Jerry Baack’s gruff voice and smiling eyes can make anyone feel at home. Like Colfax Avenue, his stories are often all-at-once edgy, beautiful, hilarious, and tragic. As we sat overlooking Colfax outside Triple Tree Cafe on a sunny Sunday, our conversation easily danced between stories about his life, the things that bring him joy (children, his dogs, and metal detectors were common themes) and the history and complexities of the street around us. 

“Last weekend I took a birthday party of a bunch of 8-year-olds metal detecting in Cheesman Park. It was fun as heck. I’d be up to do that again any day. I threw about 300 pennies out there. They had no idea.” 

Jerry oozes largess. He bought a motorcycle off a man to send him to rehab; he loans $100 to the same two people every month; he bought the little boy next door birthday presents. He greets a passerby in Spanish as the man runs to work. “I bought that guy a grill when someone stole his because he makes the best mole in Denver,” Jerry said with a laugh. Halfway through our conversation, he slips me a necklace featuring a chunky purple stone. 

Jerry’s greatest gift to Colfax is his awareness of others’ wellbeing. He knows the exact age of his elderly neighbors and the marital problems of seemingly half of Denver. Countless people turn to him for comfort. “I have this thing called Jerr-apy” he says with a chuckle. “I get a lot of calls about some Jerr-apy.” He told me about his friend, a gay veteran of the Iraq War. They used to take long walks together. “You know, she was on solid ground with me,” he says somberly. “But she had the visions, she had the demons.” 

Many of Jerry’s saddest stories are about homelessness and mental illness. Jerry walks the streets almost every day, keeping an eye on the neighborhood. He is no stranger to tragedy —he has found eight bodies, he says, the most recent one in his own basement. “I loaded bodies in Vietnam,” he says. “I guess you could say I have an ‘I’m used to it’ thing.” 

“I was born and raised in a small town in Iowa. Went to Vietnam, never went to back Iowa. I tried living in Denver when I first got back from Vietnam and I couldn’t handle it. I just couldn’t be around a lot of people. I went and lived in Montana and got my brain back. And then I came back to Denver and went to work at Coors.” 

I ask Jerry about what can be done to address homelessness. “It’s hard to address it,” he says slowly. He rattles off a list of nearby mental health clinics that have shut down due to budget cuts. “We’re making all these fancy highways here and there, and it’s not right… it all starts with mental health and drug and alcohol treatment.” 

Mental health is personal for Jerry—many of his loved ones and acquaintances have suffered from “demons.” Jerry gets quiet when we talk about this. “It’s one of the most real things that can happen to someone,” he says. 

As we are talking, a man with a bandaged foot comes up behind Jerry. A few nights ago, Jerry called an ambulance for the man, whose toe was severely injured—leaving a trail of blood behind him, which Jerry followed. “He didn’t even know what had happened to him. That’s my point—[homeless people] don’t know real from not-real anymore… reality is no longer.”  

Two young men approach us for help. Jerry and I each buy them a burrito. They chat as they eat. Jerry sternly talks to them about the “real world.” I feel sad as they leave. Jerry fiddles with his metal detector and watches them wander off. Does a burrito really solve anything? Maybe that’s not the point.