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Tilted Cat Head
Administrator
Location: Manhattan, NY
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The Bogus Beggar
Quote:
THE BOGUS BEGGAR
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By MARK BULLIET and ADAM TAYLOR
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December 20, 2004 -- EXCLUSIVE
Paula Headley dressed for her job in Midtown — wearing a filthy blanket and a pathetic look on her tear-streaked face.
Then she headed home at the end of a busy day — clad in a casual-chic jogging outfit and a warm hat.
Meet the Fifth Avenue faker — a fixture for four years on the famous thoroughfare, where she begs change from high-fashion shoppers.
Last Saturday, camped out in front of the Louis Vuitton store, it took her only 20 minutes to collect $18 in bills, several dollars more in coins and one cup of cocoa from a middle-aged man who also gave her a gentle warning, "Careful, it's hot."
When work was over for the day, Headley hobbled slowly across Fifth Avenue, doubled over as if in pain.
She walked into a telephone kiosk — and, like Superman, emerged transformed.
Wearing her jogging clothing, she stood straight up, took a sip of the cocoa and strode off.
Headley, 36, claims the blanket, the tears, the bent-over shuffle are no Christmas con.
The blanket?
"That's what I use to wrap myself to go to sleep anyway," she explained.
And the slow, shuffling walk?
That, she said, was because she didn't "want to step on [her blanket] or trip."
But what about those tears?
"If you hold your eyes open long enough, they come down your face," she said. "Or you sit back, you reminisce on the past and it makes you sad."
But she admits the blanket does help her cash flow.
"It takes a long time to get $10" when she's wearing her store-bought clothes, she said.
"When I go out with my blanket, the money comes fast."
Harry Yancey, a security guard at Van Cleef & Arpels, said that before Headley upgraded to a blanket, she'd lie on the street wrapped only in black garbage bags.
"I think she's a con artist," he said. "I pity con artists. To go through that routine is hard. She deserves whatever she earns."
Another area worker was less sympathetic.
"She gets paid more than I do," he said. He estimated that "on a good day, [she makes] $200 at least."
Headley insists she deserves all the sympathy she gets.
She said she wound up on the streets when she lost both her parents at age 24.
"I basically just gave up," she said. "I stopped going to church."
She used to sleep in the station at 57th Street and Sixth Avenue, but when she hit the jackpot with her penniless pageant she gave up sleeping on a bench for nicer digs — an apartment on 123rd Street where she stays with a friend.
Not counting handfuls of coins or the price of a cocoa, the $18 she earned last Saturday would average to a comfortable tax-free $103,680 a year — if she could lie on her corner 40 hours a week. City panhandling laws make that impractical, but Midtown observers say she moves from corner to corner to escape notice.
"Sometimes worried people call EMS for her," Yancey said. "When they come, she gets up and says, 'I'm all right.' "
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Really gets my goat these kinds of "beggars." I know that there are plenty of desrving people out there but the charlatans really make it worse for those that do have real needs.
I've seen people like her for years here in NYC. It's a shame and a sham.
I can honestly say I've become quite jaded and no longer "give" directly to people like I used to.
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