from the L. A. Times
She's 97 years old and homeless.
It's a lonely life -- days spent living in a vehicle, passing the time away in public parks, parking lots and shopping centers around the Westside.
It's a miserable life, she said. Still, she is glad to at least have that.
Bessie sits by the side of the road and seeks handouts. She holds a cardboard sign in her lap: "I am 97 years old. Homeless. Broke. 
Need help please."
Need help please."This has attracted attention -- both wanted and unwanted.
Randall Zook, a Culver City TV advertising producer, pulled over on a recent day when he saw her holding the sign in front of a Costco on Washington Boulevard.
"This little lady hit me deeply. I said I have to do something. I just can't pass by her," Zook said. "I went over and talked to her and was moved by her dignity. She wasn't begging. She just asked, 'Do you have a home for me?"
Zook didn't, but he gave her "more money than I've ever given anyone."
For everyone who gives, there are many others who just drive by or simply stare.
"It makes me feel like I'm a bum," Bessie said.
"I don't mind living at the mercy of the public because some of the public is good -- they're nice to me. But there are some that are nasty. Some of them laugh at me and my sign."
"They say they don't think I'm 97 years old."
Reaching slowly into a pocket, she pulls out a laminated California state identification card that shows her date of birth: March 2, 1912.
Bessie was born in the Bay Area city of Richmond six weeks before the Titanic sank.
She wakes at 7 in the morning when the sun shines through the trees that shade the neighborhood near the Venice Public Library.
She washes up in an Albertson's restroom in the back of the store and spends the rest of the day around Venice Beach.
Once a week she gets a free shower at a drop-in center.
And sometimes, she gets free hot meals served from a food truck.
