I’m surprised no one mentioned Aileen Wournos . This piece of work killed many men while “getting a ride” in Florida. I tend to want to help also but now that I have a wife and child I no longer will pick up a hitchhiker or give a ride. Sucks that it has come to this but I have my priorites.
The last time I ever helped a panhandler, he was less-than-happy with my donation, so I will probably never do that kind of thing again.
I was walking into a party store, and this guy asked for a couple of bucks for food, I said I didn’t have any cash, but while in there, I bought him an apple danish and a pint of milk.
I gave it to him on the way out, he looked at it, said “shhiii-it,” and put it in his coat pocket. No ‘thanks,’ no hungry devouring, nothing.
That bum just ruined it for everyone in my book.
When I worked in Boston, I was constantly hit up by panhandlers outside the bus station next door. I lost count of how many parents needed to get home to thier sick children, or how many college kids got on the wrong bus. Shockingly enough, they all just needed a few more dollars! One guy, all I had was a $50 bill (it was just after payday), and he offered to make change for me.
I wonder how many sick children’s lives I destroyed by not giving my pocket change
[QUOTE=USCDiver]
When I was a medical student I had just come out of the pizza place when a guy approached me with a slight limp. He said he had cut his foot on some glass and needed some money for some gauze and shit. Of course being so near to taking my Hippocratic Oath, I made him take off his shoe there in the parking lot to let me see how bad it was. I even offered to drive up to the nearby drug store to buy him some gauze and dress his wounds if he needed it. Well, when the shoe came off… he had some really nasty athlete’s foot, but no cuts or bleeding.
I then told him about the free-medical clinic about a mile up the road, but he declined to be seen.
Maybe I should have offered him some Lamisil.
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Yeah, I had a bum approach me with a story of a broken down car and his need for a tow truck. My offer to call my automobile association to get him a free tow was met with fairly obscene reproaches, which struck me as so strange if he really did have a stalled car just right over there by that corner.
Offering help-in-kind, especially when the in-kind services are those that an average vagrant could not readily convert into crack, is a good alternative.
Generally speaking, people legitimately in need figure out where to find social services, and do not frequent parking lots with their tales of woe.
You’re only a year late. 
The ones that really bother me though are those that start demanding BRAAAINS!
Zombie thread closed.