The Panhandler and the Professional

On March 9, Kendall Shrum left jail (again) and headed back to life on the streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Four months later, while panhandling on an interstate bridge, he offered a suburban commuter a tattered piece of paper onto which he had written a joke. That one simple exchange between a donation-offering-commuter and a joke-offering-panhandler set into motion a series of events that turned both their lives upside down and opened doors of change and possibility that neither had ever sought or expected.