and I hailed, the cab Pulls up in front of me and Nicole and Joseph opened up the cab doors and sit inside. The driver is fit to be tied, fit to be tied. And I said to him don't worry, number one, I'm paying. Number two, they're clean. And number three, three, I'm going with them. And so we drove across town to the intake center and went through security and and and got them uh, actually, what they had once their documents were vetted, they had to go to jamaica, queens, where there was a three-week wait period until they got into a shelter room for couples, basically.
Jamie Serino:Okay, and where was the shelter located?
Minister Tashkovich :The shelter room was in the mid-Bronx around West 181st Street or so, on Broadway Again a dangerous part of the Bronx.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, okay, so they're waiting out there three weeks. They're on the street and you're interacting. No, no.
Minister Tashkovich :They were in a temporary shelter room out in. Jamaica oh okay, okay, gotcha In the back of the street, but then they went up. They were assigned up to uh, the monks okay.
Jamie Serino:So I mean, at that point, you know that's sort of like it could be the end of the story, right, like you got this homeless couple off the street, right, right, and it's, uh, I guess it's like, well, you know, could that if there were more people like you, then maybe there'd be less homeless people, right, that if everyone was assigned a homeless person or homeless, you know like, go ahead and do these steps and get them off the street, right? So you know that's it's amazing that you did all that and went through all that uh to to get them off the street, but then the story continues. It does.
Minister Tashkovich :So listeners have to keep in mind a couple of things. Number one, the codependency. Number two, they were both on methadone, which meant that seven o'clock every morning they had to get methadone, yeah. And number three, their education levels roughly eight, maybe early ninth grade, um and uh, the fact that now they were in the system a lot of things in their past were creeping up on them and you had somebody to defend them. Um.
Minister Tashkovich :And there's just general bureaucratic let's call it malfeasance, where benefits get cut or dropped for no apparent reason assistance in your debit card, you know, on a fixed day every month and plan on having that money to live on and to eat from, and stuff like that. It's a real problem. And so a number of times I think around six or seven times or so I had to go to the New York state office of what's called fair, fair assistance, fair hearings, something like that. It's a website and it basically dials back and freezes the situation of the recipient to where they were and it gives a direct order to the agency that cut their benefits or whatever, and says no, it goes back to where it is effective immediately and we're going to have a hearing and talk about this. Hearings were always in Brooklyn, so I made, whatever it was, six, seven trips to Brooklyn where I defended them in a hearing.
Jamie Serino:Okay, as like a character witness kind of thing as a advocate okay, gotcha I'm not a lawyer now so just to just to go back, you know, to sort of address, like to not gloss over this so these two people that had substance abuse issues then, yeah, and so they were. They were on methadone as a result of that and um, and so they were trying to kick, kick their habit, right um?
Minister Tashkovich :and they had, I mean methadone was keeping them sedated there. There wasn't any interest in doing drugs right? They, okay, started at something like 260 units a day. They were down to 60 when I met them, so they made significant progress. But the doctors at the clinic were afraid to lower any more until they had the stable housing situation. So that was really important to give them that so they could lower it more.
Jamie Serino:Yep, and so do you know? Actually, we should have probably explored this right in the very beginning. Do you know why they were homeless to begin with?
Minister Tashkovich :Yes, in Nicole's case, from the time she was like what year was that? Early teenage years, let's say 13 or 14, an older sister gave her drugs to try.
Minister Tashkovich :She got hooked and she did have some mental health issues as well. Um, and her mother tried to commit her a number of times. Uh, didn't succeed. And then there was uh, or maybe she was there for a month or two at a time or whatever, but came home. And then there was an issue with her father dying from potassium overdose. And there was the issue of joseph himself, who the family did not approve. I thought he was a bad influence and basically said it's either the family or joseph, take your pick, wow. And so, um, she chose joseph, um, but she would go to the park, cross the street from her family home and watch her kids going to and from the school bus every day. Oh, so she had children At that point she had two. By the time I met her, she had four.
Jamie Serino:Oh, wow, okay, so she was a mother. Wow, okay, yeah. So so this is the thing with. You know, the issue of homelessness is that it's never simple, right? There's no, never. You, you have all these factors at play. Um, you know, her childhood experiences drug use. Then the codependence with joseph um, okay, yeah, so thanks for filling in that those details. Um, okay, and they were trying together to stop using drugs. They were on methadone and at the point at which you began helping them, they were sort of maybe you could say on this upswing of like, we want to improve our lives well, she more than he, but he, he lived with a perpetual fear that she would get better and he wouldn't, and she would leave him behind.
Minister Tashkovich :Yeah, there was, there. Was that, that was there. Was that interaction taking place? To the point where, when she was sleeping, he would take her cell phone and send me text messages oh wow, right Trying to convince me that they were good. Now they didn't need my help anymore. Thank you very much.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, wow.
