Timothy Russell didn’t open up to just anybody, but he did to Sally Munoz and Brandon Willette.
Munoz and Willette, two of his coworkers at the downtown Mexican restaurant Dos Amigos, knew Russell as a gentle person with a positive attitude, someone who always had a smile on his face.
“He just came and did what he had to do, and he would never complain about anything,” Munoz said. “He was just a good person, and not enough people saw that side of him.”
Russell, who was 29, told them about his teenage son and how important it was that they see each other as often as possible. It was obvious to both coworkers that, no matter what was going on in Russell’s life, he really cared about how his friends were doing and tried his best to be there for them.
Munoz and Willette also knew that Russell had been living outside since at least the start of last winter.
They knew he’d struggled with his belongings being stolen – his sleeping bag, his backpack, his medication – and with weather or wildlife making it hard to get enough rest before showing up for work. They knew he avoided group encampments and would sometimes would stay in the woods near Memorial Field.
He wasn’t the type of person to “no call, no show” to his dishwashing job.
When Russell didn’t come into work in June, Munoz and Willette began to worry. He’d left behind his medication, which he’d started storing in his locker for safe-keeping, and bug spray they’d recently brought him – a lifeline after a rain-drenched May.
They feared the worst a few days later when a body was found near the city sports complex. The state medical examiner confirmed those fears the following month.
“It’s really sad to me,” Willette said. “He didn’t get a chance to see his kid grow up.”
To many of those mourning him, Russell is the tragically common example of how difficult and complicated it can be for people to exit homelessness.
In separate interviews with the Monitor, Russell’s family, friends and support workers echoed a similar refrain.
“Timmy tried,” said Freeman Toth, the housing stabilization and street outreach manager at the Community Action Program. “He really tried.”
“He knew he needed help, and he asked for help, and that’s all it should take,” Toth added.
Working together in the kitchen at Dos Amigos, Russell had told Donelle Thomas that he was on the verge of obtaining housing with the help of his case worker.
Thomas met Russell a decade ago when they were both bussers at Olive Garden. When they reunited at Dos Amigos, Thomas was glad he was back in her life.
Russell had been working closely with the Concord Coalition to End Homelessness to apply for housing assistance, Executive Director Karen Jantzen confirmed.
“Tim had completed all his paperwork for housing,” Jantzen said. “We knew of an upcoming opening in one of our properties in July, and he was first on the waitlist.”
Knowing how close he came to finding housing left Thomas not only grief-struck but angry.
“He was close,” Thomas said, “but it just didn’t come in time.”
Russell grew up in Concord with his four brothers: two older, one younger and a twin named Tom, who declined to be interviewed.
Tim was smart and athletic, his mother, Becky, recalled — he ran track and joined the chess club in high school — but he didn’t enjoy school and got his GED instead. Later, he held a number of different jobs as a dishwasher, landscaper and an event tent installer. A lover of everything tropical, he had a soft spot for mangos.
His younger brother, James Russell, remembers Tim as someone who kept his friends close.
“He was quiet, but that didn’t stop him from having a lot of friends,” said James. “He was the life of the party, and you wouldn’t even know it.”
Things hadn’t always been smooth with his own family, and he got in trouble with the law when he was a teenager. Still, Russell sought to be an attentive father to his young son, his mother said. He liked to hike and fish, especially when he could bring his son along with him.
“He loved his son, Mason, more than anything in the whole world,” Becky said. At a memorial she organized for him at the Salvation Army Church on Aug. 23, attendees spilled out the door.
Sayre Moskwa had only known Russell for about a year, but they often shared online posts back and forth or confided in one another. They talked often, she said, about his son and how Mason motivated Tim to improve his life.
“He wanted to have an apartment, he wanted to take care of his son. He really wanted to do all those things,” she said. “He’d always just say he wanted to be better for his son.”
Russell experienced depression and anxiety for most of his life, acutely at times. In the years after high school, he first sought treatment through local providers but hit stumbling blocks.
Following a treatment plan and accessing medication grew harder when he lost his housing, and Russell occasionally turned to alcohol or other substances to help him survive difficult nights.
Russell found he could talk openly about that with Willette, his coworker who was also in recovery.
“He tried to be at 100%, showered and stuff, when he’d come into work, but it’s really hard when you can’t even get a good night’s rest,” Willette said. “At some point out in the elements, it’s a matter of, ‘Do I sleep tonight for work tomorrow or not?'”
Becky Russell and her son didn’t speak much over the last year, but she kept tabs on him through a few of his close friends. She prayed every night that he would find a place to call his own.
Becky had helped her son find his last residence, a room on Main Street, but after he was evicted last year she said that he’d wanted to figure things out on his own.
“He really wanted to be independent,” she said. “That’s ok. I know he loved me and he knew that I loved him.”
When he went missing in June, Becky drove around Concord, Manchester, Chichester, Epsom and Pembroke with fliers and shared them across social media. Initial reports that the body found at Memorial Field had been long deceased gave her false hope.
“Who wants to think that it was their child?” she said. “You’re not supposed to lose your child at 29 years old.”
Russell was one of three people who had died while experiencing homelessness whose remains were found within the span of two months in Concord. An autopsy did not find foul play, but its details have not been released publicly pending the permission of his family.
Thomas, who worked with Russell at Dos Amigos, hopes his death will be a wake-up call for city and state leaders.
“There are mutual aid efforts in Concord, in New Hampshire,” she said, “But there just seems to be a great sea of need and no will among our political or economic system to fix the problem.”
At the Community Action Program, Toth has been among those driving conversations about a sanctioned encampment in the city that would give people like Russell a safe place to camp while they work on getting services and permanent housing.
“There’s a lot of, ‘Why can’t they just'” in casual conversation about people experiencing homelessness,” Toth said. “I don’t think people know what it’s like to prioritize a meal or a shower over something else.”
Toth keeps a gallery of photos of program participants who have died while experiencing homelessness.
She calls them participants, as opposed to clients, because they had to want to engage with CAP support.
Tim Russell was a participant.
“He sits behind me now,” Toth said.