I began following a story last fall about Patrick and Leo. Patrick is a 23 year old software developer that works in New York City. Each morning on his way to work, he would pass a homeless man.

Patrick could have chosen to do nothing. To his credit, he was curious about this man and chose to make Leo a powerful offer.

“I will give you $100.00 in cash or I will teach you how to code.” Leo chose to learn how to code.

Patrick bought Leo a cheap laptop and began mentoring Leo. Their journey together encountered many obstacles. An arrest for sleeping on a park bench after hours. The police confiscated Leo’s laptop that night.

Leo and Patrick persevered and eventually Leo released a web application called Trees for Cars.

To date, after paying for associated costs, Leo has made $10,000 on his web app. At this point in time, Leo has not touched any of the money he made on his creation. The money remains in an account that Patrick holds and Leo doesn’t have a bank account and has not expressed a desire to open one.

Leo is currently still homeless, but happy. Patrick’s critics celebrate this fact. “I told you that nothing would change. This wouldn’t work.”

Does that matter that Leo is still homeless? Patrick did what he could. He could have chosen to walk by Leo every morning and ignore him. Now Leo and Patrick are friends. What does that mean to Leo, to Patrick?

I was in Austin Texas last fall ironically to attend a coding bootcamp at MakerSquare and saw a homeless man every morning at a Panera Bread. He would enter the bakery and immediately enter the bathroom and change his clothes and take only what I can assume was a sponge bath. He would order a small cup of coffee and read a previously purchased newspaper. He would sometimes clothes his eyes and doze off for a few minutes. Sometimes I would come back to this same Panera after school and he would still be sitting at the same table, eight or nine hours later.

I often wondered, where did he sleep at night, where did he get his money for coffee? Maybe the staff at Panera bought his coffee for him. I don’t know the answers to any of this, because unlike Patrick, I turned away. I could have offered to buy his coffee, or his breakfast. There will many times we were in line at the same time. What stopped me from making a connection with this man? While I was curious I wasn’t willing to have a conversation with him. What had brought him to this point in his life?

I felt uncomfortable seeing him there. It creeped me out.

Would he choose something else for himself if he was given an opportunity? I will never know, because I didn’t ask.

So to Patrick, I say thanks for making a difference to Leo. Maybe it didn’t work out the way he intended, but at least Patrick got up and swung the bat.

Whether he hit it out of the park or not is irrelevant. He swung at a pitch even if it was out of the strike zone.

I stood there with the bat on my shoulder and took a called third strike.