“I’d get off work early and drive home, taking different routes and feeling pretty sorry for myself,” Keith recounted.

“I’m not a saint, I’ll tell you, but I hate winter. I’m a hotel-guy and even hate camping,” he added. “So I did wonder how [people] stay alive in 40-below, outside, sleeping in the doorway.”

Then during the late October cold spell, when the temperatures dipped below freezing, Keith saw a man sleeping without shoes and with his head in a cardboard box. He then stumbled on a woman sleeping on Woodward Avenue near the Detroit Institute of Arts. And while he had seen it all before, something moved him to action this time.

His initial response was to buy a bundle of $2 throw blankets when they went on sale at Walgreens. He found himself combing through resale shops. He then wrote to his e-mail list and asked for donations.

Keith keeps the blankets in his pickup truck and either passes them out or drapes them over people while they sleep on the street.

“I am just trying to do a little bit. I know it is not going to save their lives. I know they should be in shelters or in hospitals getting help,” Keith said. “But if I now see them [sleeping on the streets], I have to do something.”

Keith often offers an apology that he can’t do more.

“It is time for me to start giving back a little bit because I can’t tell you how much people have been helpful with me in my divorce and stuff,” Keith said. “Out of desperation and out of despair, something has to come that’s good. I was telling all my friends that ‘I know this divorce is really terrible, but I never knew I had so many friends.’”

It’s a good bet there are folks sleeping on the streets of Detroit this winter who feel the same way.