‘Soap, Hope and a Bone…’: Homeless helper has change of heart

Stacy J. Willis

Monday, June 11, 2001 | 10:48 a.m.

The end of evangelist John 3:16 Cook went something like this:

He yanked his clerical collar off of his neck and announced, "This is it. John 3:16 is gone.

"I'll never wear this collar again."

He was sitting with his wife, a self-professed witch named Magickal Marissa, in the back corner of a casino coffee shop in North Las Vegas. They were drinking tomato juice. The waitress persistently dogged them to order some food. But no one was hungry. It was the end of an era.

Cook had just given up on humanity -- in favor of animals.

"People are horrible," said the longtime community preacher and homeless advocate. "But there's nothing like the love of a good dog."

His 68-year-old face turned purplish with anger. His eyes welled up. He shook his finger across the table. "I don't mean to get emotional, but I just killed a man I spent 25 years building up," he said about his now-abandoned evangelist persona.

"I'm changing my legal name from John 3:16 to John K9 Cook," he said. "I'm going to open an animal sanctuary."

Moments earlier he had pulled a piece of dental work out of his mouth -- a crown or cap or something that shouldn't come out -- to prove a point: Three decades of serving homeless people have left him so broke that he can't afford basic health care.

The past 14 of those years have been spent in Las Vegas, where he has become well-known for motoring around town in a converted mail truck emblazoned with the slogan "Soup, Soap and Hope," and handing out ham sandwiches and blankets, coffee and razors.

"I've helped a lot of people," he said.

But as he sees it, he has gotten little in return. His house has been splattered with buckshot in a drive-by shooting. His truck, which has faded from bright red to dingy pink, has been vandalized. Many civic leaders no longer return his phone calls. Donations to his Pride Village homeless outreach program have dried up. Just last week, a homeless man came to his house and, after being fed an egg sandwich, stole Cook's radio.

"I'm disappointed and heartbroken over people, from preachers to politicians," Cook, who is eking out a living on Social Security, said. "Even the homeless people have changed. They're horrible."

His wife, an astrology columnist, echoes:

"They're horrible out there today. They don't even want to help each other anymore."

Cook's life, chronicled in two bulging scrapbooks that lay on the table in front of him, has been a mix of showmanship and charity -- he has been called a saint, a hustler and a gadfly.

He was raised Catholic in California by "showpeople," he said, and started his career as a Hollywood stunt man -- he took the fall for Clark Gable in "The Misfits." In 1969 he became a born-again Christian and started a lucrative career as an evangelist in North Carolina and Florida.

He adopted a name referring to this New Testament verse:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. -- John 3:16

"But I realized that being a big-time evangelist was just another type of show," he said. So, he said, moved by his conscience, he started working with the homeless.

But his unconventional way of executing his mission -- from occasionally giving out shots of whiskey to performing lay-dentistry -- often brought him trouble with authorities. His shelters came under fire for code violations, and more than once he locked horns with community leaders over the way homeless people were treated.

Cook has never been shy with the media and has been featured in dozens of articles -- from People magazine to the St. Petersburg Times -- for feeding the homeless, feuding with city officials and even running unsuccessfully for public office.

But enough of all that. It's all behind him now, he said, pausing momentarily to autograph his last clerical collar. "I'm going to focus on animals."

The plan, should he and Marissa find funding, is to open a Las Vegas animal sanctuary called "Dog's Little Acres." He will drop the reference to Biblical verse in his name in favor of a reference to dogs. Marissa, his wife of 13 years and the cat-lover in the family, will change her name to Magickal Meow Marissa.

The couple already has a couple of dogs and a cat.

"We're also going to change the words on the side of the truck," Cook said, letting out a hearty laugh. "It's going to say 'Soap, Hope and a Bone..."

"You've got to keep your sense of humor about these things," he said.

"I'm sick of people. But if you've got the love of a good dog, you've got it made."