(upbeat acoustic music) - [Jim] This nonprofit helps folks in need turn a place to live into a home.

And all that stuff?

No charge.

- Like they're missing a couch, kitchen table, beds, pots and pans, dishes to eat off of.

So it can be truly transformational.

- [Jim] It's that time of year the Purple Martins are coming to their summer home in Forest Park.

But there's more than just nature at work here - Because Purple Martins are totally dependent on human provided housing.

- [Jim] And he is that human.

A St. Louis clinic that's set up to detect the early signs of serious mental illness in young people.

- The earlier that you can intervene, the better the long-term outcomes are.

- [Jim] And the town that's made a name for itself.

How Piedmont became Missouri's UFO Capital.

It's all next on "Living St.

Louis."

(bluesy upbeat music) (bluesy upbeat music continues) (bluesy upbeat music continues) - Hi, I'm Anne-Marie Berger.

Our first story is about fresh starts.

Each year hundreds of individuals and families around the St. Louis area transition out of homelessness or crisis, but many do so without a bed to sleep in.

Brooke Butler tells us about a local organization that helps to furnish their new spaces, providing comfort and hope, delivery included.

- [Brooke] Moving day.

You dread the thought of pivoting that sofa up the steep flights of a St. Louis apartment, but to see a blank space turn into a home is worth the backaches and pinched fingers.

For some families, however, having a furnished home is a lot more complicated than getting that mattress to fit through the front door.

- Are you so excited?

- The furniture.

(laughs) - Typically the families we're working with also need everything.

- Yeah.

- So they're not just missing a couch or a kitchen table, like they're missing a couch, kitchen table, beds, pots and pans, dishes to eat off of.

So it can be truly transformational and their like general wellbeing at home, how they feel about waking up in the morning, and just being able to tackle whatever hardships they have to go through the rest of that day.

- [Brooke] Home Sweet Home is a nonprofit that provides furniture and household items at no cost to families in need.

Betsy founded Home Sweet Home in 2015 after working for other nonprofits in the St. Louis area and seeing the need for this specific service.

Over the past 10 years, they've grown significantly with over 800 volunteers, 21 staff members, four moving trucks, and they serve up to 1,200 families each year.

Which is a huge service, but the need is far greater.

- We did a needs assessment a few years ago where we learned that there are more than 100 different agencies in four additional counties that are seeking services from us.

- Around the St. Louis area.

- Around the St. Louis area.

- Wow.

- So we currently only serve St. Louis city and county.

So for us, it's not a very simple task to just grow.

To grow, you need another truck, you need two teams of movers, you need more insurance, you need more volunteers and stuff.

So that is within our next five to 10 year plan is to figure out how do we grow in a way that's sustainable but also so we can meet the needs of the community.

- [Brooke] Home Sweet Home currently works with over 50 agencies who assist with a wide range of housing insecurities, from those recovering from substance abuse to veterans to survivors of domestic violence.

Those agencies can provide the actual housing, but to make it feel like a home is what can truly spark hope for that transformational time.

- I've been volunteering since 2016, 2017, somewhere along there.

- [Brooke] Joyce's volunteer role as a personal shopping assistant is one of the many elements in building a trusting relationship with clients.

- Some individuals are not as shopper happy like I am.

(laughs) When I first started, there was one young lady who, from homeless to finally having a whole apartment of her own.

I had so much fun with her 'cause she had her own particular taste and this is what she wanted and she was into the boho feel and style and she had so much fun, going through and getting excited like, "Can I have this?"

You know, just surprised that, "Yeah, yes.

If you want to fix it like this, yes."

We are trying to make individuals comfortable and proud and secure because the world around them is not.

- [Brooke] Aside from the mattresses, which they use donations to purchase, nearly everything has been donated.

But unlike some things you might find at a secondhand store, clients don't need to worry about the quality or condition.

- We have been known to be a bit picky when we're accepting items.

So obviously things have to fit.

