A Bit of Extra Change Can Have Untold Value

Dave Mortlock, left, with the Ignatia House's operations coordinator, Marvin Talley, right, and veterans who have used the SmarTrip cards Dave collected. (By John Kelly -- The Washington Post)

A Metro Farecard with less than a buck on it is about as useful as a single chopstick or a punctured bicycle tire. It's barely worth the paper it's printed on.

But if you are a homeless veteran, that Farecard -- added to another and another and another-- means mobility. That Farecard, supercharged, could mean getting yourself to a job interview or to a training course.

It could mean getting a job.

That's why, one afternoon a month, Arlington's Dave Mortlock stands at the Virginia Square-GMU Metro station and performs an act of Farecard resurrection, pumping in paper card after paper card and transferring their value to some 60 plastic SmarTrip cards. These he delivers to Ignatia House, a place for veterans in need of help on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Northwest.

The seed was planted years ago, when Dave volunteered at a homeless shelter in Alexandria.

"While I was there I learned that one of the barriers to getting back on your feet is a lack of access to transportation," he said. "They don't have their own cars, and public transportation is really expensive."

That stuck in Dave's mind. And there it stayed while he was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, took part in the invasion of Iraq and then mustered out. It was lodged there during a job interview at a local company. An employee pulled open his desk drawer to illustrate one of the fringe benefits: free Metro Farecards.

He never used his. He carpooled.

"I just got thinking it was a wasted resource," said Dave, 29.

So last year he bought some plexiglass boxes and asked to put them out at area hotels, figuring the hotels were full of tourists whose Metro miscalculations had left them with Farecards they'd never use again. So far he's raised $30,000 worth of Metro fare, good for rail and bus.

Dave's in grad school now, doing a joint program to get a master's in international relations from Johns Hopkins and an MBA from Wharton. (What, no MD?) He feels a kinship with his fellow veterans. They feel the same for him. Yesterday at Ignatia House, some of the vets he's been helping learned for the first time that Dave is a vet himself, one who fought in Iraq.

"Welcome back," said Robert Evans, 57, an Army vet who served in Vietnam.