Jack Garrett is the kind of guy who feeds stray cats. Groundhogs, too.
"I had six feral cats and four groundhogs I was taking care of. I'd feed them bread or my leftover sandwiches. But the groundhogs got to where they weren't afraid of traffic anymore and it scared me, so I stopped," he says.
At the time, Garrett, 58, was living in an extended-stay motel near Chattanooga's East Lake community. He had recently left his job at Dixie Produce to begin working at Pilgrim's Pride. "But drinking and other flavors were getting the better of me," says Garrett. "I knew I had a real problem when two drug addicts came to my door and said, 'Pack your bags. You're going to rehab.'"
After the push, Garrett entered into a 21-day treatment program - which turned into a three-month stay. When he finally left the center, he had lost his room and his job.
"So I landed in a parking lot on 11th Street, living out of my van," he says.
Jack Garrett poses for a photo Sunday, November 11, 2018 in front of the former P&P Produce in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The parking spot directly behind Garrett is where his van, which also served as his home, was parked for a year and a half before he got a new job across town.Garrett has been homeless since 2016. It was near that parking lot, not long after his return from rehab, that he met Ann-Marie Fitzsimmons, a 43-year-old school librarian, ultra-runner and mother of five.
"I've always wanted to work with homelessness," Fitzsimmons says. "When I heard about My Own 2 Feet [& Wheels] I was like, 'Dude, I'm in.'"
Founded in 2016 by Robert Gustafson and Rita Fanning, both local runners, My Own 2 Feet & Wheels is a running and biking program geared for Chattanooga's homeless community. Once a week, volunteers like Fitzsimmons gather at the Community Kitchen, where they host couch-to-5k training programs and bicycle safety courses, incentivizing participation with free gently used running shoes and new bicycles.
But the overarching goal of the program is to give participants a sense of accomplishment and camaraderie with positive people. Garrett admits that early in his recovery he had a few a slips, but thanks, in part, to My Own 2 Feet & Wheels, he has now been sober for two years, and has gone on to compete in about a dozen local 5k races.
Ann-Marie Fitzsimmons poses for a photo in front of her van Sunday, November 11, 2018 in front of the former P&P Produce in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Fitzsimmons regularly brings her van to the East 11th Street area to hand out items she has collected for homeless individuals. Garrett first became involved with the program around the same time as Fitzsimmons.
"He's as much a part of the program as any of us," Fitzsimmons says. "When you're walking or running with a person, you learn a lot about them. There's nothing but time to talk."
Garrett, Fitzsimmons soon learned, grew up in Atlanta. In his 30s, he became a long-haul truck driver. During those years, he would spend up to six months at a time on the road, living out of motels and truck stops. At age 40, he says, "I had the bright idea that I'd try to be normal, start sleeping in the same bed every night."
In 2000, Garrett quit his job as a trucker, got married and bought a home in Chickamauga, Georgia.
"That didn't last no time at all. We were married in January and by the time it was hot, she was gone," Garrett says. "That's when I started drinking more. I wasn't on the road anymore. I had too much free time as a single guy."
In the following years, Garrett continued to struggle, bouncing between maintenance jobs. He eventually sold his home and began renting rooms by the week at extended-stay motels - where he began saving up his food scraps to feed the hungry animals in his neighborhood.
"Anybody that's gonna go out of their way for stray cats, how bad can they be?" says Fitzsimmons, who, like Garrett, has a soft heart for those in need. Her passion for helping the homeless extends beyond her volunteer work with My Own 2 Feet & Wheels.
One evening last September, Fitzsimmons visited the parking lot near the Community Kitchen where homeless people often live in their vehicles. She had brought a sleeping bag for a man named Darryl after he'd told her he needed one. She didn't find Darryl that evening, but she did find Garrett.
"Do you need anything?" she asked him.
"A job," he told her.
Fitzsimmons went home that night and posted a photo of Garrett on Facebook, along with a plea.
"So, here's what I know about Jack," she wrote. "1. His work experience involves trucking and unloading freight. Stuff like that. 2. I would invite Jack to Thanksgiving dinner and let him take my kids out for ice cream. 3. He's on my list of people to invite to be on my board if I ever pull off a non-profit. I love Jack. If I had a business, I would give him a job first. But I don't, so I'm handing him over to you, Chattanooga. If you have work that he might be able to do, message me and I'll pass his number on to you."
Within a week, as a result of that post, Garrett was offered a job as a locksmith at Rick's Lock & Key. Sympathetic to his situation, his new employer even built him a shower inside the office.
"There is so much more good in the world than most people get to see," Fitzsimmons says. Kindness, after all, comes in different forms - much like joy.
Every morning, Garrett wakes at 4 a.m., crawls out of his van and goes to work.
"I don't have to start work until 8:30 a.m., but it's 'me time.' I drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, watch the news. I'm not unhappy. I got no complaints," Garrett says, adding that he's not interested in becoming a homeowner again. "I want a mobile home, but not so I can drive it away. I'd keep it here in Chattanooga. I'm attached to these people."