If you've spent time waiting on a red light at the intersection of Northern Lights Boulevard and Minnesota Drive in Anchorage, you probably saw Charles Jones Jr. He died at the Anchorage jail over the weekend.
Jones was the tall, slender man who often wore a heavy tan winter coat and tucked his curly hair under a hat. He often sat with a small coterie of homeless people at the edge of the Walgreens parking lot, right under the neon Northern Lights Center sign.
Sometimes, one member of the group would panhandle, darting into the headlights to collect bills. Other times, they'd pass a bottle or a communal meal of fast food or grocery-store takeout.
Department of Corrections officials have so far declined to offer any details of Jones' death at the Anchorage jail, except to say he was found just after noon on Saturday, having been booked on a warrant for a shoplifting charge two days earlier.
Alaska State Troopers said there were no signs of foul play.
Jones was the 14th person to die in an Alaska jail or halfway house this year.
He was 42, but looked older. He had been a homeless alcoholic for the better part of a decade.
The contours of that story are familiar: adolescence, alcohol, addiction and ultimately homelessness with his health compromised by decades of alcoholism.
Series: Man down -- Chronic alcoholism on the streets of Anchorage
What's less familiar is his family's story of devotion to the troubled son and older brother they knew as Charlie, who came to Thanksgiving dinner and got flannel shirts for Christmas even as he lived a precarious existence on the streets of Anchorage. He had a son, now in his 20s, who will travel to Alaska for his father's funeral.
Jones was born in California but grew up mostly in the Anchorage neighborhood of Fairview, said his brother, Christopher Jones, who works as a pastry chef in Anchorage. He was the kind of big brother who would untangle a fishing line or take his little siblings rabbit hunting in Eagle River or Portage.
"He was a protector," Jones said.
He first drank as a teenager.
"From that day forward he couldn't stop," said his sister Jenniffer Herrera, an accountant.
Jones was a functional alcoholic for years, his brother and sister said. He had jobs doing brick work and at the family's bakery and restaurant, Cafe Croissant.
About eight years ago, he detoxed with the help of his mom and strung together nine straight months of sobriety. It was a good time, Herrera said: The family went four-wheeling and fishing. There were Sunday family dinners. Sober, he was quiet and shy. Drunk, he could be mean. He tried living with various family members but it never worked out.
He started drinking again. By then he was in a relationship with a woman who lived on the streets. He became homeless too, camping and sleeping in shelters.
Herrera never saw her brother panhandling. But she'd sometimes run into him at the McDonald's at Arctic Boulevard and Northern Lights Boulevard. Her children would run up and hug their uncle. They'd sit down and share hamburgers, attracting quizzical looks.
"I wasn't ashamed to call him my brother, or sit next to him at McDonald's -- while people stared at us," she said.
Charles asked once if his sister could buy food for his friends, too. He seemed embarrassed to ask. Jones said his brother was known for sharing his food and clothing with his friends on the street.
Once, at her corporate job, someone made a comment about the homeless to Herrera.
"My brother is homeless," she says she responded. "Just because I have a college degree, my other brothers are established and my parents had a business doesn't mean that there aren't people in our families who are sick."
Addiction strikes all kinds of families, she said.
The family also knows almost nothing about how Jones died. But Herrera said his alcoholism was severe enough that he'd go into violent withdrawal symptoms after hours without alcohol.
"Just him going a few hours, he'd vomit and shake and hallucinate," she said.
Autopsy results are pending. The family is planning a memorial service.