Minister Tashkovich :Right, wow. And so it was tied in with a story I was telling before. So why don't I just come back to that? Yeah, so Joseph had his hand sliced, nicole patched up, they went to bed early in the morning the police came to arrest Nicole, but there was a scuffle again because they were codependent and so Joseph fought with the police. His badges were covered so he didn't know who was there All over this $2 fine at 4.30 in the morning. It was just obscenely ridiculous to spend that kind of manpower.
Minister Tashkovich :And that evening also, joseph had messaged me from Nicole's phone saying exactly what I just said before that hey, they have a place now, they're happy, they're good. Thank you very much, have a good life. And it felt very dismissive and I was a bit surprised. But I was like OK, if that's what you want, but I'm disappointed, there's so much more we could do. Yeah, and so then around nine thirty in the morning I get a call from Joseph. He tells me what happened the night before, absent the fact that he used his wife's cell phone, and he's very worried about her because of course she didn't get her methadone and needed to get that, and she's afraid that she'll be in some holding cell don't have her methadone, which it's pretty important to have on a regular basis. And so at one point in the call he says my arm is bleeding. I'm like why is your arm being joseph? He says well, because when they fought with the police officers, advantage came off and it damaged the wound and it's been bleeding. They said for god's sakes, go go run it under some cold water. You have a sink, you know? 10 feet ahead of you, he said. He said no, he said that's nicole's job. Oh, my god, right.
Minister Tashkovich :And that was when I understood what codependency was. Sure, yeah, um. But then I spent six hours, about like six hours it was four, it was many hours certainly trying to find the call, calling every police station, every holding facility, every courtroom to make sure that they got her her methadone, because I was afraid that she would go into withdrawal if she didn't have the methadone. Um, and along the way I found a, a, one of the legal aid services it was called legal aid even, I don't remember exactly how in one of the courtrooms that confirmed that her case was in their court, and explain everything to the person. They said no problem, we'll get her off, just the process. And so they enter the courtroom with Nicole and the officer. And the officer says you know, we picked up Nicole for jumping a turnstile six years ago and not completing her mandatory neighborhood.
Minister Tashkovich :Yeah, community service for jumping Community service Exactly right. Service for thank you community service exactly right, um. And the lawyer you know made the right statement and got her off and nicole was very grateful. She said oh my god, who are you? How did you do this? Thank you so much. And and the lawyer said don't thank me, thank mr g. That's great, he wouldn't have been there otherwise. So then she thought I was like on a different plane sure.
Jamie Serino:Well, it's also just amazing when, like you, hear about these types of stories, you know, because I think people are very like sort of flipping and they don't, they don't a lot, you know, there's some people that don't quite understand, you know they might judge the person for that one specific thing or that one specific moment. But, like, take like someone like you, like you jumped the turnstile all the time, right, never. But let's just say you did, and then you got caught for it, right, then your situation would not have ended up like her situation, right. So there's like a this fragility to their lives because one little thing falls out of place and then the whole thing collapses, you know, and and it all snowballs.
Jamie Serino:And so I think you know when, when people you know kind of roll their eyes or dismiss, you know a person like her and it's oh well, of course, or blah, blah, blah. You know it all, it all kind of has some background to it. You know a person like her in this oh well, of course, blah, blah, blah. You know it all. It all kind of has some background to it, you know, and you know. So it's amazing, you were there and you're always there trying to, trying to keep them on track.
Minister Tashkovich :Right, because the social worker in the facility met with them, I think weekly for half an hour, an hour just going over their case and what they had to accomplish that week or goals they had to accomplish over the two years. They were allowed to stay there, right. And so I worked with them to do that, because the social worker had the entire building and he had no time or interest in spending a minute more than his 40 hours a week, right. So we tried to work on on these things, but among them we were getting Nicole dentures. She had no teeth. They were kicked out of her mouth overnight when she was sleeping on the subway one winter and a door opened up and fell in a crack, kind of thing. Oh my God. And for security, because she was, she was so short. You know those old-fashioned razor blades her father might have used. Yeah, she kept an old-fashioned razor blade inside her gums she could take out and cut somebody with if they ever tried to. Yeah, um, but how she kept that blade in there and how she ate, food and drank, and all that without swallowing it. I mean it was just incredible.
Minister Tashkovich :When I saw her First of all, I didn't realize she didn't have teeth for the longest time. Then I felt guilty for not having noticed, but she'd done such a great job at covering it up and, plus, she was shorter than me, so the angle wasn't right. You know that I I was really stunned and then, once I realized what the issue was, I tried to find a place to get free dentures. It's very hard now. Granted, I was traveling, I had other work and things and I wasn't there all the time, whatever, but it took me a year to find a place to give her free dentures. Wow, because all the state and federal programs that were involved with this were either fully booked or they had a three-year backlog, or whatever it was. But I couldn't get any love from various state and federal programs. Finally, I found the adult dental unit at Bellevue Hospital, which would accept the Medicaid that she had to get her free dentures. Wow, and she did do that, except the Medicaid that she had to get her free dentures.
