Homeless in life. Unclaimed in death. Bucks County group takes remains of 2 homeless

Editor’s note: This news organization has told the stories of the unclaimed dead and their impact on the community in 2019. As of this publication, at least 179 people have been removed from morgues and found their final resting places. But hundreds more remain unclaimed in Bucks and Montgomery counties. You can find their names and other information on our website unclaimed database.

A little more than two years ago, nurse Brandi Stewart met Shane Estopinal and George Kaucher, homeless men with life-threatening medical conditions living in the hidden corners of Bucks County.

At the time, Family Service Association Raising awareness of street medicine the program that Stewart manages was a recently launched mobile effort that he interacts with the homeless to support their immediate medical and basic survival needs to keep them from dying on the streets of Bucks County.

She and her team members visit customers in the places they call home. They arrange doctor visits, transport them to appointments (sometimes to the emergency room), monitor their health and deliver their prescribed medications. They help them apply for medical assistance and food benefits.

Outreach workers looked after the men as family, because that’s what they considered clients.

After the men died, the nonprofit agency wanted to find a way to continue caring for them.

“They both deserved a dignified place to be at the end with people who cared about them,” Stewart said, “despite a lot of what they’ve been through.”

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Who was Shane Estopinal and how did he spend his last months?

In the summer of 2022, Stewart received a disturbing call about a potential Street Medicine client.

A man with a softball-sized tumor on his neck showed up at the Bucks County Emergency Shelter in Bristol Township, which is operated by the Family Services Association.

That day, she spent an hour talking with Estopinal, a Louisiana native who has retained his Cajun style and Southern manners. He told Stewart he slept in an abandoned bus parked in the lot of a Morrisville business.

Every day he walked the 7 miles to the shelter looking for a meal. He didn’t mind, though; Estopinal said he likes to walk. He also loved his Bible.

“He was sweet,” Stewart said. “He used to call me Miss Brandi.”

Stewart arranged for Estopinal to see a doctor, who diagnosed him with lymphoma, a treatable type of lymph cancer. He moved into an extended-stay hotel in Bensalem, which the outreach program uses to house its sickest clients.

He started chemotherapy, and his health seemed to be improving, Stewart said.

So when he stopped answering her calls and didn’t come to the door when she visited in February 2023, Stewart knew something was wrong. Estopinal was not one to ignore a chance to speak.

After three days of no contact, Stewart asked Princess Maloney, an outreach case manager, to check on him.

Maloney had to ask management to open the door for him. Inside Estopinal was found kneeling on the floor beside his bed, his Bible open on the table and a pair of rosary beads on the bed.

The autopsy determined that he died of an accidental drug overdose. He was 44 years old.

Despite numerous searches and attempts to contact the family, no one has been found. Ten months later, the Bucks County Coroner asked for Stewart’s next of kin.

Estopinal talked about a sister in Louisiana, Stewart recalled, but she had no phone number. He once mentioned that he was married and talked about a woman named Helen and how he would meet her one day in heaven.

The news that Estopinal had no one to claim his remains bothered Stewart.

“I was sad to think it was sitting on a shelf,” she said.

George Kaucher, a man who never complained, always grateful

Shortly after meeting Estopinal, Stewart received a referral for George Kaucher, a former truck driver and type 2 diabetic with a bone condition that affected his legs, making it difficult for him to walk.

He was also addicted to prescription opiates.

“He was always in pain,” Stewart said. “He had leg injuries all the time.”

Not that Kaucher was a complainer, Stewart said.

“He never had a bad thing to say about anybody,” she said. “George was a very sweet person. He was a good friend, really. He was always grateful and kind, even when the situations weren’t ideal.”

Stewart moved Kaucher and his girlfriend into a room at the Bensalem Extended Stay Motel. He began treatment for his feet and legs and Stewart drove him regularly to the wound care center in Warminster.

But between his chronic conditions and opiate addiction, Kaucher lost his leg, then part of a leg, then the other leg and several toes, Stewart said.

His girlfriend also died of a drug overdose during a six-month period when the couple lost touch with Stewart.

She last saw Kaucher after he returned to the area over the summer, she said. He reached out after running out of insulin.

His sadness over the loss of his girlfriend, who had diabetes, was evident, Stewart said.

“I think a part of him died with her,” she added.

Four months later, she learned from another social service agency that police had found Kaucher dead in his wheelchair in the woods near the Bensalem motel where he was staying. He was 42 years old.

His cause of death is still pending, according to the coroner’s office, but Stewart suspects it was a drug overdose.

Street Medicine Outreach workers could not leave clients behind

After his death, Stewart learned that Kaucher’s remains, like Estopinal’s, were also unclaimed.

Losing her client and friend was hard enough on Stewart. But the thought of him in storage at the county morgue weighed on her grief. She mentioned this in a meeting with her boss, Family Services Association CEO Julie Dees.

Dees suggested contacting the medical examiner’s office to see if the agency can claim him and Estopinal.

Stewart didn’t know if that was an option, but the agency reached out. The coroner’s office agreed.

Stewart and Cinquetta Fisher, a nurse educator with Raising awareness of street medicinehe picked up the ashes on December 18, three days before Homeless Memorial Daywhich is observed on December 21, the longest night of the year and two days before Dees works her last day at the nonprofit.

A glass-fronted curio cabinet was commissioned for where the ashes will be kept. It will be stored in Stewart’s office at the agency’s Middletown headquarters.

The practice has room for more homeless clients if needed, Dees said.

“They were good, good people,” Stewart added. “We wanted a happier ending, but we can give them a dignified ending.”

Reporter Jo Ciavaglia can be reached at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on the Bucks County Courier Times: Bucks County, PA nonprofit is holding the remains of two homeless men it helped