PANHANDLER WISHES SHE HAD STAYED IN SCHOOL

Marie Jenkins is 30 years old and has a ninth grade education.

"Mom always tried to get me to stay in school," she said. "Now I wish I had."

Jenkins stood at the corner of William and Kingshighway late Tuesday afternoon with a tattered white cardboard sign that read from top to bottom "Homeless, broke, God Bless." A plastic bag with a change of clothes lay at her feet as she watched traffic slow for the stop light.

"A ninth grade education is all I have and it's hard to get a house with just like working at McDonald's you can't hardly make it," she said.

Jenkins and her sister Veronica, who is 24 years old, are from the New Orleans, La., area and have been traveling around the United States for about a year.

"We travel all over. We've been to Colorado, Nebraska, everywhere around. We mostly camp around," Marie Jenkins said.

"We hitchhike mostly with ladies or people with families. We don't hitchhike with just anybody."

Jenkins says she and Veronica don't have much trouble with the police who usually tell them to move on unless she goes back to the same spot with her sign.

"A lot of them are good to you. They know you are down on your luck and as long as you're not bothering the traffic like going up to the cars and whatever.

Jenkins turned to reach for a dollar a cab driver handed her while waiting at the red left turn light.

"God bless. Thank you," Jenkins said as she stuffed the bill in her pocket.

She said sometimes it bothers her to be standing on the street asking for money.

"It's the only thing I've got right now. A lot of people holler at you and call you different things. I just ignore it. It goes in one ear and out the other," she said.

Jenkins said she would like to go back to school when she gets home because she has learned she can't get a job with the education she has.

"You know, I'm 30 it's not too late," she joked.

Jenkins said the most money she has ever made standing on the street with her sign was around $100, but said that doesn't happen very often.

"People are scared. They think you are drunk or a drug addict or somethin'," she said. "I'll be lucky if I make $30 while standing out here about three or four hours or whatever. Just enough money to eat and go on down the road.

"We take care of ourselves."