Maggie speaks out to Miami herald. Oh Oh
article posted on miami.com on sept 18th
Falling into a crack hellSHE'S BEEN SELLING HER BODY ON THE STREETS FOR DECADES AND NOW GETS HIGH AT LEAST SIX TIMES EVERY DAY
BY PAUL LOMARTIRE
Palm Beach Post
COURTESY OF THE PALM BEACH POST
INNOCENT DAYS: Three-year-old Maggie Williams, now 52-years-old, stands with her sister Dorothy to pose for a picture with his brand new Chevy in 1957.
More photosA T-shirt decorated with the words ''Crack *****'' costs $16.95 on the Internet.
Maggie Williams considers this, her head tilted like a confused terrier.
''Who would buy that?'' she asks in a raspy voice. ``That's the stupidest thing I ever heard.''
Maggie states this with authority. She has spent nearly half her 52 years selling sex acts to earn cash for crack, five bucks at a time.
Her entire universe is a six-block rectangle in Riviera Beach, west of the old Spanish Courts Motor Lodge, where drug dealers seem as common as vendors at a Dolphins game.
Maggie gets high at least six times a day or she loses control. She wails about hating her life. She begs for money. She cries about dying.
When she feels good, she talks about her tricks as matter-of-factly as the weather. Shocking details from a life spent in the passenger seat of men's cars: Old men, young men, rich men, poor men, timid men, twisted men.
Some want sex. Some don't know where else to go for a human touch. Most want crack.
''Did I tell you about the fat guy I picked up at the Denny's in Lake Park?'' she asks.
She takes a short hit off her buck-a-pack Cheyenne Menthol 100's. Her sun-soaked face is as creased as leather. She wears a baby-blue shirt, black shorts and high-top sneakers she dug out of a Dumpster.
Once, long ago, Maggie was a happy kid, the sixth of seven children in an Irish-Catholic family, who memorized poetry and loved to make rhymes.
Once, she dreamed of finding a soul mate and getting married.
Then she met something more powerful than love: crack cocaine.
At 27, she ``married the pipe.''
Now, Maggie is so famous in Riviera Beach that Mayor Michael Brown introduced her to a CNN crew, who interviewed her about blight. Some clever kids, eager to meet a real prostitute, interviewed her, too -- and paid her $25 for video footage they posted on a website.
Locals recognize her from two blocks away, because she walks with a signature hop.
They know her by a name she hates: ``Scaggie Maggie.''
In Maggie's netherworld, criminals make the rules and law-abiding citizens drive by -- quickly.
When a car stops in this stretch of Broadway, it's assumed the driver wants drugs. Dealers surface along the side streets to serve their customers, who drive in from places like Wellington and Jupiter and Lantana.
White buyers sometimes feel safer getting crack from white prostitutes than black dealers, even if it costs them more.
''There's this guy who smokes crack big time,'' Maggie says. ``White guy, black Hummer.''
Here, nobody knows your last name, just your street handle: ''Get Down'' or ''Tall Debbie'' or ``Chicken George.''
Riviera Beach cops have nicknames, too: ''Good Bar.'' ''Gomer Pyle.'' ''Curly Top.'' ``Big Head.''
They call this part of Riviera Beach ''The Raw'' -- because it's torn and bloody, like a wound.
Maggie's world consists of convenience stores with bulletproof glass, garbage-strewn lots, shabby homes and a bank parking lot where addicts routinely pass out in the drive-through lanes.
She can hop-walk and catch up with a crack dealer in mid-stride, then do a deal in three steps. Cash for crack. As fast as a magician could do it.
Five bucks buys a thin, brownish chip of crack called a ''pound'' or a ''nickel'' -- a cheap and potent high.
Ten bucks buys a ''dime,'' $20 a ''dove,'' and $100 gets you a ''yard.'' Dealers chip those quantities from a slab called a ``cookie.''
If a drug dealer feels heat from police, he'll throw drugs on the ground and take off. That's why Maggie always walks with her head down -- she's scanning the ground, trying to find crack. That's called ``a floor score.''
Since 1973, Maggie has been arrested for three felonies and 75 misdemeanors, including 19 prostitution busts. Her longest jail stint was six months. Police found a thin slice of crack, a $25 ''Jamaican Juggler,'' in her cigarette pack. It was too big to fit in her mouth, which is where addicts usually carry crack because it doesn't melt. She has slept on rooftops with rats and in bushes with roaches. But for the past two years, Maggie has paid $5 a day for a couch in a high-traffic, crowded house near Spanish Courts.
Anything of value she finds, she sells for crack.
Anything of value given to her, she sells for crack.
Maggie operates by her own personal street code: She's often high or drunk or both, and she occasionally stinks of sweat and stale beer. But if she can get a ride to the marina, she'll wash her sheets and her few clothes. She showers daily. She preaches safe sex. ''If you're going to allow prostitution,'' she maintains, ``you ought to be certain the girls are clean.''
This code -- and pure luck -- have kept Maggie alive on the Riviera streets for 25 years.
She is the rare constant in a place where about 30 hard-core junkies and ****** live, and where the players change constantly.
Few live long enough to qualify for AARP.