Editor’s note: This story discusses sexual abuse.
Jeremy Hofmann was just seven years old when his life changed forever.
“That’s, I think, when things started really going downhill for him,” his sister said.
Forty years later, Hofmann, who was homeless, died after he was struck by a vehicle in Canby.
Hofmann’s sister, Stephanie Lathrom, describes him as a survivalist. The longtime Portlander lived life on his own terms, rarely having a job and living homeless for long stretches of time. He did it in style, often carrying a Louis Vuitton backpack and spending hours at the Goodwill “bins,” picking through goods with manicured fingernails and well-kempt hair.
Hofmann and Lathrom were raised by their parents, Jerry and Judy Hofmann, in Gladstone, Oregon — the same place their mother grew up.
When he was young, Lathrom said Hofmann would press every floor on the elevator just to see what would happen. He’d take a flight of stairs just to see where it went. A childlike curiosity continued into adulthood.
“Push it, let’s see,” he said when his nephew asked what an elevator button did.
Lathrom said when Hofmann was seven years old, his father caught a neighbor sexually abusing Hofmann. The Hofmann kids knew the rule to be inside before the street lights came on, and when Hofmann missed the curfew, his father went looking. Lathrom said their father was so angry he didn’t know what to do, and he physically punished Hofmann for being out that night, according to Lathrom.
“I truly feel like that was the root of his disease,” his sister said.
Lathrom said multiple kids in the neighborhood later came forward with similar experiences with the same abuser. Lathrom said her family felt ashamed as the incident became public.
For Hofmann, the psychological damage was done.
“It really affected my brother, and he always wanted to please my father,” Lathrom said. “Ever since then … just always felt like he was a disappointment to my dad.”
In high school, Hofmann played baseball and golf, at one point making his father proud when he had the opportunity to play with Tiger Woods.
“My dad thought that was so cool,” Lathrom said.
By his senior year of high school, Hofmann began self-medicating with alcohol and eventually started using methamphetamine. He dropped out of high school before completing his senior year and continued to struggle with his addiction as he moved in and out of the carceral system.
Hofmann’s struggles didn’t come without complexity, and out of his own trauma over the years, he caused further trauma to the people he loved, according to Lathrom. His three children hardly knew him. He left them behind, saying he could never care for them properly. At times, he became angry and acted out toward the people around him, particularly when the drugs wore off.
His mom always wanted him to talk with counselors about his childhood trauma, but he simply didn’t want to talk about it, turning instead to drugs to relieve his pains.
“He always used to say, ‘I wish I could feel this way without taking the drug all the time,’” Lathrom said.
Life on life’s terms
“He was homeless, but he liked it,” Lathrom said. “Sometimes it’s not bad. Does that make sense?”
Hofmann was homeless in Portland and Canby for much of his adult life. He didn’t generally like rules, went most of his life without a bank account and had trouble keeping track of an ID or a wallet. Lathrom said he walked everywhere because he couldn’t figure out how to use Tri-Met, but he also simply liked seeing what he could see along the route.
“He was just a big kid,” Lathrom said.
In 2019, Hofmann started working through a residential program at City Team, a Christian nonprofit helping people in need of food, clothing and shelter in cities along the West Coast. City Team also offers supportive housing opportunities to help people struggling with substance use. Hofmann did everything he was supposed to do in the two-year program — he got a sponsor, went to church, worked at the front desk and eventually became a house manager.
“He thrived there,” Lathrom said.
She described Hofmann as someone who would give others the shirt off his back.
“He’d always say, ‘God’s got my back,’” she said.
Hofmann was known for walking around the neighborhood with a bucket of warm water and soap to wash the feet of other homeless Portlanders, saying Jesus told him to. When donated clothing came through City Team, he searched for the clothes he knew certain neighbors liked to wear. When Lathrom would come to visit, Hofmann knocked on tents and introduced his sister to the people living inside.
“These were his people,” she said. “These were his friends. He loved it here.”
Hofmann graduated from the program, which helped him get a bank account and two jobs — at an auto parts manufacturer and a recycling center.
He continued working at City Team, where he met the love of his life, Mary Krankowski, a volunteer who moved to Portland from Pennsylvania in 2019. He eventually moved into a few different Oxford houses but felt like he wanted to experience life outside of the rooms. He had trouble keeping up with the curfews and house rules and felt lonely as most people stayed in their rooms.
Still, Krankowski helped him decorate so he could feel at home, and he stayed clean from drugs and alcohol the entire time.
“He loved Mary so much,” Lathrom said. “I’m so happy he found Mary.”
Krankowski and Hofmann hit it off, and she took him to Las Vegas on the first flight of his life. They loved going out to dinner, and Krankowski made him feel important, according to Lathrom.
But from the start, Krankowski and Hofmann knew her time in Portland was temporary. Mary moved home to Pennsylvania in July 2022. Soon after she left, things quickly began to spiral for Hofmann. He briefly moved to Salvation Army before settling in, homeless in Canby, where he made community in the past.
Just before 4:30 in the morning on August 25, 2022, a 20-year-old driving to work hit Hofmann with her car on a Canby road. Life Flight transported Hofmann to OHSU, where he died later that evening.
People experiencing homelessness were nearly 45 times more likely to die in a transportation-related crash than the general population in Multnomah County in 2022, according to the county’s Domicile Unknown report.
“She’s an angel,” Lathrom said of the young woman who hit Hofmann.
Lathrom reached out after her brother died, knowing how traumatic the experience must have been for her.
“Instantly, I wanted her to know that there was forgiveness,” Lathrom said.
The two have kept in touch ever since the wreck and plan to meet in person for the first time in January 2024. Lathrom sends gifts to the young woman on every holiday, and Krankowski recently joined in sending a gift as well.
“I don’t know why it’s so important for me to show her that it’s okay what happened,” Lathrom said. “I just want her to not feel bad about it because my brother wouldn’t want her to feel bad about it. She’s just a beautiful person.”
When people ask Lathrom what the community could have done to help her brother, she doesn’t have much of an answer, saying he liked living life on the edge.
“Some people choose it because they like it,” Lathrom said. “I think the reason he chose it was because he did not know how to live life on life’s terms.”
Lathrom recently commemorated her brother with a tattoo of a bluebird on her forearm, looking up at her heart. His last Easter before he died, Hofmann brought Lathrom a decorative bluebird charm to hang in her kitchen window along with the A.S. Waldrop poem “Bluebird of Happiness.” He liked to hand out the same poem to people he met along his path. In his wallet, found two weeks after he died, he carried his own copy of the poem:
This little bluebird is special, / so cheery and merry too; / He’s here for just one reason, / to bring happiness to you! / Just keep him close / or carry him, / enjoy each and every day; / This little Bluebird of Happiness, / will bring smiles along the way!
“My brother just didn’t like having rules,” Lathrom said. “I don’t think that’s bad. I think that’s why he was so beautiful.”•
Editor’s note: Street Roots advocacy collaborates with Multnomah County to compile and publish Domicile Unknown. The Street Roots newspaper maintains editorial independence from Street Roots advocacy and was not involved in generating the report. The newspaper shared a transcript of an interview with a decedent’s family member with the county with consent from the interviewee.
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This article appears in Dec. 20, 2023.