Minister Tashkovich :Wow, and she did do that.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, well, that that must've been a game changer for her. It was. She could smile yeah, Holy, amazing, right, so so then. So Joseph and Nicole were reunited after the court situation. And then what happened?
Minister Tashkovich :wow. Well, um, I was blogging about this on facebook and if anybody any of your um listeners want to try to locate it, it's hashtag n-i-k-o-l-e. It's a fairly unique spelling for nicole on facebook. There are one or two other hits, but most of them, uh, revolve around my stories of nicole and what we did, where we went shopping, where we did things, and so on, um, but among them, uh, um, what I want to say is that, because of this blogging which they authorized me to do because they wanted people to understand how difficult it was and they were hoping to be an example of change A lot of people sent money and I guess it was because they didn't trust people that they met in the street to give them money.
Minister Tashkovich :But they trusted me. They knew I wasn't going to spend it on vodka and so they sent me money. I received thousands of dollars for their credit, unsolicited. I didn't ask for anything. People read the stories and said, my gosh, I can actually contribute to someone getting better and I know that people will spend the money wisely. That's great, it was really great it was. It was brought to your smiles. It was so incredible because it was all unsolicited, wow, and it came from many people 30, 30, 40 people, something like that. Uh, and so when they got the shelter room, I was able to take them to a place on 125th street, um, and get them, you know, pillows and pillowcases and sheets and blankets and you know all fresh stuff um, some clothing, whatever. Now, they were very resourceful getting clothing to fit them. Now, they were very resourceful getting clothing to fit them, but they were worthy of a few new pieces too.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, that's great. Okay, so people can read the blog on your Facebook page. Is that what you said?
Minister Tashkovich :Yeah, if you're on Facebook, hashtag Nicole the other places there's a mediumcom account for kind of long. All together, indignity.
Jamie Serino:Fourth world movement atd fourth world um, and then they could search there as well okay, yeah, and then what I what I could do is I could put that stuff into the show notes for this um yeah, great, I think I sent it to you earlier in our chat.
Jamie Serino:Yeah yeah, so we can link to that. Um, so through all this, you know, do you have any thoughts like? I also want to really give you credit because you've in your life solved big, huge problems, like big picture problems, right. Like being a minister in the government, you're solving problems for millions of people, but then you dove down deep to solve a problem for two people, right, and that's that's really amazing that you know just sort of the difference between that and you know the the way your mind works. I think that's really amazing that you know just sort of the difference between that and you know the way your mind works. I think that's I give you a lot of credit for that.
Minister Tashkovich :Could I segue there for a moment? Of course, yeah, I want to tell you, tell one story about the time in Macedonia, which is sort of good example of what you were describing. So I was in my actually, it was actually before I was even confirmed, in the week before I was confirmed as minister by parliament. Um, this man knocks on my door. It was a temporary office I was using in the party headquarters. I was not a member of the party, I was a technocrat.
Minister Tashkovich :I thought that was very important in order to get the work done that I needed to do, to have both sides supporting me, not not just one side, right, because it was very divisive, like we see today in our country, here in America. And he says to me my name is Professor Vlach Ocengovsky, I am going to become the head of LM, which is a state-owned electrical generation facility, mostly with coal but also some waterworks and stuff. And he said you have a big problem, mr Minister. I said what's that? He said well, you can't attract new businesses to Macedonia except shop here, assembly lines, factories, whatever, if we can't keep the lights on.
Minister Tashkovich :And I was like you're right. And so that began a three hour unscheduled meeting for how we were going to solve this problem, which I very much took, took in mind. And shortly after I started, maybe, maybe, see, see, it was August, september, october, september, maybe October, actually October of 2006, a man comes to my office. He was a senior advisor to the chairman of an engineering firm, had maybe 30-some-od odd facilities across the country that did different types of engineering, but this one in kitchevo, in the mountains in western macedonia, was specifically tasked with making the high voltage line, uh bars, the uh the stands that the wires ran on.
Minister Tashkovich :And he said Mr Minister, you're the only person who can help us. And I said that's quite an opening sentence. Why am I the only person who can help you? He said because you're a technocrat and everyone else takes sides. I said okay, tell me more. He said well, we have this, this factory. We have to produce these high voltage poles, right? Uh, because we need electricity, as you know, in this country very badly. It was still on, it wasn't? We weren't having outages, but that was going to happen in 2008. It's now, you know, a year and a half away, but it's definitely going to happen as electricity use continues to increase. And he said ever since the election, the people from the two political parties are fighting on work time in the factory. Fistfights, ambulances oh wow, I mean hospital visits. They're not getting any work done. It's really a problem. I need you to come and talk to me. So Kichevo is like an hour, maybe hour and a half away from Skopje. Ministers are usually very busy.
