He had been homeless for decades. Then old friends saw his photo in a newspaper.

SOURCE: WASHINGTON POST

The photo shocked Leea Mechling, who had no idea that her old friend was living on the streets just a few miles north of her workplace in Austin.

The version of Coy Featherston photographed, pushing an overloaded shopping cart down Guadalupe Street on a rainy day, looked little like his younger self, someone classmates remembered as an outgoing and popular high school student. But there he was, decades later, illustrating a story about homeless encampments on the front page of the Sept. 11 edition of the Austin American-Statesman.