On a crisp November afternoon, as the sun began to set, a car rolled to a stop in an alley in southwest Baltimore.
A woman approached the vehicle, her thin frame engulfed by an oversized gray sweater, a beanie draped low over her head. Since slipping back into addiction, she had traded pieces of herself to scrape by.
But this time, when she leaned into the window, there wasn’t a john behind the wheel. The driver instead offered a black winter coat. Hand warmer. Socks. A turkey and cheese sandwich, neatly wrapped in a bright pink bag. Tears ran down the woman’s cheeks.
“I’m Kristina,” said the driver.
Most every Tuesday and Thursday night, Kristina Page zigzags down Wilkens Avenue and into Morrell Park to seek out the most ignored women, sex workers battling addiction.
Women like these fall through the cracks, forgotten in a city awash with programs — but ones that, for political and practical reasons, often fail to help them. Shelters tend to ban sex workers, fearing they will bring their clients. Domestic violence groups shy away, unwilling to navigate the legal gray areas of labor trafficking. Many addiction treatment centers do not address underlying trauma.
And the city officials? They often turn a blind eye, Page says, letting these women disappear into Baltimore’s maze of abandoned homes.
Page sees herself as a bridge, a “connector” who helps these women get what they need. It’s everything from food and warm clothing to STD testing, government identification and, most importantly, access to addiction resources.
The woman wiped away her tears and told Page she wanted to get clean again. She had done it before – five solid years on methadone – until a recent relapse. The banner is not naming the workers due to the sensitivity of the subject and security concerns.
Page paused, her mind scrolling through the catalog of clinics and programs she had accumulated over the years. She mentioned a nearby methadone clinic. The woman seemed interested but hesitant. Page held out a flyer with her number on it and offered to talk more.
“But if you ever change your mind about me, I’ll still be here,” Page said. “There is no judgement.”
She nodded and grabbed the paper. Then the woman in the gray sweater stepped back from the car.
Before her rounds, Page packs her white Honda with 30 lunches, clean clothes and overdose medication. She takes the same route through the same streets, looking for familiar faces. Once a month, she hosts a resource fair outside Wilkens Avenue Mennonite Church, offering hot meals, fentanyl test strips, wound care kits and anything else she can scrounge up — makeup, bras, tampons, toothbrushes.
This rhythm of weekly drives and monthly fairs is how Page walks the fine line between helping and holding back. Each trip gives her time to build trust with the women she meets, to offer support without fostering trust. And when they’re ready to consider addiction treatment, she’s there to help.
“I fall into this ‘working girl’ category,” said one woman at one of Page’s resource fairs. “But she sees me, and it feels so good for someone to actually treat me like a human being.”
Page, who is 44 and lives in Baltimore County, worked in social services for about two decades. A native of Maryland, she spent several years as a caseworker at a treatment clinic in a Baltimore hospital and then more than a decade at a domestic violence nonprofit, rising to associate director. In her spare time, she would load her three children into the car and head to Wilkens Avenue, handing out food and clothing to anyone who needed them.
It didn’t take her long to notice a troubling pattern: Most of the women she met on the street never made it through the doors of the nonprofits she worked for. A few years ago, Page decided to leave the office and focus entirely on outreach. Someone had to fill the gap. She figured it might as well be her.
Page has kept his operation, called Lotus Coordinated Services, deliberately small, unregistered and outside the non-profit system. With no paperwork and grant limits, Page says she can help anyone, however she wants. No salary, no cut for herself. (She supports herself through a day job running a moving company.)
Almost everything she gives away comes from Facebook crowdsourcing and corporate donations. It’s a patchwork operation she’s stitched together, one post, one connection at a time.
What Page brings with him on his runs depends on the season. In the summer, she focuses on food and water. On warm nights, Wilkens Avenue and Morrell Park buzz with activity, making it easy for Page to find 30 people to feed.
But shortly after 4pm on this November afternoon, the sharp wind had driven the temperature close to freezing and the usual buzz of the streets had died down.
“You just have to be more creative about finding them,” Page said.
She detoured past a roundabout on Wilkens Avenue and slowed near the vacant houses where the women often congregated. Soon a few appeared and walked down the sidewalk, some waving when they saw her. The clothes and blankets went quickly.
“Those were our last two blankets,” Page said 10 minutes into his route, after handing some to a man and woman huddled outside a townhouse. The pile of winter coats, hats and shoes stashed in her backseat shrank with each stop.
Page often says that addiction bends time, stretching days into weeks and weeks into months until it all dissolves into the haze of the next high. That’s why she comes back every week. In a world where time is running out, she believes, showing up consistently can make a big difference.
For her, it’s not about the dozens of people she’s guided into treatment or the hundreds of meals she distributes each month. It’s about the moments that can’t be counted: A girl who’s been ignoring her for weeks and finally accepts a lunch. Someone who trusts her enough to share her name, her story.
By 5 p.m., Page had wound his way to Morrell Park, driving slowly along Washington Boulevard, turning onto side streets, eyes scanning. Outside a convenience store, she saw a dark-haired woman she had helped many times before, slumped to the ground.
Page parked and rushed out, kneeling beside her. For 20 minutes she stayed there, checking her pulse, listening to her slurred, coarse words, overdosed meds at the ready.
“She’s breathing fine, just really loud,” Page said in a calm voice. She took a pink grocery bag, a jacket and a hat from her Honda and placed them next to the woman.
“I hate seeing her like this,” she said softly, sliding back into the driver’s seat.
Such scenes have become routine for Page. The women collapsed on sidewalks, those who disappear without a trace. But recently, she says, she has had more hope.
Johns Hopkins-affiliated SPARC, which stands for Sex workers promoting action, risk reduction and community mobilization, has become an important ally in her efforts. Bonnie Marquez, who runs the Missing in Baltimore City Facebook group, is always ready to help her search when another woman goes missing. And then it is Page himself who relies on hard-won trust and many years of experience. Bit by bit, she says, she and others make a difference.
At 6 p.m., with the sun long gone, Page handed out the last meal of the evening. Around the corner she saw two more women walking down the street.
“It almost feels like you never have enough stuff,” she said.
As she drove up North Avenue toward home, her phone rang.
It was the woman in the gray sweater. Page logo.