So when donors call and they're like, "I have this big kitchen table or this big, I don't know, China cabinet," my kind of response is, "Will it fit up three flights of a South city apartment?"

- Mm-hmm, yes.

- Because that's kind of like just a general standard of what you're looking for.

If it's not gonna make those turns or fit up those stairs, it's probably too big for most of our families - For a job that, in a large part, consists of lifting and carrying heavy furniture, the most challenging aspects really are when we have to turn down furniture from donors because a big part of our mission is having high quality items for our clients to pick from.

So there's like a dignity in that choice, you know?

And it's not just the dregs of whatever somebody didn't want to have in their own home anymore.

And so hopefully their heart's in the right place, you know, they want to help out.

And sometimes turning down something that you need because it doesn't meet the standards is especially difficult 'cause we live and die by our donations and the generosity of our donors.

The great thing about Home Sweet Home is that you get to make an impactful difference in people's lives.

A couple months ago, I did a delivery to a single mother, two nice young kids, and then just about a month ago, maybe two months after that delivery happened, I was on a pickup route and I ended up at her same house because she had gotten a job, she had gotten all new furniture for herself, and then she turned around and re-donated everything that she had got back.

She kept it in pristine condition.

And you know, it was just so nice to see some confirmation for like, the start that we're able to help people get.

- Well I'm thankful, I'm grateful, I'm glad places like them exist and that when people do need help that it's here.

- Yeah, truly.

- I appreciate it.

(bright music) (birds tweeting) - Finding the perfect place to live can be a challenge unless you're a member of this group.

In our next story, I take a look at a unique living community offering amazing views, free, low maintenance housing, and the best landlord you could possibly imagine.

Forest Park, our city's crown jewel, boasts as one of the most beautiful urban parks in the world.

It's known for its cultural institutions and beautiful natural and recreational areas.

And during the summer months, a specific acrobatic songbird calls it home.

- [John] I like to brag, it's probably the largest urban colony in North America.

- [Anne-Marie] This is John Miller.

He's referring to the Purple Martin population he's helped grow in Forest Park.

- I'm kinda like one of those little kids who knows all about Tyrannosaurus Rex or something.

(laughs) Purple Martins, being swallows, are among those birds that take their food, insects, as they fly through the air.

I have had an interest in Purple Martins all my life.

Like many people, I learned about it from my grandfather in Kentucky.

- [Anne-Marie] Purple Martins, who aren't actually purple, are long distance migrant swallows who winter in South America and return north in the spring to nest and care for their young.

But what makes the Purple Martin unique is their existence thrives in close proximity to humans.

- Purple Martins are, as a bird species, are totally dependent on human provided housing.

They don't nest in natural cavities anymore.

- [Anne-Marie] How did that happen?

Did they evolve that way because of humans?

- Some historical accounts actually document that Native Americans may have been the first to host Purple Martins in natural gourds.

But I think some of it also just happened by accident.

Early colonialists in North America put up a lot of multi compartment bird houses because they were decorative.

You know, that's something that was done in Europe.

And Purple Martins said, "Well, well this is better than a woodpecker hole, so."

This will help 'em out just a little bit.

- [Anne-Marie] This is why what Miller is doing is so important.

He's been leading the effort to attract and multiply the songbird population in Forest Park by building, buying, and maintaining these structures on poles.

Purple Martins are not an endangered species, but they have been in decline.

- I spend my time researching, but according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey, the population is 8.6 million.

That sounds like a lot, but the most numerous bird in North America is the American robin.

And there's 400 million robins.

I love robins, but there's a lot of robins, so.

- They don't need your time.

- They don't need our help.

They don't need our help.

Right.

- [Anne-Marie] So for the last 20 years with support from Forest Park Forever, Miller and these human made boxes are doing their part to keep the Purple Martin off the endangered list.

- So here's babies that are progressing to sort of teenage years.

They look to be about 16, 18 days old and there's one, two, three, four if I'm counting all the noses.

Over the last 20 years we've learned about what is the best type of housing?

What size should the compartment be in order to give the babies the best chance of being successful in fledging?

