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She Helped the Homeless, Who Will Help Her?
- Homelessness: Real Stories, Real Solutions
- 59 minutes ago
- 8 min read
Damari Perreard spent decades fighting to keep vulnerable people safe and off the streets. Now, after battling a mystery illness and a debilitating fall, she's on the verge of joining them.
By DAVID DUDLEY
Damari Perreard's mind went blank when the attorney representing her landlord asked if she understood the potential consequences of choosing to go to trial.
"He said that if I took it to trial, which would be in two weeks, I'd have to move out the day the judgment was handed down," Perreard said. "If I accepted the landlord's terms, I'd have to move out in 15 days. So, either way I'd have to be out in two weeks.
"That's just not possible, in my condition."
Perreard attended the February eviction hearing by phone, sitting in the apartment she's called home for seven years. As a teen, she dreamed of becoming a lawyer. Not the kind who badgered people in their most vulnerable moments, but one who helped them.
Caring for others is her life's work. Perreard, 57, raised two sons while working for Child Protective Services agencies in California and Oregon, then she spent four and a half years working at Shepherd's House Ministries, where she advocated for people experiencing homelessness. And she had recently taken in a grandson.
"All I've ever wanted to do was help people," she said. "I wanted to be a healer."
After the hearing, Perreard sat among boxes and furniture she'd need to donate. She'd quit her job at Shepherd's House in March, exhausted from battling an undiagnosed illness for over a year. She collapsed in her driveway — which led to a traumatic brain injury that changed everything. Her world was unraveling.
"I spent my life fighting for those in need," she said. "Now that I'm in need, I wonder who will fight for me?"
Soil, berries and sunshine
Perreard was a foundling. Her adoptive parents brought her home to Seneca, population 165, in 1969. The tiny timber town situated in Grant County is the site of the coldest temperature in Oregon, -54 degrees, recorded in 1933.
Perreard's dad was the principal of the school there, and her mom, a teacher.
When asked about her first memory, she closed her eyes and smiled.
"Sunshine on my shoulders," she said. "The smell of fresh raspberries and blackberries. My bare feet in the soil."
Perreard's parents were proud hippies. Her dad talked openly about his feelings and didn't hesitate to hug his male friends. Her mom was active in several local charities. Perreard recalled riding on her parents' shoulders during protests.
The family moved to Corvallis when she was 2. The years that followed were mostly peaceful and stimulating, said Perreard. The blend of agrarian life and intellectualism that flourished in the university town suited the sensitive, curious girl who recalled reading books about traveling nurses and "War and Peace" when she was still in second grade.
She doesn't remember much from Leo Tolstoy's sprawling masterpiece, but her need to help others was stoked by those books.
The peace she knew began to crumble when her mom fell in love with an incarcerated pen pal. Her mom divorced her father. She married her pen pal while he was still in prison, then moved in with him after his release. Perreard was in fifth grade.
Perreard said she witnessed her stepfather stab a friend who had tried to hurt her when she was just 11. That event left a complicated legacy that has shaped Perreard's life ever since.
"It's definitely one of the reasons I feel a deep need to help people," Perreard said. "Though, it was hard to process at the time."
Fast times
Perreard said her years at Mountain View High School felt like an '80s movie. She played basketball and went running in her spare time. She was in the international relations club and the thespian society. She made the honors society and worked part-time at Sundae's West and Candy Shoppe in the Mountain View Mall.
"I was always busy," she said. "Being involved in so many activities, I became popular really fast."
As her circle expanded, so did the opportunities to get into trouble. She started partying on the weekends. Her mother struggled to control Perreard, who was developing a taste for independence. Perreard returned home one morning to find her bags packed.
"She kicked me out of the house," said Perreard. "I moved into a duplex on Studio Road in Bend. But I wasn't ready to live on my own. Even when I had company, which was most of the time, I felt alone."
Perreard dropped out of high school in her junior year. She floundered in Bend for several years, working odd jobs to make ends meet as her dream of becoming a lawyer faded.
Then, she moved to Los Angeles to be with a boy she loved. She had her first son at 21.
'Know yourself and choose to help others'
Living in California during Ronald Reagan's presidency opened Perreard's eyes. As "Reaganomics" reshaped the economy — cutting inflation and adding jobs, while also gutting social services and pushing millions into homelessness — she saw the consequences up close in the streets.
In response to the suffering she saw around her, she began volunteering at The Sunshine Place, in Modesto.
"My mantra was: 'Know yourself and choose to help others,'" Perreard said. "I've always had this interior fight with myself. I believe I'm not worthy, so I must earn my place in this world."
That inner conflict yielded an uncompromising commitment to helping the homeless, mentally ill and elderly. Perreard knew what she wanted to do with her life, and she was actively seeking opportunities to do it.
