Former symbol of poverty could face life in prison
Though poor herself, she took in 28 others before being convicted of running drug ring
By EVELYN NIEVES
New York Times
PINE RIDGE, S.D. — Here in the poorest corner of the poorest Indian reservation in the country, Geraldine Blue Bird's household was one of the worst off.
Then-President Clinton stopped by her home during his 1999 tour of the nation's most impoverished places.
Blue Bird, who lived on a disability check, was squeezing 28 adults and children, most of whom she had taken in from the streets, into a four-room shack with no plumbing and a pop-up camper out back.
When word got out, donations poured in, and continued for years. Blue Bird even received a brand-new double-wide mobile home with four bedrooms.
But the woman who became a symbol of enduring, desperate poverty in the United States now bunks in a jail cell in Rapid City, some 90 miles to the northwest.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4434394.html