And we've also, for instance, created special shaped entrances into the housing that blocks certain invasive species.

House sparrows and European starlings, for example.

One of the things we look for as we're going through is an infestation of bird mites, which can weaken the babies, and if the mites get really bad, we can kind of change out all the nest material, which might sound a bit intrusive, but it really does.

When you attract a colony of Purple Martins, you become somewhat of an amateur wildlife biologist.

You're not a professional.

So you need to be careful and foremost do no harm, but those of us who are really into the hobby, lower the housing once a week during the breeding season, take notes on eggs, how many babies?

We try to correct any problems that we see, removing any dead birds.

Sometimes you might get wet nests because of heavy rain.

We can actually replace the nest material, that type of thing.

So we try to manage them as best we can to help them fledge the most young that they can.

- [Anne-Marie] So are you saying that you actually provide them the material to make their nest?

They don't even have to go out and find it?

- Well, a little bit.

We help them out because if they were nesting in a woodpecker natural cavity that was rough on the bottom, you know, they wouldn't need much nesting material.

So we do put a little bit of pre-nest in the housing just to help them out and then they add to it and kind of top it off.

- [Anne-Marie] These are some pampered birds.

- Well, well they are.

Purple Martins also will, as grit, collect tiny mussel shells along the waterways, but a little more difficult to find those in the big old city.

So I help 'em out with some eggshells.

- [Anne-Marie] And if they are successful in fledgling young Purple Martins have what is called a strong site fidelity.

The adults will return to the same housing, spring after spring, as long as they're successful in raising babies and getting them out in the air and moved out of the house.

Do you feel a personal responsibility for these birds?

- I absolutely do, and I worry about it.

I'm not getting any younger and so I have recruited a couple of really good volunteers and the thing that we're trying to do is perpetuate the tradition of people erecting housing.

- [Anne-Marie] What Miller and the other volunteers are doing here is a thankless job.

Today, around 100 pairs of Purple Martins make Forest Park home each summer, each fledging an average of seven young.

- I see that first Purple Martin return in March, you know, and I get sentimental.

I think, "Well this is so cool.

That guy came all the way from South America, 3,000 miles.

How amazing."

And they start departing in July and start a new season.

I joke, they have some unique vocalizations.

I joke they speak Portuguese.

I'm not sure, but they probably spend more time in Brazil than in North America, yeah.

- It's all Portuguese to you.

- Yeah, it is.

It is.

- If you hear about someone with schizophrenia in the news, it's probably bad news.

And while the mental illness can bring on violent behavior, there are a lot more people with the disorder living lives that don't make headlines.

There's an effort here in St. Louis to detect the early signs of schizophrenia in young people, which can go a long way to addressing the needs of patients and families.

- [Jim] In a building on Washington University's medical campus, you will find WERC, the Washington Early Recognition Center.

Its focus is identifying and treating the early stages of serious mental illnesses in young adults, ages 13 to 25.

The center's founder and director is psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Mamah.

- And basically it's a clinic that specializes in individuals who are at an early stage of a psychotic disorder, like schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, or are at risk for developing a psychotic disorder in the future.

- You're looking at earlier age groups, I think, than most of us think about.

We think of adults, very often adult males in my mind, dealing with schizophrenia.

Does it emerge early on?

- Well, schizophrenia typically on average tends to first present during the late teen years or the early 20s.

- [Jim] According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 6% of adults in the US are living with an SMI, a serious mental illness, which includes potentially debilitating cases of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

The greatest prevalence of SMIs is among 18 to 25 year olds, who are also less likely to be receiving treatment than older adults.

- Our clinic doesn't only treat people who are already psychotic, but we are trying to get to people earlier.

And the reason is, just like for any other medical condition, the earlier that you can intervene, the better the long-term outcomes are.

- [Jim] The WERC Center is free and it's served about 200 patients over the past five years.

And to help identify early warning signs, it's developed a two page questionnaire, asking about such things as mood swings, sleep habits, thoughts, voices, hallucinations.

