How one sheriff's office program is helping hard-to-reach drug users
CHICAGO - A woman emerged from a blanket-draped tent in Chicago's Austin neighborhood on a brisk November morning to find a half-dozen people from the Cook County sheriff's office lingering on the sidewalk.
"Am I in trouble?" she asked. "I didn't do nothing."
The woman, 37, had been camping beneath a railroad overpass with her boyfriend for a year, and she had every problem in the book: drug addiction, mental issues, poor health, malnutrition and an infant lost to foster care, to say nothing of homelessness.
She had sought assistance many times, she said, but something always seemed to get in the way, whether an indifferent bureaucrat or a