Minister Tashkovich :They don't travel that far away from the capital, but I agreed to go and we were one morning and we were traveling up the mountain road and it's very steep. You're going over these mountain roads and we got to the factory and there was a tv camera that came with us as well and when the announcement was made that the minister was here to visit the factory, everything calmed down very quickly and we spent a few hours talking both sides back and forth.
Minister Tashkovich :It was all on on camera and I said, and I was mediating, right. And I said, look guys, here's, here's the. They were all guys, right. I said here's really the. The issue.
Minister Tashkovich :He said you go home at night, right, you turn on light switch, your wife's made you dinner. Maybe turn on tv, see the news, maybe turn on the radio, but you turn it on, you expect the lights to go on, you expect the power to turn on, you expect to be able to see the image on your screen. This is, you know, before most people had cell phones and you don't think twice about how that happens. Yeah, but you have a mission critical task here, because this country is going to be short of electricity within a year and every high voltage pole that you make is critical to solving that problem and anticipating it. And so I'd really appreciate it, if you're looking for jobs for your relatives, for your friends, your neighbors, if you kind of put this to one side and get the job done, because without it we're going to be in a much worse position than we are today.
Jamie Serino:Yeah.
Minister Tashkovich :And that was really compelling to them and I'm proud to say they never fought again and they got the job done. That's great Building this high voltage power line in Bulgaria.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, that's great and that's you know that uniting them under that mission, you know, got them to put the differences aside. Also, reminding people how important their jobs are, you know, is key, I think, to leadership, so that's that's great story. So, knowing you, know your experience, having had this experience, like what, what are your thoughts just on homelessness and the problem of homelessness? Obviously a massive question, but you have such a unique perspective on it, having gone through what you went through, and and and helped the way you did, you know what, what's the way you did, you know what, what's, what's your perspective on it and as much as you know, you could sort of summarize that you know and it's not to point fingers or blame anyone or whatever but, like you know what, what are your thoughts on the issue of homelessness in America?
Minister Tashkovich :Well, I mean, it's, it's's, it's an extremely difficult task, right? Because I now understand that the secret to solving this problem is providing housing in some way shape or form. And once you have a stable place you can live, then everything else stems from there. And after joseph died, I was able to get nicole into a shared apartment uh, two bedroom, one bath with another woman who had mental illness issues, but she was high, functioning as well. And uh, and from there, nicole found herself a part-time job and I helped her get a volunteer position and she was actually literally making money that she'd have to pay taxes on.
Jamie Serino:Wow, that was a huge success in my book yeah, well, so we we didn't talk about, so joseph passed away, um, and so of course then in some ways then that codependency, uh, so nicole was able to kind of move on from that not really.
Minister Tashkovich :It was very very very very tough for her I could imagine um, she spoke often of taking her own life, spoke often of taking her on life. But we would meet Sunday afternoons for two or three hours. I helped her discover green tea and she loved the feeling he had in her brain and really woke her up and got her to engage and stuff like that. And so we would speak and talk about her the week past and what she needed to do and how to get things done, where to go and how to ask for things and stuff like that. So I was, I was really providing, you know, extensive counseling services face to face on sunday, usually saturday or sunday afternoons, and then we were in touch, uh, at least once a day, if not twice a day or more, by text or phone call.
Minister Tashkovich :And in fact, after Joseph died, she called me early every morning when she went to get her medicine. I'm up early, so it was around 7 am or so and she'd say hi, mr G, it's Nicole, have a great day. It was a very fast call and it used to annoy me at first because I didn't know why she was doing it, but much later understood it was a um, an uh, an acclamation, a, a affirmation, an affirmation of life call, thank you, an affirmation of life call saying I'm alive today it's going to be a great day yeah, due to have one too, um, so she took every day very seriously yeah.
Jamie Serino:Well, she probably also just in a way felt it was like a gift, um, so how did joseph die?
Minister Tashkovich :so, um, as years went on, joseph was, you know, became 31, uh, and remembering what he had said when I first met him, that his mother died at the age of 32 and he wouldn't, didn't want to live past that, uh, his birthday was march 2nd and march 3rd, uh, and he, um, uh, in that, let's say five months beforehand, he deliberately went downhill. He would sell money off the monthly credit not credit card, but the monthly credits that he got from the government to people who would sell him drugs. So he'd take the drugs in exchange for buying food for them. Right, he'd beg, borrow, steal other money to take more drugs. Oh, but I forgot to mention so. Actually he was, but as part of his grand plan he got himself kicked off the methadone program. And I remember going 8.30 am, 8 am one morning we went down to an appeal program down by Beth Israel Hospital, down near Union Square, by Beth Israel Hospital, down near Union Square, and I remember the lady who was the manager. She was in charge. She was no one's fool, really tough, but she was also very heavy. And at one point Joseph said to her you know, you're really fat, have you thought about losing weight? And I'm like Joseph, that's really self-defeating. You might want to apologize, because I was in the room. I was mortified, self-defeating, right. And so, of course, he did not win his appeal. And they have a protocol for scaling people off methadone very quickly. I don't think it's that healthy, but for whatever reason, it's approved.
