Vendor Spotlight : Timothy Harriman
Photo by Douglas Harding
Timothy Harriman is the kind of person I can listen to for hours, giving full attention—in fact, I have. But storytelling is only one of Timothy’s many talents and passions.
Like many people I’ve met through my service with HoH-Share, Inc., Timothy is full of knowledge, life experience, and artistic ability. But more than anything, he values service.
“I’m most passionate about keeping my promise to God in serving him. Everything I do is for that motive, in one way or another,” he says. “I’m very passionate about helping the helpless, giving hope to the hopeless—because I’ve been there.”
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Timothy and his family found their way to Wheeling when he was four. Timothy has spent much of his adult life traveling state-to-state, often in pursuit of work opportunities. He’s been to Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, New Jersey, Florida, California, Nevada, Baltimore, and other places he can’t always remember.
“Now, I’ve been back living in Wheeling for the past 15 years,” he says. “I consider Wheeling my home.”
One of Timothy’s earliest ventures away from Wheeling came in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew touched down in Florida, and he decided to drive south seeking volunteer work. He stayed in Florida for nine months, spending most of that period helping to rebuild a local church building during the days and sleeping in a tent through the night. Afterward, he returned to Wheeling to begin studying education at West Virginia Northern Community College.
“I was going to be a pre-school teacher,” Timothy says. “I was really interested in helping people with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities.”
In his first semester, a professor told Timothy he possessed a “gift” for helping people and recommended he study child psychology. But after transferring to West Liberty State College (now West Liberty University), which did not offer a child psychology program, Timothy decided to study art and special education. When his favorite professor at West Liberty retired, he decided to change his major again, this time to business.
“I had lost my anchor,” he says. “The art department changed. It was chaos. In that chaos, I thought to myself, ‘I can’t do this.’ And I thought I could always make money in business. I went totally mercenary, totally in the opposite direction.”
But before he could acquire a business degree, Timothy got into a car accident that changed his life forever.
“I almost lost my life,” he says. “I got very depressed, and I disappeared for three semesters. Mortality can change your whole worldview.”
Timothy was put on academic probation by the university before dropping out. He returned to working odd jobs wherever he could find them- as a cook at DeFelice Bros.; working with his brother doing construction; working on kitchens and bathrooms; working at Olive Garden; laying carpet and doing tile work. Eventually, in all this movement from job to job and place to place, Timothy found trouble.
“I was just doing all these side jobs, and one of the guys I worked with at this time was a heavy drug user, and somehow, he got me into using drugs, too,” he says. “Then, I even started dealing drugs to support my habit.”
Within the unrelenting grips of addiction, Timothy continued this way of living right up to the point when he felt he no longer could: Something had to change.
“There was one night when I just couldn’t stop [using],” he says. “I remember saying to myself that night, ‘Damn, I really can’t stop. I can’t stop. I know I need to stop. I need to stop or I’m not even going to have any left to sell so I can get more.’”
Even knowing this, Timothy found himself unable to quit using, his mind racing out of control.
“I did everything I had, all of it right there on that table. My heart started pounding and skipping beats and I was just sitting there sweating. I was stroking out,” he says. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘Well, this is it. I did it. I just killed myself.’”
At that moment, Timothy decided once more to look upward rather than inward. He began praying to God for the first time in nearly a decade. He apologized to God and promised that if he survived the night, he would find a way of serving again—and this time, he would never quit.
“It was like someone had flipped on a light switch,” Timothy says. “The tension drained out of my body from the top of my head and down to my toes. I just stayed there and went to sleep.”
The next morning, Timothy awakened to a ringing phone. His cousin said he was driving through town on his way to Arizona and offered Timothy a spot along the ride. The two took turns driving his cousin’s truck from Wheeling until they arrived at Mormon Lake Lodge in Arizona, about 30 miles southeast of Flagstaff. While living in his cousin’s camper at Mormon Lake, Timothy found the freedom, time, and utter willpower he needed to “dry out” from using drugs.
“I spent two weeks just screaming, sleeping, drinking water and eating hardly any food because I had no appetite,” he says. “I remember people asking if I was OK because they said they could hear me screaming in my sleep.”
After several weeks sober, Timothy learned he had been staying at a place called “Rehab Row,” where drug users go to detox and begin the process of getting sober. Timothy says his stay at Rehab Row is a time marker of when he “started to get [his] life back together.”
Following some months spent working as a cook in Arizona, Timothy decided one day to sell his belongings and purchase a train ticket to Pittsburgh before driving a rental car back to Wheeling.
Having returned to Wheeling, Timothy noticed an increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness throughout town. One day, he decided to do a Google search for the word ‘homelessness,’ curious to learn and hoping to find ways to help.
“It said not to give cash to homeless people, but to talk to them,” he says. “[It said], ‘Homeless people don’t get talked to. Most people avoid eye contact with them. People shun them.’ Growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, I knew what shunning was and how much that hurts people. So, I decided I would start talking to homeless people. And when they asked for money, I’d say, ‘I’ll give you a cigarette. I’ll buy you some food.’”
And that’s what Timothy did.
One person he crossed paths with during this period was a woman named Joyce. Joyce has since passed on. Before her passing, Joyce played a pivotal role in Timothy’s life by introducing him to HoH director Kate Marshall, who she referred to as “the lady who lives in East Wheeling and cooks food in her kitchen for people who are hungry [and] lets people sleep on her couch.”
“When I finally agreed to go and first walked in the door at HoH, it was filled wall-to-wall with people,” Timothy says. “There was this murmur of association—of joy. Someone in the corner was playing a guitar. It was just this real vibe of being at home and feeling at home. I knew they were all family. It was like I had walked into a family cookout, but everyone was homeless.”
Since then, Timothy has been deeply involved with HoH happenings—such as Mustard Seed Mountain’s vendor program—all of which seek to implement the same community and service-oriented values he embodies in his day-to-day interactions with others. People like Timothy are what HoH is all about. And to him, it’s all about service:
“I’m passionate about helping addicts because too many people cast them aside, and Jesus would never cast anyone aside,” he says. “Jesus would be here in East Wheeling feeding the homeless, right by our side, if he was on Earth with us now. He would be going to the homeless camps and healing these people. And when he comes back, he will be doing these things again. I want to be in the place where he will be when he returns. But, even if that doesn’t happen in my lifetime, I’m still going to keep my promise to serve God—that’s what I’m passionate about. The rest is just a matter of how.”
