Steve hosts some good memories from his near lifetime on the streets. Like when he first saw Sarah. A tall man, Steve peered over the heads of others lining up for food outside a church in North Carolina and spotted her. "She smiled pretty," Steve said recently, prompting Sarah to giggle and hide her face in her sweater sleeve. This year, almost seven years since that day, Steve and Sarah — not their real names — left their tent by the Kanawha River for a place at Vista View Apartments with the help of Charleston's Covenant House outreach center, which receives help from the Gazette Charities Christmas Fund. Together under a proper roof, they work toward

After years on the streets, Steve and Sarah still lament homeless children. "If I was a millionaire right now, I'd take them in with me," Sarah said.

Steve, 53, a Charleston native, would defy his parents if he could live his life over. They pulled him from school when he was in the 10th grade then gave him the boot when he hit 15, he said. His seven brothers and five sisters got the same treatment, but Steve knows now that he was too young to leave home and school.

“It was a scary world,” he said. “I always depended on myself.”

Steve worked construction, in tree nurseries, on various farms and at a slew of other jobs in different states to survive. He sometimes lived inside. He rented a spot at Vista View years ago when it was the Spring Hill Apartments, but left when he could not make the rent.

Most of the time, Steve lived in a tent wherever he could do so in relative peace. People harassed him. Unsavory people tried to steal his stuff, but he fended for himself. And without falling into booze or drugs, he said.

“I came across a lot that were addicted to drugs and alcohol and it’s not a pretty sight,” he said.

Sarah’s life hit a rough patch a few years before she met Steve, she said. Her fiancé died of throat cancer when she was 28, and his children saw her to the door, she said. She stayed with her aunt for a few years before hitting the streets almost 10 years ago.

Sarah also avoided drugs, but alcohol made an appearance during the hard times, she said. “It never became a real problem until the situation with my fiancé,” she said. “It really tore me up.”

On the streets, Sarah mowed lawns or washed dishes, anything she could to eat and have a little money.

Steve whisked her away to Charleston after a stint in Florida. A North Carolina native, Sarah fell for the state and people immediately.

“I started crying because it’s so beautiful up here,” Sarah said.

Steve and Sarah knew plenty about people’s callousness toward those without four walls of their own, Steve said. In Charleston, people seemed nicer.

“You meet people who are nice and some who have their nose in the air,” he said. “People here are nice.”

People would hand them money at random, Sarah said: on the street, in the market. They never asked for it and never would, Steve said. He and Sarah always worked and felt strange about accepting charity. The two currently work for a temporary agency, but want permanent work.

“It wouldn’t feel right to us,” he said. “We take care of ourselves the best we know how. We make an effort looking for jobs. We walk and we walk to put an application in. We don’t care how far we have to go.”

They bathed and cleaned their clothes at places such as Covenant House, Sarah said. Just because they lived outside did not mean they had to look like they did, she said.

“We ask many people, ‘Do we look homeless to you?’ No,” she said. “We keep ourselves up.”

But they could never make the leap to a sturdy dwelling, Steve said: “We barely made enough to get by. We only had enough to be able to eat.”

An application error involving Sarah’s birth certificate kept them from moving into Vista View the first time they applied. But with help from Thomas Walker at Covenant House, the error was discovered and the apartment landed. The couple pays the rent, Steve said.

Aside from furniture, Steve and Sarah need time to get used to a roof overhead, they said.

“She still doesn’t know how it feels to live in a place and neither do I,” Steve said, laughing.

Sarah chimed in, “I still look around and say, ‘Is this how it feels to live like this?’ ”

For more information on Covenant House, call 344-8433 or visit the charity’s Web site at www.wvcovenanthouse.org. Information on other agencies and people helped by the Gazette Charities Christmas Fund is available at the Gazette Web site, www.wvgazette.com, under Gazette Charities.