Mike Menner strolled into the reception area of St. Stephen's Human Services, where an hour earlier people had lined up in search of advice on where to find an apartment, a meal, or a bed just for the evening.
"Illinois?" Menner called.
A young man in the first row, dressed in clean but casual clothes, raised his hand. Menner escorted him into a private room and pulled out a folder containing an application from Illinois for a birth certificate, along with a "cheat sheet" that helps Menner negotiate the rules from every state in America on the procedure to obtain a person's birth certificate.
"Illinois" is Kevin, a quiet, polite man who moved to Minnesota and secured a job. But his employer needs identification to complete the employment process, and Kevin's Illinois license has expired. To get a Minnesota ID, he needs a birth certificate, which he's lost somewhere along the many moves that got him here. St. Stephen's is where so many of the poor and homeless turn, looking to have their existence validated.
In 1996, St. Stephen's helped 92 clients find their birth certificates. Last fiscal year, that number was 872. Kevin is just one of those many people, always on the move, who lose track of personal documents. Incredibly, St. Stephen's helps people acquire their birth certificates, then keeps them on file for nine years. They recently retrieved one that they'd gotten for a client in 2006. The man cried.
Menner's attention to the issue has earned him the nickname "the birth certificate savant." But savant infers Menner has only one gift, when he actually is more of a jack of all trades of homeless issues. He helps people on fixed incomes budget and pay their bills, for example.
He's known to be able to cut right through bureaucracy to smooth the way for people moving from homelessness into housing, or help them get a meal after they've been evicted from their homes.
So, it's a good thing he has knife skills, obtained with a culinary degree from a prominent cooking school that was to be his second career, before the crash of 2008. Instead, Menner went back to social work, recently marking 25 years on the job. Now, one of his gifts is to cook for "the guys," as he refers to clients, and for staff parties. He's organized drop-in meals on Thanksgiving and Christmas, casual affairs where people can hang out and reconnect with others from previous meals. For special fundraising dinners, Menner makes pasta sauces and fresh focaccia bread, from scratch.