Ready, Willing & Able | The Doe Fund

They are a familiar and welcome sight in Manhattan, where they have been tidying up neighborhoods for the past few years.

But last summer they came to Queens, thanks to Sen. Daniel Hevesi (D-Forest Hills) --- yes, the son of former City Comptroller Alan Hevesi, who unsuccessfully ran in the Democratic mayoral primary last year.

They showed up first in Forest Hills and then in Rego Park, and that's why the streets of those neighborhoods look so clean.

"They are the greatest," says Jay Parker, the owner of Ben's Best Kosher Delicatessen, a business founded by his dad, Ben, on Queens Boulevard in Rego Park.

Sounds good, doesn't it? A group of men looking to rebuild broken lives due to drugs or homelessness or both working for a tough love-style foundation that brooks no rule-breaking in return for giving these workers a job.

I know some of the workers because I have sat with them at their graduations at the annual Doe Fund dinner, which draws high-powered executives who want to help themselves while the Doe Fund workers help them and the neighborhoods where they conduct business.

After a two-year "apprenticeship" cleaning streets, during which time the workers must pass regular drug tests, many are offered jobs at major corporations. Since 1990, McDonald said, 1,000 Doe Fund workers have been hired at companies such as Toyota Motor Corp., Gap Inc. and Bloomingdale's Inc.

All was going well with the Queens operations until Sept. 11. The money allocated by the state for the cleanup crews dried up, and it looked as if dirty, trash-littered streets might return.

But Hevesi got a team together --- including merchants from Rego Park --- to commit to picking up the tab for the $44,000-a-year cost of the cleanup crews in Rego Park.

Those merchants --- people like Parker --- staged a fund-raising drive two weeks ago at Parker's deli and raised $4,000 with more commitments. State Sen. Michael Cohen (D-Forest Hills) got the state to cough up another $11,000. With more fund-raisers and direct appeals to merchants, it looks as though enough money will be raised to keep the streets clean at least for this year.

"It was awful before these people showed up," Parker says. "I'd get here early in the morning and the streets looked as though they had been hit by a hurricane of trash."

"This is the perfect circle," says Parker, who grew up in Fresh Meadows and now lives on Long Island. "It's good for these people who have been in jail, or who used drugs; it helps them and they help us."

The merchants are finding an unexpected plus thanks to the 30 Doe Fund workers. (There are 160 workers in Manhattan and 20 in Brooklyn.) Many of the Queens merchants were regularly ticketed by the Department of Sanitation for overflowing garbage and litter. Now the tickets are far less frequent.

Even better, the merchants and the homeowners have literally opened their doors to the workers. Parker often invites them in for sandwiches and coffee.

Irene Monogenis of Forest Hills wrote to McDonald last year about one of his workers, Clinton Speller:

"It is important to note that Clinton's presence represents something greater than the streets he helps to clean and maintain. Clinton represents an entire community.

"His warm greetings, his appropriately measured and intelligent conversations restore a civility, and his steadfastness brings a stability to the community," she added.

Rego Park resident Bill Waranoff is just as enthusiastic. He calls the workers the "men in blue," and says, "I always stop and talk to them."

"I feel that I get as much out of my encounters with the men of the 'Ready, Willing and Able' project as do the men," he said.

I met McDonald years ago when he was serving sandwiches in Grand Central Terminal to the homeless. He was busted often by the police, but he persevered and now runs a foundation that offers hope to men who have lost most of it after years of living on the streets or in prison.

Hevesi said he was grateful that McDonald had agreed to keep his men on the streets while other local pols scrambled to come up with the money to pay him. "He's been on the hook for this," Hevesi said, "and now we're taking him off that hook."