Am I the a**hole for basically interrogating a woman who came to our shelter for help?
I (32F) have been volunteering at a women’s emergency shelter every Thursday night for about four years. I do intake – I sit at the front desk, collect ID when people have it, assign beds, go through the rules. It’s not glamorous but I’m good at it and I care about it, and I’ve seen enough by now that I thought I was past the point of being thrown off by anything.
Donna came in three weeks ago on a Thursday night, maybe 9pm, in January cold. She had a rolling suitcase, which is actually common, and a canvas tote from a museum gift shop, which made me look twice. She was maybe 55, hair unwashed but cut in a way that used to cost money. She handed me a New York State ID without me asking, which most people don’t do.
Her name on the ID was Donna Marchetti. I typed it in and kept my face neutral because that’s the job.
But I knew that name. I was pretty sure I knew that name.
I grew up in Rochester and Donna Marchetti was a family court judge there for almost fifteen years. There was a profile of her in the Democrat and Chronicle when I was in high school – my mom had pointed it out because she was one of the first women to hold that seat. I remembered the photo. I remembered thinking she looked like someone who had never once been unsure of anything.
I didn’t say anything during intake. I assigned her a bed, gave her the rules sheet, told her where the showers were.
But I couldn’t let it go. I kept looking over at her from the desk. I told myself I wasn’t going to say anything. I told myself it was none of my business and that whatever brought her here was hers to share or not share and that my job was to make her feel safe, not seen.
I lasted about forty minutes.
I walked over to where she was sitting on her bunk, still in her coat, and I said, “I’m sorry, I just – I think I might recognize you. Did you used to work in Rochester?”
She looked at me for a long time. Not angry. Something worse than angry.
She said, “I know what you’re doing and I need you to understand something.” She said it very quietly, the way people talk when they’ve had to say something hard enough times that they’ve stopped putting any feeling in it.
“I’m not a story. I’m not a lesson. I’m not here so that someone can go home and think about how lucky they are. I’m here because I need a bed.”
I said I was sorry. I went back to the desk.
My supervisor, Trish, was there by then for shift overlap, and I told her what happened, and she said she wasn’t sure I’d done anything wrong but that she also wasn’t sure I’d done anything right. My friends are split – some say I was just being human, some say I crossed a line that exists specifically to protect people in that situation.
But here’s the part I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.
Before I walked away from Donna’s bunk, I glanced down at the open tote bag on the floor beside her.
There was a folder inside. Manila, with a rubber band around it. And on the tab, written in marker, was a case number I recognized – because it was mine.
What That Number Was
I need to back up.
When I was nineteen, my mom left my dad. It was not a clean thing. He contested everything, dragged it out for about two years, and at one point there was a custody dispute over my youngest brother, who was eleven at the time. I was technically an adult by then but I gave a statement. I sat in a waiting room in Rochester with fluorescent lights and a vending machine that ate my dollar and never gave me anything back, and I waited while someone decided what our family was going to look like.
The case number was on every document. My mom kept them in a box in her closet for years. I helped her move twice and each time I carried that box and each time I saw the number on the tabs.
I’m not going to post the number here. But I know it. I know it the way you know your childhood phone number, or the way you know the sound your dad’s car made pulling into the driveway, or the way you know the exact weight of something you carried for a long time.
That number was on Donna Marchetti’s folder.
The Night I Couldn’t Sleep
I drove home at midnight and sat in my car in front of my apartment for probably twenty minutes before I went inside.
I know what it probably means. The most obvious explanation is that she kept case files. That she took work home, or that she held onto things from her time on the bench for reasons that are completely routine and that I don’t understand because I’m not a lawyer. Judges probably have boxes of old case documents. It probably means nothing.
That’s what I kept telling myself.
But here’s the thing about knowing something for a long time: you know when it’s being disturbed. That number sitting in Donna Marchetti’s tote bag, in a shelter, three weeks ago, felt like finding your own name written on a wall in a place you’d never been.
I didn’t sleep well. I made coffee at 6am and called my mom at 7, which I never do, and she picked up on the second ring the way she always does when she knows something’s wrong.