Minister Tashkovich :Between the lack of the methadone and his desire to kill himself, by the time he was 32, he started taking drugs and drinking alcohol without limit Vodka, cheap vodka, usually. And the situation got worse and worse, so much so that Nicole asked me to give him some of the cash that I was keeping as a bank in my office filing cabinet. Draw. And I asked her, I talked it through with her, I went through why this shouldn't happen. It's your money. You're the one who basically made it and raised it. You know whether it was from the street or from your job or whatever, whether it was from the street or from your job or whatever. And, uh, I've always made you sign paperwork when you wanted to take it out, so that there was a clear record, yeah, and so on.
Minister Tashkovich :But she insisted, and so one day I remember meeting joseph with a lot of money maybe it was 400 or something, um, in cash, um, and he met me at my subway stop and I passed it through him to him through the uh bars. I make him side of the thing and he took it off. He went, but his eyes were blood shy, he was haggard and gone um and he was killing himself.
Jamie Serino:There was no question about it yeah, was nicole using then because he was no. No, all right.
Minister Tashkovich :She was really determined to get her life. There was some alcohol use here and there. Right Over the course of nearly four years I probably took the alcohol detox five times or so. Oh, wow, okay. It's typically a three to five day program. It works really well until you backslide. Yeah, right, well but, they would be cleaned for weeks after coming off that program.
Minister Tashkovich :Yeah, the problem, of course, is there's not enough alcohol detox beds in manhattan. I doubt situation has changed in the last six years. Um, and it's hard to get a, get a room, get a bed. Yeah, you can show up, wait outside the door and wait until noon and then be turned away and have to do it over the next day. There's no, there are no appointments, there's no website you can check. It's all show up. You show up and you wait and you hope that it becomes available.
Jamie Serino:Wow, yeah, and this is so the again like the tying together there of the homeless issue with addiction, um, and the strength of that addiction, I mean, with recovery there is usually relapse and then you know, like, what people will say is, ask anyone that smokes cigarettes how many times it took to quit smoking cigarettes, and that can help you understand you know other types of addiction. But yeah, he couldn't in the end, he couldn't kind of get away from it.
Minister Tashkovich :But he didn't want to. He didn't want to. He literally wanted to kill himself before he turned 32.
Minister Tashkovich :And he succeeded and finally, around valentine's day, february 14th, he was at 2017. Nicole called me in a panic one morning uh, that joseph was bleeding through all his orifices. Oh my god. Uh, that happens to people who don't know when the liver stops functioning, because the liver creates clotting factor which keeps your blood inside your body. Absent clotting factor, uh, every opening is a source of blood loss. Wow, um, so pretty gross, right, um? So she called the ambulance. I told her take him to a certain hospital because I want him to make sure he got good medical care. The hospitals in the Bronx have varying medical care and standards and, for whatever reason, she wasn't successful and the ambulance took him to North Bronx Central Hospital, something like that.
Minister Tashkovich :And so I raced up there on the subway way up on the border of Rochester County and got him, with a nurse's help, to sign a healthcare proxy, naming me and Nicole as healthcare proxies. Somehow, his father was informed who he had been somewhat estranged from. He was already there by the time I got there and he insisted on being made the third health care proxy, but we didn't really do much about that and during oh and so after that, he was placed into a medically induced coma in the ICU, in a separate isolation ward. So you had to go into the ICU, identify yourself to be registered, then scrub up and go into a separate room, had cameras Right, and so he was a medically induced coma. That was to say that valentine's day, um, yeah, for, like you know, a little over two weeks, and after about, and oh, I remember going into the social worker, a nice man from nigeria who was very religious, and I said you know, he doesn't intend to live past 32. He turns 32 in 17 days from now or so, and I think we need to talk about what happens after this. No, no, let the doctors do their thing. We can talk about that later if it comes to that, but let's remain optimistic.
Minister Tashkovich :He said, and, but that was his religion speaking. I recognized that and I I said, okay, um, but I put in place a plan b with a, a, a funeral home that took care of indigent customers, um, so that I had that in case I needed it. Yeah, and I spoke every day to to the ICU, who reported that, ultimately, that they had tried two different forms of, or maybe even three of, antibiotics, but they weren't working. There was no change in his condition and he was still in a coma. And I said you know from my research, of the five antibiotics you could be using to fix liver failure, I actually think that who you haven't tried are the ones that have the highest degree of success, so why don't you try those?
