On the Bering Sea coast, 100 miles below the Arctic Circle, Eugene Iknokinok is homeless.
For years the 44-year-old has slept in abandoned cars and under buildings in Nome. He's suffered frostbite and awoken stiff with cold.
In January a man he described as his best friend was found frozen along the seawall downtown. Iknokinok had lost friends before, he said. But this time something changed.
The death of 40-year-old Lyle Okinello prompted a loose group of volunteers to collect some old Army cots and create an emergency shelter at a local church, offering up to 20 spots for Nome's homeless on the coldest nights.
"It woke up the city," Iknokinok said on a recent weeknight in an interview from Nome, the Norton Sound wind buzzing in the speakers of a borrowed cell phone. "It had to take a person's death to realize that we are homeless up here, too."
As he talked, Iknokinok was trying to find shelter near a local library. He said he wore a Carhartt cap his dead friend gave him for Christmas.
"I'm standing right next to where he passed away," he said.
Norton Sound Health Corp. estimates about 20 people are homeless in Nome. Iknokinok figures the number is slightly higher.
Either way, the new shelter is the first effort to provide shelter to the homeless in more than 10 years for the city, said Melanie Edwards, vice president of the regional non-profit Kawerak Inc.
MOVIE SETTLEMENT FUNDS SHELTER
The average January temperature in Nome is about 6 above -- roughly 9 degrees cooler than Anchorage, according to the Western Region Climate Center. Unlike some regional hubs, Nome has long allowed liquor sales and bars can provide a warm refuge until closing time at 2 a.m.
While a string of outdoor deaths this summer and fall in Anchorage rallied homeless advocates in Alaska's largest city, people have been freezing to death and going missing in Nome for decades. The FBI reviewed two dozen missing person and death cases, concluding in 2006 that excessive alcohol and the winter climate were often a common link.
Universal Pictures released a movie in November that blamed the disappearances and deaths on alien abductions. The thriller's marketing claimed the tale was a true story and included fake Alaska "news" stories attributed to real media outlets.
Facing criticism, the movie studio agreed to a legal settlement with state news organizations that gave the new Nome shelter $5,000, said Abby Huggins, a shelter organizer.
The money will pay for expenses like church utilities and cleaning supplies, said Huggins. She's part of the Nome Emergency Shelter Team, a collection of volunteers who launched the program using cots from the National Guard armory.
Another member, Linda Kimoktoak, works for the Nome tribe.
The man who died in January was the brother of a good friend, she said. "At that time I said, 'That's enough. We need to do something and we need to do it now.' "
There's no reason people should be dying of exposure in a city the size of Nome, population 3,600, Kimoktoak said.
Now whenever the temperature dips to 10 below -- or 20 below with windchill -- organizers open a church building for the night. Coffee, tea and breakfast are offered. Sometimes there's pizza, Iknokinok said.
The shelter re-opened for the first time this winter on Nov. 16, Huggins said. Seven people stayed that night.
LONG-TERM SOLUTION SOUGHT
Another group in Nome is seeking a long-term shelter building and treatment center that could include detox services.
In August a team of regional leaders from Kawerak, the health corporation and the school district called on the Rural Alaska Community Action Program to extend a treatment program for homeless, chronic alcoholics to the city. A meeting is planned for next month.
Alcohol-related emergency room visits in Nome have doubled over the past decade, following the closure of a recovery center in 2000, the Bering Strait Leadership Team said in a resolution.
Over the past two weeks it hasn't been cold enough for the shelter to open, so Iknokinok stayed at least one night at the hospital, he said Saturday. He went to the E.R., intoxicated.
They put him in the hallway to make room for other patients and checked his breath in the morning to make sure he was sober enough to leave, Iknokinok said.
Huggins expects to open the shelter again this week.
Travelers from surrounding villages sometimes get stuck in Nome and need a place to stay, but for now shelter users tend to be local homeless, she said.
That may change early next year around Iditarod time, when more villagers visit the city, she said.
OKINELLO FONDLY REMEMBERED
Iknokinok's family moved to Nome roughly 40 years ago from St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea.
He's been homeless for 15 years, Iknokinok said. Maybe 20. He goes to the food bank, soup kitchen and church for food.
He's thankful for the new shelter and the volunteers who work there, he said.
Iknokinok described Okinello, the friend whose death launched the shelter, as kind and funny and helpful. Okinello's mother, Martha Richards, lives in Anchorage and would send both men Christmas gifts.
Hats. Clothes.
Richards said her son was indeed homeless but had planned to go live with family in Gambell on St. Lawrence Island. She doesn't know why he didn't stay with friends or family in Nome the night he died.
He had many friends but could be stubborn, she said. He was sick and had a bad back. Maybe he was in pain.
"I guess he didn't know where to go," she said.
Read The Village, the ADN's blog about rural Alaska, at adn.com/thevillage. Twitter updates: twitter.com/adnvillage. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334.
By KYLE HOPKINS
khopkins@adn.com