Lee Sevilla

she needs only $500 more a month to get an apartment. for now, ms. sevilla, 71, lives in her car with her dog and works as a part-time receptionist. she's also an artist. not your typical hard luck story.

this from the la times: Anyone who wishes to buy hand-drawn postcards can send a photo or other request to Sevilla at P.O. Box 5484, Playa del Rey, CA 90296.

Looking for an End to Her Skid

Steve Lopez
Points West

May 7, 2006

Six days a week at 7 in the morning, a gray Dodge Neon pulls up to a bluff overlooking the beach in Playa del Rey. The driver, a bespectacled 71-year-old woman named Lee Sevilla, is accompanied by her shaggy dog, Sandy. The two of them have lived in a car for more than eight years.

She never would have imagined it, said the silver-haired Sevilla. She was a wife and mother with a pretty normal life until a divorce and a couple of bad breaks put her on the street. It seemed like a temporary setback at the time, but the weeks became months and the months continue to drag on.

Sevilla sleeps in nearby El Segundo, where she pulls up to the same parking spot beside a public ball field each night and settles in. At dawn she uses the restroom at the nearby Chevron station, then buys a cup of coffee and drives to Playa. It boosts her spirits, she explained, to start each day with a million-dollar ocean view.

"It's wonderful," she said, looking out over Dockweiler State Beach, near the edge of LAX. "If it's clear I can see from Malibu to Palos Verdes, and sometimes Catalina. You can see the dolphins from up here too."

The one day she's not there is Sunday. That's when she pulls her church clothes off the hanger in the back seat of the Neon, goes to services at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, then splurges on a $45 room at a Motel 6 in Santa Ana. Don't tell anyone, but she sneaks in a hot plate to cook spaghetti, her one big meal of the week.

As for the Crystal Cathedral, "I'm not overly religious," Sevilla said. "But I do depend on Him more lately." read the rest here