Real Change vendor James Williams was at his regular location in front of Top Pot Doughnuts at 5th and Blanchard Oct. 21 when he heard the buzz. Men Williams took to be Secret Service told him the president was on the way. One of them said, man, get inside.
Williams didn't budge from his sidewalk spot. Eventually, a huge group of people made their way down the street, and he figured they must be college students or something.
They weren't students: They were the press corp. Next came police on motorcycles and law officers clad in riot gear and carrying big, long guns, like sharpshooters. Up pulled a shiny black stretch Escalade, and when the door opened, Williams could see it was extra-thick; a bulletproof vehicle.
At some point Sen. Patty Murray approached Williams and bought four Real Change newspapers, and asked him to sign them for the president. He was so nervous he struggled to make out the words, which annoys him even now.
"I know how to spell president," he said, rolling his eyes.
Amid the crush of onlookers and entourage, Williams somehow ended up in front of the leader of the free world. Williams shook his hand, repeating, "Mr. President, James Williams, James Williams, James Williams."
That fact still bugs him.
"I couldn't get off James Williams," he remembers.
All the while, Sen. Murray was standing by him, patting his shoulder supportively.
Obama shook his hand and said, "It's going to be all right, Mr. Williams," then headed inside.
Williams has told lots of people this story, and it still nearly moves him to tears. A survivor of Hurricane Katrina, he came to Seattle from New Orleans with nothing in 2005. Back in Louisiana, he was a handyman who renovated homes. A Top Pot customer, Bob Hannah, gave him tools he used to do repair work for apartment managers in Belltown.
Hannah also put up $1,000 to bail Williams out of jail after he was arrested for an altercation outside Top Pot, in which a man asked him for change and ran off with the cash Williams had handed him.
These days Williams carries around a photograph tucked inside a white legal envelope. It's a shot taken from inside Top Pot, of the sea of people gathered outside the store. James Williams' head in the picture, not far away from the president's.