And Dr. Mamah says most patients answer honestly.

- So here again, the goal is, if we can pick up even attenuated lower grade psychotic symptoms, then we can monitor people closer and we can intervene sooner, right?

So that's what the questionnaire does is that it relatively quickly is able to pick up psychotic and related kind of symptoms that young people are going through.

- [Jim] There is a lot of research into what's happening in the brain of someone with schizophrenia, but there is no cure, just treatments.

Advances have been made in medications, which are usually an important part of those treatments.

- But it is not enough for most people.

You do need other kinds of supports 'cause psychosis and schizophrenia can be very taxing to the person, to the community.

And you often do need psychotherapy, often do need help with social support, with employment, with education, with housing.

And so just medicating the problem often doesn't work.

A lot of times it's because they don't, a lot of the patients don't actually take the medication.

How do you force them?

If you just give it to them, they may not take it.

But if you provide a supportive network with other kinds of interventions, they're more likely to take the medication and get better.

- Serious mental illnesses occur in all communities, ethnic, and economic groups, but some people have better access to care than others, and to the support of families and caregivers.

I mean, how important is their involvement in this?

- It is really very important.

The family and caregiver support is really important for people with schizophrenia.

And part of what we do as a clinic is try to coordinate all these things that are important for the young people.

So we do provide a lot of psychoeducation, a lot of support to parents and other family members as needed.

I think that the main thing that parents and family members need to know is that there are people that have a psychotic disorder and can get better.

It's very similar to, you know, cancer or cardiac disease.

If you can intervene earlier, then the long-term outcomes tend to be better.

- Finally, there's the small town in Missouri with a claim to fame, a story that can't be proved or disproved or even easily explained.

Veronica Mohesky was intrigued and hit the road.

- [Veronica] Piedmont, Missouri, about two hours south of St. Louis, is known for its beautiful scenery.

- Sam A. Baker State Park is a favorite place for a lot of people to come.

Clearwater Lake.

Have a big crowd of people come from the St. Louis area into Clearwater Lake.

So this area was always an attraction for tourism.

And before the UFOs came to the Piedmont area, it was a quiet town.

- [Veronica] Yes, you heard that right.

He said UFOs.

That's Dennis Hovis, the former general manager for the KPWB radio station in Piedmont.

He says UFO sightings in Wayne County began with a man named Reggie Bone.

- He was a high school basketball coach, but he was well liked, well respected.

Reggie did not believe in UFOs until the night of February the 21st, 1973.

And that changed his mind - [Veronica] Bone and his basketball team were returning from a game in another town when they saw it.

- One of the boys had spotted a light in the sky and they commented about that.

And then, oh, probably 15, 20 minutes later, they were in an area in a rural country we call Brushy Creek.

And as they came through that area, they spotted the UFO, an object they classified as a UFO, that was hovering with different colored lights and they got out and they looked at it for a while.

- [Veronica] Bone died in the late '70s, but Dennis Hovis interviewed him about the UFO sighting in 1973.

- [Reggie] And the only thing that we could see was a rotation of lights.

The lights were red, green, amber, and white.

And of course, being familiar with, a little familiar with airplanes, I knew that, although I didn't say anything at the time, that this wasn't an airplane.

It at least wasn't the markings of an aircraft of any type that I'd seen before.

- [Veronica] Hovis says that Bone and the boys didn't initially report the incident, but their story spread within weeks.

And as it turned out, they weren't the only ones who saw something.

Over the next month, about 500 people would report seeing UFOs in the area.

This included many respected members of the Piedmont community.

- And there were probably many more than that.

A lot of people didn't want to talk about it, didn't wanna say what they saw.

- [Veronica] Piedmont resident, Karen Ruble, says she saw something strange while walking back from her chicken house one night in 1973.

- But all of a sudden there was just beam of light come down from whatever was above us, and lit up the path so we could see all the way, you know, to walk into the house.

And like I said, we lived way out, you know, no neighbors around or anything, just out in the middle of nowhere kind of.

