By Neil Farrell ~

They pulled into town about three weeks ago, driving their RV/home and looking for work but within about an hour, ran into a law enforcement buzz saw that left them on the streets with not much more than the clothes on their backs.

And as Morro Bay Police get ready to conduct another clean sweep of two major homeless encampment areas, Megan Parigi and Jerry Sullivan could get swept aside once again.

The Bay News met with Megan and Jerry in the front lobby at Albertson’s, the place where their odyssey into homelessness began. They were 20 minutes late, she said because they had to walk up from the waterfront, where they have a tent pitched in the dunes, a gift from the local Salvation Army.

It happened about a week previous to the interview. Jerry says they were sitting in the parking lot, the RV’s key on to power the radio. The generator is busted, he says. They hadn’t been there for more than a few minutes, when Megan says a police cruiser pulled up.

In the subsequent encounter, Jerry went to jail for an alleged DUI, though he says the rig was parked and he was just sitting in the front seat. She joined him for suspicion of being drunk in public. “We just got into town,” Megan says.

The pair spent a couple of days in the County lock up, before being released. But the RV, their home on wheels, was impounded and won’t be released, according to a police spokesman, until they produce a believable and legal plan for what’s going to happen to the 28-foot, 3-bedroom Tioga motor home.

Neither of them has a valid driver’s license, they admit, taken away after repeated DUIs. The RV is licensed and has insurance, Jerry explains. They left Monterey and ended up in Paso Robles for a few days. Megan says a Paso police officer advised them to leave town. In Atascadero, too, the police were on their cases, but let them leave without arrest. End of the road came in Morro Bay.

They were carted off to the hoosegow and when they got out, the RV was gone and they were left with little more than the clothes they had on. “I went to jail in boxer shorts and a bikini top,” Megan says. Jerry was shirtless. The impound yard allowed them to get some things out of the RV. Which is when Megan says they discovered the police had searched it, and didn’t find anything.

She says it looked like the place was ransacked and their fridge door was broken.

When they spoke to a reporter, they had 22 days left before the mandatory 30-day impound and Megan says it will cost $1,700-$2,000 to get it out. But they still have the issue of no licenses to contend with.

“I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” explains Jerry, who is extremely upset about their situation. The commercial long-line fisherman (she’s done computer programming work) feels responsible to protect Megan, and camping in the dunes, huddling together for warmth, wasn’t part of the plan. “This is the road trip from hell,” Megan pleads.

Police Cmdr. Bryan Millard agreed to answer questions about Megan and Jerry’s plight and on a plan the City has to clean up homeless encampments at Lila Keiser Park and a strip of dunes along the power plant fence. The clean up and crackdown is set for Dec. 10-11 and promises to be a monumental undertaking.

As one might expect, Millard’s version of events varies from Megan and Jerry’s. Police got a report of a man and woman “in a domestic disturbance,” Millard says but upon arrival, the couple was gone. “The reporting party actually said the man was stabbing the woman.”

Officers got a description of the vehicle and went searching for it. Millard says he spied the RV parked at Albertson’s. He called for back up and she, Megan, was outside the vehicle at the time, something she denies.

They got arrested and the RV was impounded, Millard says. A few days later, they came in protesting the impounding.

“Neither one of them has a driver’s license,” Millard says. “I can’t release the vehicle if neither has a license.” He says they could appeal the impoundment to the “traffic sergeant” and ultimately, to him. Megan laughs, saying “there is no appealing the impound.”

With a normal car or truck, after 30 days, a person could have someone with a valid license help get it out, but Millard says RVs are treated differently.

“What’s the plan with the vehicle?” he asks. “Who is going to be driving it? Where are they going to park or store it?” In most cities, Morro Bay included, sleeping in any vehicle outside a campground or RV park is illegal.

Millard says officers did search the vehicle, but denies it was ransacked. “When we impound a vehicle we’re required to go through it to remove any valuables,” he says, “and we log and document it.” He also believes Megan was wearing appropriate clothing when she was arrested, though Jerry didn’t have a shirt on.

So the road trip from hell is about to take another turn, as Police, with the help of City employees, Dynegy and the Grizzly Academy, plan to clean out the encampments, including where the two landed. The first major clean up, Millard says, was in 2012, when several tons of trash was removed from the dense forest of eucalyptus trees.

That creek has always been a homeless area, so too Morro Creek areas further upstream opposite Miner’s Hardware. But with everyone expecting — indeed hoping for — a strong, wet winter, all the accumulated trash could end up on the beach.

Millard says the City recently scoped out the creek and using satellite photos discovered more than 10 active campsites along the power plant fence. They plan to clean out Lila Keiser on the 10th and the dunes on the 11th. They’ve already cleaned out an encampment behind Burger King along Quintana Road. And Caltrans cleaned out a large encampment in bushes along the southbound Hwy 1 off ramp at Morro Bay Blvd., where up to six people were living. There’s another bunch camping on Black Hill, which Millard says is on State Park’s property and not their responsibility.

Though the park has always had homeless living in the creek, Millard says in the past 5-6 years a rougher group of people moved in, and there’s been an increase in crime — from petty thefts to, assaults, batteries and even a violent attempted car jacking. “This is not about a specific person or area,” he says. “We’ve just heard enough.”

A recent incident where two, 8-year-old girls attending a City youth soccer match wandered into the creek and got stuck in the fingers with a hypodermic added to the seriousness. The syringes were the kind used for insulin injections, which are the preferred choice of drug addicts, too. “They’re cheap and come in bulk,” says Millard.

As part of the clean up, Millard says, they will bring out County social workers and local volunteers, to try and get people some assistance, though he admits there isn’t much available here, certainly no shelters.

Meanwhile, Megan and Jerry are stuck here, as his court appearance isn’t until mid-December, spending nights huddled together in the dunes for warmth, hoping to get off this tough-luck carousel.