Mark Horvath, a documenter of homelessness who was once homeless himself, was touring a tent city in Sacramento when he raised his cellphone to take a photo of one man's ingenious shopping-cart storage system.
Suddenly, another man rushed at him, screaming, with a knife.
Horvath was terrified, he said, but not so scared that he stopped sending photos and text messages about what was happening.
"I am a little scared because people will protect their home and everyone is angry," read one, followed soon after by another: "One man . . . starts screaming at me. I walk away. Two guys follow me to my car. I'm scared."
Five hundred miles away in Los Angeles, Heather Meeker sat on the edge of her chair staring at her computer screen, anxious for Horvath's next update.
Meeker is director of marketing and communications for the social media storytelling website Whrrl, which lets users create online storybooks using their own photos and captions.
She was afraid, she said, that Horvath was going to be attacked mid-message.
As it turned out, the encounter ended peacefully. It also led to a relationship between Horvath and Whrrl that has helped turn Horvath into one of the Internet's most outspoken homeless advocates.
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