When she was 32, she got a job at a child receiving home in Sacramento.
"I remember young girls coming in," she said, "12-year-old prostitutes wearing four pairs of underwear, so they could hide what they were doing.
"I'd ask them what they wanted to be when they grew up," she added after a pause. "They weren't thinking about the future. They were just trying to feed their siblings. It was horrible."
Perreard eventually moved to Oregon, joining Child Protective Services in Prineville. She learned to function during crises, but that same skill blunted the impacts the work had upon her mental health. She'd quit drinking in 2000, but she relapsed in 2015.
"I had become so good at functioning during times of crisis, I didn't feel myself slipping," she said. "After 10 years in that field, I quit. I just couldn't do it anymore."
Mystery illness
Perreard was hired by Shepherd's House Ministries in 2020. She helped build connections between her new employer and St. Charles Medical Center - Bend, to coordinate wound and in-home care for her clients.
The first symptoms of her mystery illness appeared in Autumn 2024.
"I was vomiting every day," she said. "I was severely fatigued."
She began missing work more frequently. A series of tests to determine the root of her persistent symptoms revealed little, but she was sick every day.
"My doctor thought I might have developed a gluten intolerance," she said. "At some point, it felt like they were patronizing me. They thought it might be psychosomatic, you know, all in my head."
But the consistent vomiting had worn away the enamel on her teeth, and several began to break.
"If doctors had treated one of my unhoused clients like that, I would have made a fuss," she said. "Why didn't I do that for myself?"
Perreard isn't alone in asking that question. A 2024 study found that 1 in 3 health care professionals suffer from burnout, which the authors define as "an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress."
For those who work with homeless people, many of whom have suffered complex trauma during their lives, that stress runs even deeper.
Dean Corcoran, a licensed mental health counselor who runs a successful practice in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, recognizes the pattern.
"I have clients, some of whom are health care workers, who have seen several specialists in an attempt to diagnose a mystery illness," Corcoran said. "After seeing doctor after doctor, they finally make their way to my office.
"But it's not because they need mental health treatment," Corcoran continued. "It's because the doctors couldn't identify the cause of my clients' shortness of breath, fatigue and joint pain."
Corcoran, a former restaurateur who took up counseling in his 40s, said that diagnoses like Lyme disease, lupus and gluten intolerance can function as catch-all conditions that give patients a framework for treatment before doctors fully understand what's wrong.
"Health care providers and advocates are known to fight fiercely for their clients," Corcoran said. "All too often, they learn to help themselves last."
By the time they seek care, he added, they're past the point at which preventative measures will help.
"The American medical system does not deal well with systemic disease," he said. "We treat symptoms."
Buckling under the exhaustion wrought by her mystery illness, Perreard resigned from Shepherd's House Ministries in March 2025.
She said that a series of tests revealed a mass on her uterus, a nodule on her thyroid, and a dental infection — which traveled to her brain, causing it to bleed.
"One day in November, I fell down in my driveway," she said. "I woke up in the hospital with broken ribs, a fractured skull, and a ruptured eardrum."
If she hadn't collapsed in her driveway, she believes she would have died on her couch, still awaiting answers.
The aftermath
When she returned home, she remembered nothing from the fall or her hospital stay.
"My kids were worried, because they'd seen me bounce back from things before," she said. "But I knew this was serious. My mom kept saying I needed to go to a skilled nursing facility."
Now, Perreard says she's facing the hardest stretch in her life. She's doing it alone, but for her emotional support companion, Max, a 7-year-old Yorkie mix who stays by her side.
The woman who once dreamed of becoming a lawyer scribbled notes on a yellow legal pad, so she wouldn't forget what the attorneys and judge said during her eviction hearing.
"One way or another, I will need to move in the next few weeks," Perreard said, drawing short, sharp breaths. "My energy, projects and zest for life, it's all gone."
She still doesn't understand why she couldn't help herself the way she helped others. She still struggles to make sense of her situation. And she doesn't know where she'll go.
"I feel like this whole thing has completely destroyed my faith in myself," she said. "I went from earning over $70,000 a year to zero. I'm facing eviction, homelessness."
Before the fall, she had received enough donations for her clients to fill her minivan. That minivan has collected dust for the past six months, and the donated items are still sitting inside — a daily reminder of how her life has been frozen by a mystery illness.
Homelessness: Real Stories, Real Solutions (realstoriesrealsolutions.org) is a journalism lab funded by Central Oregon Health Council under FORJournalism (forjournalism.org), an Oregon nonprofit dedicated to supporting journalism statewide. Sign up for weekly newsletters to receive updates.
