How a Story Tipster Became Its Subject

This “backstory” is a part of a collection of articles that describes some of the obstacles that Seven Days reporters faced while pursuing Vermont news, events and people in 2025.

Seven Days was about to shut down for Christmas last year when an email from a coworker caught my eye.

In it, Gillian English explained that Burlington urban park ranger Neil Preston had just stopped by the office. He wanted the newspaper to know about a homeless person who was willing to discuss his experience living on the city’s streets. Preston provided the man’s name — David — and said he was living in the lower dugouts at Calahan Park.

“Preston said he thinks the guy has an interesting story,” Gillian wrote.

I knew “the guy.” In fact, I’d been worried about him for a long time. David, a bearded man in his sixties struggling with alcoholism, had lived in a sober house that shuttered with little notice just before Thanksgiving 2021. I published a story then about the closure, describing how David and his neighbors had been turned out on the streets in wintertime.

David and I stayed in touch for many months after that. Our hope was that I would eventually write a story about his life as a homeless man in Burlington. At my request, he managed to compile a folder of bank statements and brought them to Seven Days so I could see how he was spending his money. I later accompanied David to a medical appointment at a homeless health clinic, but clinicians refused to let me inside, despite David’s consent.

Then he vanished. David stopped answering his phone; later, the phone line was disconnected. I wrote to local officials who I thought might know him. I called his probation officer but never heard back. As time passed, I looked for his name in spreadsheets of death certificates.

As soon as I saw Gillian’s email that day in December, I pulled on my coat and drove to Calahan Park. I spotted crumpled tent fabric in a baseball dugout near some malt liquor cans — but no David. After the holiday break, I visited the dugout three more times. Each time, the snow drifts had grown taller, but the business card I’d placed next to the tent remained untouched.

As my search for David resumed, I also became curious about the other guy, Preston. He’d dropped by the office just to say someone might want to talk to the man living in the dugout across town? Government employees don’t do that.

Actually, no one does that.

I emailed Preston while standing in the empty dugout. Soon we started talking, and I learned that David wasn’t our only shared acquaintance. Preston had served as a groomsman in the wedding of two other homeless Burlingtonians whom I’d previously gotten to know and interviewed.

Preston, I realized, surveyed Burlington each day from an unusual vantage point. His task was to enforce rules at city parks at a time when those parks had also become “homeless shelters.” Over the summer, seven months after we met, Preston and his bosses agreed to let me tag along with him and fellow park ranger Daniel “Jake” Payne as they performed their challenging work.

Meanwhile, David and I finally reconnected by phone. David explained that he was taking care of an ailing family member at her home outside the city. He said he didn’t get back to Burlington often; we haven’t met up since.

David and Preston have, though. This fall, after my story about the park rangers ran on the cover of Seven Days, they met for lunch and sent me a photo. Both were smiling.

The original print version of this article was headlined “Most Fruitful Connection”