The downward slide began. Casarez was sleeping in his van in Mountain View to save money, and had calculated the “burn rate” at which his cash reserves were dwindling. He’d figured his nest egg would last six months, maybe seven.

“I was barely scraping by in March,” he said. He started to miss payments on his van. In early June, the vehicle was repossessed, and he was on the streets, sleeping in a park, he said.

“It was very hard, because when I was living in the van I had the safety of knowing I was enclosed,” he said. “I was literally at the very bottom.”

He’d never imagined his own choices could bring him so low. Depression took hold. “I was crying a lot — ‘How did I let it get to this point?'” he said. “It really got to me.”

He held onto a gym membership so he could shower, but as his savings vanished, he had to sell the iPhone X. Deep inside, he held onto hope. And he decided to fight back against his self-created disaster.

“I told myself, ‘I’m not going to let this break me,'” he said.

That’s when he decided he needed to do something new to stand out. So he stood out, on the sidewalk where El Camino Real and San Antonio Road come together in Mountain View, and held up a sign saying, “Homeless Hungry 4 Success Take a Resume.” He was not taking money, he said.