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By Jeff Hansel

The Post-Bulletin 

LIVING ON THE EDGE
Ronald and Terri Erickson met on the streets, fell in love there and got married while still homeless.

Long-term, committed relationships such as theirs are not uncommon among the homeless population in the Rochester area.

When they first met, both Terri and Ronald Erickson were abusing alcohol to the point of near-constant intoxication, drinking all day until they ran out of money. He also was hooked on crack cocaine -- and selling drugs to support his habit. Part of the reason he drank so much was that it helped dull his senses, he said.

This October, though, he celebrates four years of sobriety. Terri's sobriety came a year after Ronald's when she went to Right to Recovery.

When they met seven years ago, Terri wanted to go home with the man who would eventually become her husband. She had no money and no home. But neither did he.

"I've been sleeping under a bridge," he told her. She thought for a bit, and decided that was OK. They've been a couple ever since. They made their first home together underneath that downtown bridge, with a circle of large rocks as a nighttime wall against the winter cold.

"I was living there for almost a year before I met Terri," Ronald said. Their relationship changed his life significantly. No longer could he just crawl into the brush and fall asleep if he were too drunk to get back to the bridge. Now, he had to think of someone else's needs, too.

"It's easy to live by yourself on the street. But when you've got a woman, you're trying to take care of her, keep out of the weather -- it's a whole 'nother story," he said.

They came to rely upon each other. While homeless, he worked at a business called the Trading Post, which sold used household items. Many Rochester residents will remember him from there, he says, noting that he was homeless the entire time he worked there. Today, after knowing each other for seven years, the Ericksons live a sober life in a Rochester duplex.

Happy together

Jeff Paradis and Kathy Anderson sit next to a campfire. On most days, Anderson is motivated to get things done. But on this night, she and Paradis, who works at a car detailing business, relax together and drink beer while they listen to their campsite radio.

"Baby, it's all I know. That you're half of the flesh ... and blood, that makes me whole," come the words from the musical group Mister Mister.

Paradis jumps up when smoke from the fire changes direction and envelopes Anderson. He grabs her folding, purple-and-green Scooby-Doo chair and helps her settle in again on the other side of the fire.

"She's my baby," he says.

Anderson waves her hand through smoke, which is now far enough away that she can be playful.

He waves back, giggles and says, "Oh, hi!" Then he starts hand-rolling a cigarette for her.

"She didn't like me the first time she met me," he says. But that eventually changed.

"She's so cute," he says now.

Both had kids. He proudly describes his two sons; One 27, a United Autoworker and one, 25, in the Air Force, and a daughter, 14, who does not live with him.

As the light of day disappears, the couple tells of life on the street, and their love story emerges. Slowly, Anderson fades into the darkness until all that can be seen is her forehead, glasses and the shins of her crossed legs and, every now and then, her hands waving descriptively.

"We've been together for over 10 years. Out here (in the woods) a year-and-a-half, winter and summer," Paradis says. "We were both working too, but we just couldn't get it together."

"I closed my eyes and I slipped away...," the group Boston blares on the radio. Anderson recalls their first encounter.

"It was his high school reunion and we met through a mutual friend," she says. "We sat and talked the whole night, and his friend went to sleep and we ended up drinking Kool-Aid and then we didn't see each other for like probably six months to a year."

But they did meet again and, eventually, became a couple.

"We had a lot in common. We were talking about kids, and just all of a sudden he just disappeared out of my life and I was wondering whether he would ever come back in my life," Anderson says. "And when he came back, it was like, oh my goodness!"

Paradis' grin shines through the orange glow of the fire light.

"She loved me," he says.