I didn’t tell her about Donna. I asked her if she still had the box.
She said yes. She asked why.
I said I was just thinking about things. She let me get away with it, which is what she does.
What I Actually Did Wrong
I’ve been turning the original question over for three weeks now, and I think I’ve landed somewhere.
Yes, I’m the a**hole. Not for the reason some of my friends think, though.
It’s not that I recognized her. You can’t help what you know. It’s not even that I felt the pull to say something, because that pull is human and I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.
It’s that I acted on it.
Trish has this thing she says during volunteer orientation that I’ve heard maybe a dozen times: people come here to disappear for a night. Not literally. But they need the specific relief of being no one’s interesting story, no one’s complicated situation, no one’s reminder of anything. The shelter works because it offers a few hours of being just a person who needs a bed.
I took that from Donna. For forty minutes, at least. I took it by walking over there, and I took it worse by making her spend words on me when she was sitting on a cot in her coat in January.
She said “I’m not a story.” She had to say that to someone whose literal job was to make her feel safe.
That’s the thing I can’t get past.
The Part That Isn’t About Me
But here’s where it gets complicated. And I know that’s a convenient thing to say when you want to make your guilt about something bigger than yourself, so take this for whatever it’s worth.
Donna Marchetti was a family court judge for fifteen years. She made decisions that changed the shape of people’s lives. She decided where kids slept, who got to be called a parent, what counted as safe enough.
And now she’s sleeping in a shelter.
I don’t say that with any satisfaction. I genuinely don’t. But I do keep thinking about the women who sat across from her in that courtroom and lost. The ones who walked out with less than they came in with. Some of them probably ended up in places like the shelter I volunteer at. Some of them probably sat on that same row of cots.
I don’t know anything about how she did her job. For all I know she was careful and fair and she got it right more than she got it wrong. Lots of judges are.
But I’ve been at that shelter long enough to know that the women who come through are not there because they made one bad choice on one bad night. They’re there because things accumulated. Because systems failed them, or people failed them, or both, for a long time.
And Donna was part of that system for fifteen years.
I don’t know what to do with that. I’m not sure I’m supposed to do anything with it.
The Folder
I went back the following Thursday.
Donna wasn’t there. Trish said she’d stayed two nights and then left, which is common. People move around. They find something else, or they go back to something, or they just move.
I didn’t ask anything else.
But before my shift ended, I pulled up our intake log for that night. I wasn’t looking for anything specific. I told myself I was just reviewing, which is something I do sometimes. It’s part of the job.
Donna’s entry was there. Name, ID number, bed assignment, time in, time out.
Under “belongings noted,” whoever had done the secondary check had written: rolling suitcase, canvas tote, personal documents.
Personal documents.
I closed the log.
I’ve thought about asking Trish if I can see the secondary check form, if there was anything else noted. I’ve thought about calling my mom back and asking her to actually open the box this time, to read me the case number off one of the tabs.
I haven’t done either of those things.
Where I Am Now
My friend Gail, who has known me since college and has a talent for saying the thing I don’t want to hear, told me that what I’m doing right now is the same thing I did at the shelter. That I’m treating Donna like a mystery I’m owed the answer to. That the folder is none of my business, the same way her past was none of my business, and that whatever connection I think exists between her and my family’s case is something I’m building because I need it to mean something.
She’s probably right.
I think about Donna sitting on that cot. Still in her coat. The museum tote on the floor. The folder with the rubber band around it.
I think about the photo in the Democrat and Chronicle, the one my mom showed me. A woman who looked like she’d never been unsure of anything.
I think about what it takes to get from that photo to that cot. How many things have to go wrong, or how many things have to catch up with you, or both.
And I think about what she said.
I’m not a story.
She’s right. She’s not.
But I’m having a hard time believing that folder was just a coincidence. And I don’t know what to do with that except sit with it, which is maybe the only honest thing left.
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If you’re looking for more emotional real-life stories, check out how one person reacted when their mom was sleeping in the park, or read about a missing daughter’s message after seven years. You might also be touched by this account of seeing a father for the first time in fifteen years.
