dumbfoundry

JACKIE SHEELER was among the first purveyors of one of the most successful street hustles ever to hit New York. In the early 80s, she was a strung-out heroin addict weighing in at about 100 pounds. As the news of the AIDS epidemic first made the papers, she put on a business suit that hung off her and sat on a corner near Wall Street with a sign that read: "AIDS cost me my job."

"In about 20 minutes I had $80, and I knew I had a good con going. The problem was that you could only stay on a corner so long before it got busted out. I eventually started working the subways, which is a lot harder, but I still made money."

Luckily for Sheeler—given her addiction history—she never did get AIDS. What she did get, however, was her life together. By 1989, she'd enrolled in a drug program. Having always wanted to write, Sheeler went back to her muse, started writing poems and eventually garnered success in that tough field. For the last five years, she has run a Friday-night open mic for poetry reading at the Cornelius St. Cafe; she also started poetz.com to help neophyte scribblers. What's unusual about Sheeler's pedigree is that she was raised in the Bath Beach section of Brooklyn by a street cop. [...]

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