Minister Tashkovich :And they agreed and they started to work. Wow, they were overjoyed. The doctors and nurses were overjoyed. He was getting stronger every day and they thought that they could take him out of the coma. All his vitals were getting stronger, things were healing. It was really a miracle. His birthday came and went I think it was March 2nd, still in a coma. I think it was a Thursday.
Minister Tashkovich :And on March 4th I got this call from Nicole screaming to the phone that Joseph had died to that hospital. And so I raced up there to take care of things. And Joseph's brother and brother's girlfriend was also there. Joseph's brother was in even a worse mess than Joseph was. It was immediately alive.
Minister Tashkovich :Don't quite know how he did it, but perhaps you know, think of a cockroach. I mean, the man had. No, there was no redeeming character for this man whatsoever. Wow and um, and it took me a long time to figure out that. What must have happened? Oh, I know, wait, so, so, so.
Minister Tashkovich :We didn't know how joseph died and it didn't make sense. I couldn't figure it out, right and uh. Finally and I had another problem too, right, nicole was in a couple shelter and you could be absent from a couple shelter for up to one month before losing your shelter room to someone waiting, for example, in Jamaica Queens for room to open up, right. And so I said to Nicole, I said under no circumstances can you let on. Joseph has died. You have to use the rest of this month you have available to you to figure what we're going to do and worry how you're going to survive, because otherwise you'll lose room immediately, yeah, and you'll have to go through the process all over again because they don't have a way of just moving you into female housing, right, right, and there's a whole separate intake system for this right. And so she kept up the charade for a bit. And so I'll just stop that story for a moment and come back to joseph.
Minister Tashkovich :So after like a week, five days, something, the, the um, the nursing home, picks up joseph on east to bring some east 87th street. That friday, next day, the next day, I go with jose, with nicole, to sign the paperwork. She has to sign it, she's the next to ken, but I read everything through to make sure it's all safe to sign, um, and we, we figure out what we're going to do. We decided that she decided to cremate him and we tried to figure out what to do. I get a call on Monday morning. We're doing paperwork on Friday. Saturday morning goes by. Monday morning left 9 o'clock in the morning. I get a call from Marie Munchinsky. Marie was the director of the funeral home. Super nice lady, super confident, extraordinary experience. Been doing this for like 30 years. And she says to me, mr G, she said I have bad news and I'm like bad news. What does that mean?
Minister Tashkovich :When the funeral home director calls you after a weekend and says you have bad news, I said order my options. I said he got up and walked out. Yeah, there was a fire, you lost a chrissy. I'm confused. I don't know what you're going to say next.
Jamie Serino:Yeah.
Minister Tashkovich :And she said to me well, in order to get permission to do a cremation, a whole bunch of city agencies have to sign off on our request electronically. Huh, and one of them was the medical examiner who had, uh, thanks to the network available through the health and hospitals corporation here in new york city, was able, from the comfort of their office, to look at his urinalysis and blood work. That was done because he'd been in a coma, right, everything was all wired up. Yeah, he wasn't moving right, but all the stuff was measured on a daily basis, or maybe twice daily, for all I know.
Minister Tashkovich :And she said to me they refused to sign off on the cremation request because there was a high dosage of cocaine in his urine. Whoa, and I said that's not possible. He was comatose, what are you talking about, right? And so she said well, they've just taken away his body to do an autopsy. Wow, and I said let me get this straight the city cares about him more dead than alive, because that's a pretty expensive process and she was like gaining a potential crime, right, and so, anyway, they didn't take action.
Minister Tashkovich :but it was clear that there was only one person who could have done it, and that was his brother, who was keeping his younger brother's death wish.
Jamie Serino:Wow, that took a turn, man. One thing I thought to ask you hadn't talked too much about the family until that point and I'm wondering, over the four-year period, had you had interaction with either Nicole's or Joseph's family? Just thought to ask this now.
Minister Tashkovich :Only Joseph's father when we signed the health care proxy and then I met with him twice afterph died to give him paperwork and pictures okay, but previously over the whole four years though zero.
Minister Tashkovich :Joseph's family, okay, with nicole's family, I was able to arrange um a rendezvous with her two youngest sons. I think they might have been twins, I don't. I don't remember now, um, but her two, two youngest sons, and they had a very awkward meeting uh on east 96th street in lexington with the um husband, uh, um the father, the father of the children, right, okay?
Minister Tashkovich :so he had custody of the children right for like 10 minutes or something like that and we took a few photographs and then that was it but. But at least she got to see them. Interesting, but for them it was very traumatizing, you can imagine yeah, yeah, I could imagine. They were like you know, 10, 12 years old or something like that yeah, so all right.
Minister Tashkovich :So then and then, in the few months before she died, I was able to reconnect her with her firstborn child, her oldest son, who was living in Queens, and they had a number of I don't know three, four, five meetings. Wow, okay, coffee, to just sort of ask questions.
Jamie Serino:How old was he?
