Kimberly Miller has worked with people on Denver’s streets for years, so she was ready for a somber evening when she arrived at the City and County Building Sunday night. It was the winter solstice — the longest night of the year — when the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) held its 36th-annual vigil for people who died this year without stable housing.
She did not expect that it would feel so personal. Before the program began, she spied the name of someone she knew written on one of the 276 luminaries glowing on the stone steps. It was a woman she’d once helped, then lost touch with. She was crushed to find out like this that the woman had died.
“Oh my God. Trena. Trena’s gone,” she remembered thinking. “These are our people. These are our neighbors. And it makes my heart so heavy.”…