I mean, it's frightening, the unknown like that.

- [Veronica] By March, news about the UFO sightings reached across the nation and reports continued into the summer.

- I went outside and noticed, just briefly noticed, an unusual light.

- [Veronica] Mike Henson, another Piedmont resident, says he saw something when he came home from college in the summer of 1973.

- I said, "Hey, well, hey, what's that funny light up there?"

And nobody knew what I was talking about.

So we grabbed a pair of binoculars, we went out, and took turns setting it on a fence post, and what we saw was pretty much what you hear about, you know, the flying saucer sort of thing.

Little light flashing, very playful, moved, darted back and forth at a reasonable speed and then finally just kind of took off in an unusual direction that would not be, I don't think, possible for any normal type of aircraft.

- [Veronica] Hovis says the sightings were so frequent that they began causing traffic jams at night in certain areas.

- But in 1973, everybody was looking for UFOs.

They would be large crowds gathering on Brushy Creek.

They would have the highway patrol there to direct traffic in a little rural countryside town.

- [Veronica] Robin Thompson was 14 years old that summer.

- Well, after the news of all these sightings came out, at least the kids in our neighborhood, we were out late every night looking at the sky and looking around, 'cause we wanted to see something too.

- [Veronica] He says he and his friends saw a UFO above Clark Mountain.

- And then all of a sudden there was red and white flashing lights really rapidly, like you'd see on a police car, not like you'd see on a normal plane.

And it just lasted a few seconds and then it was gone.

- [Veronica] The large volume of sightings and media coverage soon attracted scientists to the area.

A physics professor from southeast Missouri State, Dr. Harley Rutledge, came to the area around May, 1973.

- And he set up a group, a scientific group, and they spent seven years investigating the UFOs in this area.

- And though Rutledge came in a skeptic, he left Piedmont as a believer.

He claimed to have witnessed UFOs himself while there.

He even published a book about his research in Wayne County in 1981.

He and other scientists concluded that while many of the alleged UFOs could be explained as car or airplane lights or fires from the town dump, there were still some they considered to be legitimate.

And though the initial sightings happened over 50 years ago, Piedmont is still in touch with its paranormal past.

Their UFO Capital of Missouri Park opened in May, 2024.

Their title as the UFO Capital of Missouri was designated by Governor Mike Parson in July of 2023.

- And that was brought about by our representative, Christine Dinkins, who introduced the bills at the state level.

- [Veronica] Vicki Eaton is part of a group of small business leaders in Piedmont who are working to boost tourism to the town by promoting its history of UFO sightings.

- We are who we are and so we might as well embrace it and take advantage of that claim to fame.

- [Veronica] The town hosted its first ever UFO Festival in 2023.

And after several other fundraising events, the group had enough money for sculptures in the UFO Park.

- We have a 16 foot UFO that was welded together by a local welder, which is even that much better.

It was landed in town with a police escort.

- [Veronica] And though no aliens were ever reported to be seen in the town, there is one in the park.

In fact, you'll find statues and images of UFOs and aliens all over town.

And according to some, you can still see UFOs in the sky around Piedmont too.

- Five or six months ago, a gentleman and his wife were fishing on Clearwater Lake and they witnessed a light hovering above their boat during the nighttime, and they became alarmed and they left the lake, but nothing happened to them, nothing bothered them, anything like that.

So yes, there's still some sightings, - [Veronica] There's still no official explanation for many of the sightings, but Hovis says the easiest way to make up your mind is to come look for yourself.

- As I tell people, if you go out tonight, on a clear night, and you look into the heavens and you sit there and you watch, you'll see something strange a lot of times.

I would suggest you go to Clearwater Lake and camp out and look in the sky.

You might see something.

- And that's it for "Living St.

Louis."

I'm Anne-Marie Berger.

Thanks for watching.

Goodnight.

(bluesy upbeat music) (bluesy upbeat music continues) (bluesy upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] "Living St. Louis" is funded in part by the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of Nine PBS.