SEATTLE — 74-year-old Ralph Richardson will tell you he had an awful childhood and adolescence. He says, “My father was abused by his father, so he screamed at us for no reason. And I never felt like I had a father or a family. It was very oppressive”. Ralph’s mother’s subsequent partners were no better as father figures, leaving Ralph on a lifelong quest to find a sense of belonging. Ralph says, “I thought families are the most important thing, being able to grow up nurtured.”
On February 24, 2022, President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As Ralph watched the news come in, he was horrified, and he knew he now had a family to care for. He says, “Putin decided to attack Ukraine, he chose to destroy their cities, killing people and throwing them in a common grave. He’s killing families, and nothing ever did I want but a family.”
When drivers see people asking for money at freeway onramps or intersections, the reaction is often, “There’s a homeless person”. Ralph makes it clear — he is NOT homeless. He lives in North Seattle and collects donations from drivers at the I-5 southbound onramp, in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood, at 5th Ave NE and NE 45th St, usually Tuesdays through Saturdays.
Ralph says, “Some days I don’t collect anything. But some days I collect really well. I just collect it until it’s approximately the right amount of money. I guess that I had to try whatever I could.”
Over the last four years, Ralph has collected thousands of dollars.
He tells KIRO 7 that collecting donations is a rugged job. At times, other panhandlers have tried to drive him away, once pepper-spraying him.
But Ralph is passionate about his mission, saying, “If Russia stops fighting, there will be no war; if Ukraine stops fighting, there’ll be no Ukraine! I’ll spend the rest of my life hoping to free them from the oppression, doing anything I can to stop this atrocity.”
Ralph stresses that 100% of the money he collects goes to a registered charity. After trial and error, he settled on Ukraine Defense Support, a Seattle-based, registered 501(c)(3) group delivering critical medical aid and life-saving equipment directly to Ukraine’s defenders, medics, and frontline volunteers.
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