A life off track

By Stacie N. Galang , Staff writer

Stephen K. Koech spent his last 18 months living in a concrete pipe.

He wedged a mattress inside and stuffed dozens of blankets on top to keep warm. He used a blue plastic tarp to keep out snow and rain.

On his last winter night outdoors - Jan. 26 - temperatures dipped to 1 degree. Koech's body was found the next morning outside his makeshift home off Howley Street in Peabody. He was 44.

To most who passed Koech on the streets of Peabody and Salem, he was a guy pushing his carriage of empty bottles and cans, a homeless alcoholic, indistinguishable from any other.

But 25 years earlier he had accomplished the unimaginable. Koech, who had grown up in a poor Kenyan village called Koiwa, earned a full athletic scholarship and a spot on the track team at Ranger Junior College in Texas.

The night before he left Africa, his friends threw him a going-away bash in Nairobi, where he was working and living. They were young and had few resources, but they managed to slaughter a goat for the outdoor party, too large to house all the guests in one place.

A band of well-wishers saw Koech off at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Koech, 19, was on his way.

But somehow, Koech, who could outrun his peers and surpassed most in class, got lost. He had come halfway around the world only to die homeless and alone.

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Koech grew up a part of Kipsigis tribe, a subset of Kenya's "running tribe" the Kalenjin, said Livingston Ronoh, a high school classmate and his Salem roommate. The two met at 14 as boarders at Figor High School, an all-boy school about 200 miles from Nairobi.

"He was the smallest boy in a school of about 400 boys," Ronoh remembered.

Figor was "a very poor school in the middle of nowhere," Ronoh said. Students worked by the light of pressure lamps. They ate porridge for breakfast, and for lunch and dinner ate collard greens and ugali, a cornmeal mush known as Kenya's national dish.

But their lives were fun and carefree.

"We had a good time when we were there," he said. "And we were happy. We were very happy."

Koech was one of 10 children - nine boys and one girl, Ronoh said. Each weekend, he would walk home to the family farm about 30 miles away.

At school, Koech was a double threat - king on the track and among the top of his class, his friend said.

"Nobody defeated him in the cross country."

In his high school yearbook, Koech told classmates he wanted to pursue a career in education.

After graduation in 1981, Ronoh and Koech headed separately to Nairobi, where Koech worked a factory job at East African Industries for about six months. Then, he got word of the scholarship.

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A "little bitty feller," as his Ranger Junior College coach Johnny Gann described him, Koech didn't take to Texas easily.

"It would take a year to actually get used to the food. The weather was colder," Gann said of his spring 1982 arrival. "We got him in good shape and going when it was time to go to a four-year school."

Gann learned of Stephen from his older brother Geoffrey Koech, a distance runner at the University of Texas, El Paso.

"So I took Stephen in," said Gann, now dean of students.

Koech ran the 5,000- and 10,000-meter races, but never really stood out at Ranger, a two-year school 116 miles west of Dallas.

By the time he transferred to East Texas State University, now Texas A&M; at Commerce, Koech was a little more "Americanized," his new coach, Eddie Vowell, said. He was now studying business.

Recruiting Koech was a key move for the Division II university, Vowell said. He was the first African to run at East Texas State, and he helped convince two world-class African runners - Samson Obwocha and Agapius Amo - of the coach's trustworthiness.

"I never would have got those two kids if it hadn't been for Stephen," Vowell said.

In 1985, East Texas State's track team placed second nationally, an impossible feat without the new runners.

Like at Ranger, Koech "ran hard and practiced hard" but wasn't on the same level as Obwocha or Amo, Vowell said.

Koech's two-year athletic scholarship ended before he finished his course work at East Texas State in December 1985, according to the university's registrar. His friends just assumed he'd earned his business degree.

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Around 1986, Koech contacted Ronoh, then a student at Salem State College. He needed a place to stay and develop himself professionally, Ronoh said.

"He didn't know anybody in Texas. He was very lonely," Ronoh recalled.

Ronoh and Koech eventually got an apartment at 12 Osborne St. in Salem with two Kenyan graduate students, Chris Koech (no relation to Stephen) and Jacqueline Kirui. Another of their Kenyan friends, Martin Maingi, later became homeless and died in 2002 after being struck by a commuter rail train in Everett.

Stephen Koech found work at the McDonald's by the old Beverly-Salem Bridge and slowly moved up to shift manager.

The flatmates enjoyed their American digs and occasionally hosted parties.

Among their regular guests were John Crowley and his future wife, Eileen, co-workers of Koech.

"We just hit it off great," John Crowley said of Koech. "We just clicked."

Crowley, then 20, and Koech, about five years older, spent many after-hours talking about life, love and politics. They were pranksters.

"Everything was a joke," he said.

Occasionally, they'd claim to be owners of the restaurant as customers pulled up to the drive-through.

"I could be really down," Crowley said. "I could see him and be back to my regular self. All that stuff would be put on hold."

Koech never seemed to have a steady girlfriend, though he often dressed to kill.

"He looked like Grover Washington," Crowley said of the jazz saxophonist.

As the '80s came to a close, the Kenyan roommates parted ways.

"Chris got himself a girlfriend and married and moved out. I got myself a girlfriend," Ronoh said. "(Koech and Maingi) became the senior bachelors of Salem."

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No one knows exactly when Koech left McDonald's, but it seemed to be a turning point for him. The store closed in August 1994 to make way for the new Veterans Memorial Bridge.

Koech didn't have a green card and never drove, Ronoh said. He bounced among odd jobs at gas stations and local markets and couldn't seem to get on track.

