Meet Stephen Tennis. Stephen is a TLCBD Park Captain and has been stationed at Boeddeker Park. As a Park Captain, he is responsible for fostering a positive environment for park attendees, ensuring safety and keeping the area clean. Stephen has worked with TLCBD for over three years, formerly stationed at Turk-Hyde Mini Park, and he has also worked as a Corner Captain with Safe Passage.
A Tenderloin resident himself, Stephen has worked with other organizations in the neighborhood, like CCSRO Collaborative, where he assisted individuals struggling with living in Single Room Occupancy (SRO) housing. He has a long history of working for the betterment of the neighborhood, but working as a Park Captain gave him a new sense of motivation.
“I didn’t realize how much I enjoy being with the kids,” he says. Boeddeker Park welcomes over 300 visitors each day, many of them children living with their families in the Tenderloin. Stephen enjoys getting to know the kids, and he takes pride in ensuring a safe space for them to play.
“Children are our future,” he says. “It’s really important that they have a stable environment to play in, and I’m glad I can help maintain that space. The kids in this neighborhood are confronted with a lot of things that they are too young to understand, and they need a place to go to just be kids.”
Stephen brings warmth and joy to his interactions with some of Boeddeker’s youngest visitors, and his impact is felt throughout the park daily. Every day, when students from Wu Yee Preschool line up to leave the park, he makes sure to ask them if they had fun and blows a whistle clipped to his Park Captain vest, inciting laughs and smiles from many of the children. When Stephen recently came down with COVID-19, a group of second grade students from San Francisco City Academy sent handwritten letters and cards to wish him well and thank him for his work in the park.
As we continue to focus on and expand our Inviting Space work, TLCBD is excited to see the value that our Park Captains, like Stephen, provide to public spaces in the Tenderloin, and the relationships they create with members of the community.
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