Zephanius (Zephan for short) is a miniature Schnauzer. He’ll be 4 years old in April. That makes him Real Change’s youngest vendor. Of course, at that age, he needs a mentor. That’s Ray Sanchez, who first worked as a Real Change vendor back in 2003. Ray and Zephanius make a good team.
“If I tell him to go say, ‘Hi,’ Ray said, “he’ll walk up to the nearest person that he sees. Then they come and pet him. It’s like walking into a store: You don’t want to walk in without buying something.”
Zephan likes kids. “People with children will point to Zephanius and say, ‘We’ll be back on the way out!’ When they come back out, I have a paper in this pocket [on the dog’s sweater] and money on the other side.” The kids take the paper and put money in the other pocket.
When it’s warm, and they’re not selling Real Change, Ray and Zephan go swimming.
They have boogie boards and life jackets for staying afloat. They’ll swim from South Lake Union all the way past the Fremont Bridge or vice versa.
Zephan rides on his boogie board or swims towing their stuff.
Three years ago, Ray had been taking care of another miniature Schnauzer, Zephyr, off and on for a friend, and he decided he’d like his own dog. “I wanted a Z-name and since she already had Zephyr, I went with Zephanius.”
Ray used to be a driver and a mover for Microsoft. “Then I hurt myself, and I ended up with surgery on my back. [Later] I had surgery on both feet, my left and my right foot, the planar fasciae, and now I’m having trouble with my fingers; it gets sometimes so bad I can’t close my left hand.”
Ray’s been in Washington for 26 years. He was homeless from 2001 to 2005. “On the day of the Nisqually earthquake I moved out of my house. What happened is, I don’t do drugs, but in that house they were dealing drugs downstairs.” He told the landlord, but the landlord didn’t do anything. “So I moved out.” He started living under the Alaskan Way Viaduct in his van.
In 2005 he got into subsidized housing. “Now I’m trying to move out of there. They went from catering to the homeless and low-income to catering to drunks and drug addicts. A lot of the old timers, they’re gone.” Instead, Ray and Zephan will live in an RV that Ray just bought. “We have to sell everything inside of my apartment, and me and him are going to be homeless. I’d rather be homeless than live there.”
Someday, Ray wants to buy land near Oroville, in eastern Washington. “What’s so good about it is that you’re away from everything, just like paradise but without the, I don’t know, the dice. If I can come up with the money, I’ll buy a 20-acre plot.”