Minister Tashkovich :24, 25.
Jamie Serino:Okay.
Minister Tashkovich :Interesting um 24, 25, okay, interesting. Um, he's an accountant, you know, living in ohio, okay, uh. And then the daughter uh was up at uh union college. It's connected. She was a senior and I was trying to set up something called Miracle Messages. It's run by a friend of mine which helps the street homeless reconnect with family through an intermediary.
Minister Tashkovich :It's a great program. If any of your listeners are looking for him to support, Miracle Messages is a great program. If any of your listeners are looking for him to support, Miracle Messages is a wonderful program that helps connect street homeless with family in hopes that they can bring them in basically.
Jamie Serino:Wow, yeah, that's amazing.
Minister Tashkovich :But Nicole was impatient and she texted her daughter directly and that didn't go well. They never saw each other.
Jamie Serino:All right, her daughter directly, and that didn't go well. They never saw each other. Uh, so all right.
Minister Tashkovich :So there was never any action taken about joseph, even though there was cocaine in the system and all right, and you didn't push, I mean, you just um, you know, I mean you know, you just, um, you know I could have, you know, filed some kind of a lawsuit on behalf of the estate or something. I suppose I'm not sure what what standing I would have had. I mean, I guess I could have proven the standing I'm not really sure. Um, it was tempting to do that to win some kind of a settlement that might be used to improve the street homeless, yeah, yeah uh, I didn't pursue it yeah and maybe there's I even know the actual limitations.
Minister Tashkovich :Maybe they are not, maybe I could do it tomorrow, but uh, the point was is that they had cameras on the guy. It's obvious that they could have figured out who did it.
Jamie Serino:Right, right, man, that is amazing. So then, switching back over to Nicole, so you said when she died, so how did that happen? That was really heavy.
Minister Tashkovich :I had been away on a trip. It was like April 3rd 2018. Nicole called me that morning and she was just full of beans, just so full of life, so excited, and she wanted to give me something, something I needed, some piece of paper I wanted or something. I don't remember what it was, but she came to my apartment complex. I was warned early on never let her into my apartment. So we never did.
Minister Tashkovich :We always met upstairs, but that particular day I met her on the 27th floor at my elevator bank and the door opened up and she looked like a million bucks, unbelievable, pulled together, full of life, joyous, happy in a way I'd never seen her before. And she explained it to a psychologist, adjusted her medications and she was feeling terrific, right, optimist, everything, um. And that was the last time I saw her alive. And later on we kind of pieced together what happened. Again, it's a much longer story. I'm shortening it for the sake of the show, but basically, she had always had a sense of wariness and caution previously and this medication took that away. And this medication took that away and she befriended two street homeless men who were living on the street near where she had her apartment.
Minister Tashkovich :And that must have been, you know a cold late march, early april morning and she took them inside so they wouldn't freeze to death outside. And this went on for a couple of nights, much to the chagrin of the roommate who then had to leave for some kind of surgery on her foot. So Nicole was alone with these men and PS long story they killed her and stole the TV and whatever. Horrible. But it was because of the medication change.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, so she wasn't her usual self.
Minister Tashkovich :She wasn't suspicious, she wasn't worried, she wasn't cautious. She only felt guilty that she had this warm, heated apartment and these guys outside in the cold.
Jamie Serino:That's terrible. Sorry to hear that so this is so.
Minister Tashkovich :So the way I found out was going back to what I said earlier. She called me every morning and that sunday morning was a beautiful april morning, absolutely picture perfect gorgeous blue sky, a few clouds floating around and they called income and I thought, oh well, maybe she went to the laundromat. I made all kinds of excuses for why they called income and then I forgot about it because I was busy and around four or five o'clock, um, someone I reached out to earlier, um said have you heard from Nicole? I said no, I haven't.
Minister Tashkovich :Then I tried again and I started to get worried, but it's nothing I could really do because the person assigned to her from the sheltering agency didn't work weekends and I wanted to, you know, have a police do welfare check, but that would have involved breaking down the door and it wasn't my apartment or hers, she was, you know. Basically it was a loner apartment, so to speak, and I didn't feel I could take that step and I said if she's dead, nothing's going to change if we wait till monday, but it's going to be a long, a long way to wait, but I I got the guy on the phone first thing monday morning.
Minister Tashkovich :He wouldn't have normally gone up their offices were down by battery park. He wouldn't have gone up to the mid bronx until the afternoon or evening to see his clients and said you have to go up right away. He dumped her. So that was about 12 30 in the afternoon so that was about 12 30 in the afternoon.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, so it's a, it's a sad ending to you know, this, this sort of beautiful deed that you did, uh, and it doesn't have this sort of like tie a bow on it. Picture perfect ending, you know.