In fall 1994, Koech took a job as the overnight clerk at White Hen Pantry on Lowell Street in Peabody. His manager, Diane Walker, said he showed great patience with customers, especially when they had difficulty understanding him.

He was reliable enough, said Walker's daughter, Michelle Muise, who worked the Saturday-morning shift.

"You knew he didn't have a lot of money by the way he dressed, but he did take pride in the way he looked," Muise said.

But his drinking had grown problematic. Sometimes he'd show up drunk, and Walker would have to send him home. She didn't want him to get hurt, say, cutting his finger on a meat slicer.

"The state would come down and wring my neck," she said. "We had to let him go because of the drinking."

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Koech was in the land of opportunity barely hanging on. He withdrew from his closest friends.

When John and Eileen Crowley married in 1995, they tried desperately to find him.

His Kenyan friends heard only rumors of his whereabouts.

"At some point, I learned that he was jobless, and at some point I learned that he was in a shelter," said Kirui, now a teacher in Boston. "And he had the numbers for each one of us, especially for me. He decided, I think, he just didn't want to be bothered."

Chris Koech and his wife, Roselaine, invited Stephen to visit them at their home in Boston, but he rarely did.

"I don't think he was a city person," Roselaine said.

Ronoh, who now lives in Ohio, believes Koech grew depressed. Unable to find work, his options thinned.

"People at home, they expect a lot, too much from us, those of us who come here," Ronoh said. "There's a lot of stress that we put on ourselves, also."

Koech couldn't go home - he was worse off than when he left, Ronoh said, and he was lonelier than ever.

Ronoh and Chris Koech have often wondered where they'd be without their wives, Ronoh said.

"The women we got saved us," he said.

Out of work, Koech lost himself in the alcohol. The cycle had begun.

"You shy away from people," Ronoh said. "You don't want people to see you in the state you are in. That happened to him."

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Deb Cameron, a Salem Mission caseworker, said the emergency shelter logged Koech's first visit as Oct. 28, 1999. Cameron met Koech - always book in hand - five years ago when she started work there.

In recent years, he stopped staying overnight at the shelter - the mission won't accept guests if they've been drinking.

Instead Koech preferred a secluded, wooded area on the Peabody-Salem line where a homeless community set up a "tent city," said Charles Mason, who describes himself as their unofficial leader.

Mason, an off-and-on machinist, said he struck up a friendship with Koech after meeting at the food pantry Haven From Hunger on Wallis Street in Peabody.

"We'd drink together. Have a few beers. Have some laughs," Mason said.

Mason said Koech lived in the area intermittently for nearly eight years. "Ever since I met him, he's always been an outside person."

Koech earned his living "canning," cashing in cans and bottles daily.

Peabody Redemption Center owner Na Tren recalled Koech "always shaking." A regular customer, the Kenyan would come by daily with his stash of cans.

Koech, Mason and the others were Peabody's lost boys, killing time by inventing games, playing stick ball and hitting bottles off of tree branches.

"It's just amazing what you do to try and kill the time during the day," he said.

As desperate as Koech seemed, his childhood friend Ronoh kept tabs on him. He'd find Koech in the woods and they'd spend the day chatting.

"He was still as funny as ever," Ronoh said. "He was a great comedian."

But when his Kenyan friends offered him a room and even a plane ticket home, Koech refused flatly.

"He refused any sort of help he perceived as a handout," Ronoh said.

Koech could never admit his life had gone so downhill.

"He was always saying, 'I will get away from this thing,'" Ronoh said. "He never believed things were as bad as they appeared."

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If ever Stephen Koech's life might have taken a turn for the better, it was after a debilitating accident.

In June 2002, he was struck by a car in Peabody and spent months in rehab. He was off the street and away from temptation. His close friends hoped he might find stability, Chris Koech said.

"All of a sudden, things went in a different direction," he said.

After Koech's accident, the other homeless campers lost track of him, Mason said. It's unclear for sure, but some believe Koech received help from the state or a settlement from the accident.

"He had his own place for a little while, for a year," Mason said. "He'd stop down."

Unable to hold down a job, Koech set up camp again. He had given up, Mason believed.

"I thought we still had time," Chris Koech said. "I didn't expect Stephen Koech to die."

On his last visit to Kenya two years ago, Ronoh visited Koech's mother.

"It's difficult to tell a mother your son is not doing well," Ronoh said.

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Koech outstayed the other homeless campers and refused to leave even at the property owner's urging. He rebuffed them, saying, "This is my place, and I'm not going to be thrown out of my place," Mason recalled.

"That kid could live through a blizzard," said Mason, who now has a place in Peabody. "He was a survivor, trust me."

But the years of drinking and lack of proper nutrition had taken their toll. Mason once found a sickly Koech with yellow eyes. Concerned he had hepatitis, Mason called an ambulance.

"But he wouldn't go," Mason said. "He didn't like the hospital at all."

Koech's convenience store co-worker Muise said she would bump into him at the Dunkin' Donuts in Peabody Square. She wasn't sure he recognized her.

"I think he thought I was somebody being nice to him," she said.

The last time Kirui saw him, probably sometime in 2005, she invited her old roommate over for a chat. But he refused.

"Whatever was going on in his life," she said, "I don't think he wanted to discuss it to anyone, because that is not the Steve that I knew."

On Saturday morning, Jan. 27, Edwin Marsh, one of several people who checked up on Koech regularly, found his body on the ground outside his home, according to police. The state medical examiner has not completed a toxicology report to determine how he died.

Mason said he still passes by Koech's Howley Street home and yells out to him.

"I go right by where he was (and say), 'You home?'" Mason said. "I still talk to him. You know what I'm saying."

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