View 2013 El Monte Homeless Count Route in a larger map.

Detective Ray Larriva held Vicky Martinez’s hand as she gingerly picked her way down the rocky bank of the dried up San Gabriel River. The precarious climb was only exacerbated by the near pitch-black darkness created by the Ramona Boulevard bridge above, the 8 p.m. rising moon in the distance.

“You see those lights over there? How many do you think there are?” El Monte Police Department’s Detective Larriva asked the City of El Monte councilwoman. 

“Two, maybe three,” Martinez replied.

A dog barked in the darkness and the flashlight beams swept across a pile of blankets, a man, a woman and the shining eyes of a dog cradled in the woman’s arms.

Larriva, Martinez and Larriva’s partner, Detective Ed Nafarrate, were a three-person team participating in the first night of the 2013 Homeless Count on Tuesday, and they had just run across the first homeless people of the night.

The Homeless Count is a biannual event conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), a Joint Powers Authority. LAHSA coordinates and manages federal, state, county and city funds to support programs directed toward homeless assistance in the county and city of Los Angeles.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night, LAHSA recruited volunteers and partnered with local city officials to conduct a survey of how many homeless actually live within L.A. County lines.

Tuesday night in El Monte, Sgt. Roger Cobian briefed volunteers on what to expect during the count.

“Your safety is number one," Cobian said. "We’re not asking you to go and try to change anybody’s life tonight. You’re changing the lives by counting people. It is that simple. But we can’t do it alone.”

Of about 80 people gathered in the main hall of the Jack Crippen Senior Center - temporary headquarters for the El Monte Homeless Count - about half were volunteers, a quarter were city officials and another quarter were El Monte police officers.

After the training was finished, volunteers were paired into teams then sent off to cover census tracts that divided the city into coverage areas.

“Drive behind the gas station, go around the business if possible,” Cobian advised. “Nobody needs to jump a fence, and nobody needs to say, ‘Hey if you’re in there, please come out.’ Don’t need to do that. We just want to visually count people.”

Volunteers gathered up into teams, armed with clipboards and flashlights, then set off into the waiting night.

Martinez climbed into an unmarked black and white Ford SUV with Detectives Larriva and Nafarrate, wrapped in a thick black scarf and knee-high boots. 

“We’re going to the 605 [freeway] and Ramona, which we’ll probably have a lot of people under there,” Larriva said, en route to the homeless encampment. “Some of them are probably gonna run just ‘cause by virtue of seeing a black and white. They’re going to think its enforcement as opposed to us counting them.”

As the detectives and councilwoman alighted from the car, a few lights flickered in the darkness beneath the Ramona Boulevard bridge.

Nafarrate stepped ahead, flashlight in hand, while Larriva helped Martinez navigate the trash-strewn rocky floor between the support columns of the bridge.

The detectives shone their lights here and there, showing the councilwoman cut-off aluminum cans and wires stripped of copper wire, signs of drug users’ presence.

In the middle of the wash, the small team came across Johnny, Regina and their dog, Tater Tot.

When asked what it was like living under the bridge, Johnny and Regina both replied that it was rough.

“It’s cold, it’s rainy,” Regina said. “They have the winter shelter but, you know, unfortunately we have our dog and we can’t take him with us. He’s like our kid.”

Martinez noted a long stick beside Johnny and asked if it was a crutch, but he said it was for the coyotes.

“They come in packs," he said. "So sometimes we need to protect ourselves.”

Johnny continued, “We don’t enjoy this officer, you know what I mean? I get my [social security], $671 a month. Trying to have enough money to get into a place, it’ll cost you $1,000, $1,500. I don’t have that. So unfortunately we’re down here. We’ll rent a motel for a week and the rest of it’s gone.”

About a mile downriver, underneath the 10 freeway, the Homeless Count team spotted Monica Foster trying to keep warm in a gray hoodie after a quick bath in the 40 degree weather.

Larriva reassured Foster that they weren’t there to incriminate her, only to help provide services for her.

“Counseling. That’s what I want very badly,” said Foster, who shared about being abused by family members in the past. But when it came to her own kids, she wanted to make sure they would not suffer homelessness with her.

“I gave up my kids when I knew it was going to happen, when I was going to spend the night in my car,” Foster said.

Though all Larriva, Nafarrate and Martinez were charged to do that night was count how many homeless were living under the Ramona Boulevard bridge, the count is meant to help administrators know how to allocate funds and services to help people like Johnny, Regina and Foster.

The 2011 Homeless Count found that there were 51,340 homeless in Los Angeles County, and 23,539 of them lived in the City of Los Angeles.

Complete results of the 2013 Homeless Count will not be available until the summer, but the volunteers’ and city officials’ exposure to the homeless community’s experiences may incite change far sooner than the return on the actual numbers.

Back at the Jack Crippen Senior Center, Concha Olah counted hash marks on clipboards being dropped off by volunteers done counting their census tracts. With about two-thirds of the clipboards turned in, Olah had counted over 40 hash marks.

Olah was a volunteer for the Homeless Count but she could have added another hash mark for herself. Olah is also homeless. 

Among the top homeless needs that Olah mentioned were medical services and affordable housing. 

“Sometimes there are shelters but because people are mentally sick, like some women or even men get assaulted just trying to go to the bathroom or the shower. It’s just tough,” Olah said.

Martinez shared the same sentiment about the toughness of the situation.

“It’s good that we can come out and see these folks and take the count, and the reality is that we can eventually get funding for our homeless population,” Martinez said. “But the fact that we do have a homeless population, it’s real. That’s tough. It’s really tough to see.”

Reach Contributor Grace Y. Lim here.