Rewind three days to last Saturday in Redlands, CA. It’s a sunny afternoon, a far contrast from the weather on a January day elsewhere in the country, as I pull up to the Chevron station on the edge of the downtown section of Redlands. I’m driving my hand-me-down Lincoln Town Car from my grandmother, which has been running on “low” gas for about a week now. One of my roommates, who had owed me over a hundred dollars towards the water bill, has just paid me back and I’m excited to be able to finally fill my tank; a task that will consume fifty of the sixty dollars that I am gleaming to have received.

I enter the station and joke with the nice woman behind the counter about how the high gas prices for the Town Car’s V8 engine cause me to “walk and save money on a gym membership”. As I walk back towards my shining, freshly washed car, a young woman of about 25 years of age approaches me to ask if I can spare a dollar fifty to help her buy a one-day bus pass to get her home to Yucaipa (the neighboring town). Immediately my mind flashes to the discussions we had just a few days prior in my “Hunger and Homelessness” class at the University of Redlands. We had discovered how the expense of a bus pass, which I used to reference as “just a dollar-fifty”, was an extreme financial burden on those whom were forced to take the bus due to poverty. I then asked the woman if she took the bus often in order to get to work and back home. She answered that she rode the bus everyday. Immediately, without a single hesitation, I handed her the $10 that I had left over from paying the attendant to fill my tank.

While I am embarrassed to admit it, I would not have made this same decision a few weeks ago. Yes, I would’ve have given the woman some money, but I most likely would have followed her or accompanied her in order to make sure that the money was going where she claimed it was meant to go. In fact, I had that very experience about two months ago at Union Station in downtown LA. Following this interaction with the woman at that gas station and noticing my change of reaction, I’ve come to reflect heavily on a question of ethics and trust: “Do we trust homeless/impoverished people less strictly because they don’t have a home/look poor?” When you donate money to the Girl Scouts selling you cookies outside Vons or let a friend borrow $10 for dinner, do you question if they will actually spend the money you give them wisely? How about with the homeless man asking for a dollar on the corner just to feed his family? How quickly does your mind jump to assuming that he will just go buy booze and drink the night away until he asks you for that same dollar tomorrow? I don’t know the answer, just food for thought, but I would love to hear your responses, as I wrestle with my own in my head.