Minister Tashkovich :No, no. And and I should just add to your listenership she had gotten that because of stable housing which she'd been in. Now, for how long has she been in there? Maybe I guess it was July, so from July to April, um, she um had gotten her method introduced. She was actually down to two units a day, uh, which was low enough for them to trust her to take home several days and supply at a time. And the day she was found she was scheduled to get off methadone completely. Wow. To get the doctor's signature, yeah. And that same day, or maybe the next day, she was scheduled to start taking private classes to get her GED. Oh, wow, yeah.
Jamie Serino:So she was really trying to keep on track. It's a shame yeah.
Minister Tashkovich :But I was able, with the help of my friend Margo, to get the Archbishop of St Patrick's Cathedral to do a service for her in the? Uh, the north part of the cathedral, uh, and when I advertised it on facebook, 70 of my friends showed up. Wow, there are so many people who are so vested in her success. Yeah, they took out time from their day at lunchtime to come to her memorial service.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, that's really sweet. Well, I mean, you certainly improved. You know years of her life, you know, and you know. Of course you know I won't ask like was it all worth it or whatnot, but like what.
Minister Tashkovich :It was definitely worth it yeah.
Jamie Serino:How do you feel about like in the end, how do you feel about what you did, even though the ending, you know, wasn't what we would want it to be. You know how do you feel about it?
Minister Tashkovich :to be. You know how do you feel about it. Well, I know that she'd never been happy in her life than having someone to help guide her, to get things done, to allow her to re-enter society. Um, so I and I've had, I had her thanks every day.
Minister Tashkovich :We met, yeah, um, but it was a tough road, it's a tough road yeah I found myself intellectually challenged on many occasions and I said to myself there has to be a solution. But for god's sakes, I can't figure out with two ivy league degrees. I wonder if the people with aspa educ to figure this out. And the answer is they don't, they don't. And so at one point, while she was still alive, I got a meeting with an assistant commissioner in charge of homeless activities there was more than one and went through a long laundry list of changes they needed to make to their system to make it accessible yeah, people, and what are we?
Jamie Serino:I don't think we have time to go through all that, but what are one or two things there that you talked about with?
Minister Tashkovich :I don't remember I'd have to get back to on that, sorry, okay, no, that's that's.
Jamie Serino:That's, that's all good Cause, you know it just goes back to my question. You know I asked earlier, like a person, your perspective and your experiences. Now you probably have quite a lot to say about what we could do to improve the situation, cause I mean it's, it's terribly complex. I mean it's, it's a problem that's been going on for centuries and no one has figured it out. Maybe I should ask you do you see a country out there that maybe has it figured out better than we do?
Minister Tashkovich :Oh, I think so For sure. The richer countries, uh, norway, sweden, probably switzerland, I had to guess yeah, off top my head yeah but they're socialists, right? I mean, there is a difference yeah, yeah, um, yeah it's.
Jamie Serino:It's a complex problem for society. I mean, not all right. Well, um, is there anything else that you'd want to add? You know about the story or about you know your participation, your decisions about homelessness?
Minister Tashkovich :well, only that um again, that they had authorized the colon just would authorize me to share their story far and wide, and in doing so I'm making slow progress towards a movie. But we have a treatment prepared and we have to get a script together and we have to get financing together and all this. I'm certainly, if any of your listeners are interested, guarantee there are a lot more twists and turns than you've heard today. Yeah, and we think it would be very compelling actually.
Jamie Serino:It is. It is a compelling story, and there's so much to learn in all the twists and turns, that's for sure.
Minister Tashkovich :So there's that, and also, I think what people on the street really want is someone to listen, and even if you can't help, bend down on your knee and listen to them for five or ten minutes, and if you can buy them a meal from a local place, do that too yeah, yeah, all right, I guess I would so.
Minister Tashkovich :Just to end, so, just to clarify or to restate when you're street homeless, all you care about is the next meal. You're not writing resumes. You're not getting figuring out who, where you can get a business suit from. You're not applying for jobs. You only care getting figuring out who, where you can get a business suit from. You're not applying for jobs. You only care what happens the next couple of hours. Your world shrinks Right.
Jamie Serino:Incredibly Right the idea of, yeah, short and medium term and long term goals. You know, I think that's Out the window. Yeah, that's another thing that people have to remember. You know, when everyone just says, oh, just do this or just do that, and it's like you said, their world has to shrink. You're just looking for your next meal, or where are you going to go if it rains or something. And, yeah, there's definitely, you know, a perspective there that everyone has to just keep in mind. You know a perspective there that everyone has to just keep in mind. All right, M minister, it was wonderful to talk to you again. It's a powerful story and I appreciate that. You, you know you shared it with us. I appreciate what you did and I appreciate everything that you shared with us and, and everybody, thanks for listening or watching and, um, you know we'll see you next time.
Minister Tashkovich :Thank you very much thank you, jamie, and thank you for helping to keep alive their memory. I appreciate it, my pleasure.
Jamie Serino:Thank you Bye.
