There’s bad luck, there’s really bad luck — and then there’s what Alfred Janske has gone through over the past 14 years.

On April 13, 2012, while camping on Mount Diablo, he was struck by lightning. But even that’s not the most dramatic calamity to befall the 70-year-old.

The chain of circumstance that placed Janske on Mount Diablo — homeless, living in a tent with his brother — began four years earlier, when Janske was making $52,000 a year ($68,000 in today’s economy) as a business manager at an Oakland charitable institution that provides housing and other services to developmentally disabled adults in the East Bay.

“I had a very difficult boss, and I ended up quitting in February of 2008,” Janske said. “I figured, ‘OK, I’m going to find another nonprofit job.’

“My timing was impeccable — the economy tanked.”

Janske owned a house in the Glenview neighborhood of Oakland and went through all his savings and even his retirement money trying to hold on to it. He sold his appliances for $9,000. He had an extensive comic book collection, what remained of his Graphic Fantasy Comic Book Store, which he owned on 40th and Broadway in Oakland from 1973-79. That collection, mostly DC Comics, was sold for $53,000.

Still, within four years, the house slipped away.

My timing was impeccable — the economy tanked.

Janske’s autistic younger brother, George, had lived with him after their mother’s death in 1995, along with their four dogs. His brother used to walk the dogs every morning, on his way to buying The Chronicle, Janske said.

Janske works on historical historic papers while building a genealogy report on his mother’s El Salvadorian family. Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

Janske checks his mail before walking up to his apartment in Hayward. Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

Janske’s home has a photo of his mother with paintings depicting her birth country of El Salvador. Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

After the loss of the house, they both went to live in a Richmond motel for a few months. But at $62 a night, that cost too much.

That’s when they decided their only option was to pitch a tent at the Juniper Campgrounds 3,000 feet above sea level on Mount Diablo, where they lived for one month.

“It was quite pleasant. We bought food and found some really good library books about the Morgan Territory. It wasn’t so bad,” Janske recalled. “They have showers at the campgrounds.”

Then lightning struck.

It was an April storm on Friday the 13th when a bolt hit the tree next to Janske’s tent. He said he remembers feeling the lightning go through his body, a phenomenon of ground conduction current, and “our ears were ringing with this unimaginable noise.” It left Janske with nerve damage on his left side and balance problems, side effects that have exacerbated the ringing in his ears. It also rendered one of their four dogs, Spike — “he was a very good boy” — unable to stand. Spike died a few months later.

“I had a terrible decade,” Janske said. “I mean, bad luck — bad luck was in there all the time.”

With the help of local activist Patricia Maginnis, who’d read about their lightning incident in a local newspaper, the brothers were able to move into an apartment in Oakland’s San Antonio district. That lasted several years, until that apartment was no longer available and they had to leave in 2018.

They had another brief period of homelessness, but after a few weeks, the brothers were able to move into senior affordable housing, subsidized by the federal and state governments. For a while, they lived off of George’s disability insurance and Janske’s work as a freelance gardener. But with the COVID-19 pandemic, Janske eventually lost his regular customers.

In May 2021, George died of a heart attack at age 67. In addition to the personal loss, Janske lost his brother’s income.

He has lived in his residence for four years and was able to support himself up until the pandemic,” said Wong. “He just needed this one-time help to get him stabilized until his retirement income starts.

Janske and his brother, given their previous brushes with homelessness, had always been careful about paying their bills on time, he said. The idea of falling behind on rent has always been especially stressful for him. Hoping for some relief this year, he applied to The Chronicle’s Season of Sharing, asking for a grant to pay rent for August and September. The fund works year-round to prevent homelessness and hunger in the nine-county Bay Area. All donations go directly to help people in need, with administrative costs covered by The Chronicle and the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund.

He was aided in this effort by Andrea Wong, program specialist at the Alameda County Social Services Agency.

“He has lived in his residence for four years and was able to support himself up until the pandemic,” said Wong. “He just needed this one-time help to get him stabilized until his retirement income starts.”

Janske expected the process to take as many as five months, “but the turnaround time was really pretty quick — and they paid August, September and October,” he noted, admitting he thought it must have been a mistake. “To have somebody be this generous, it doesn’t happen. … I was grateful.

“When you’re kicked to the curb and you’re down, people tend to dump on you a lot. To have somebody say, ‘Oh, by the way, here’s something extra’ … it took a while to have it sink in.”

To have somebody be this generous, it doesn’t happen. … I was grateful.

With Janske turning 70 in November, he became eligible to take his full Social Security, which amounts to $1,900 a month. He has been paying $616 per month in rent, and if that remains the same, he says he should be on solid ground for the future.

“Life since then has been really odd,” Janske said of that fateful night atop Mount Diablo. “I don’t know where life is going to go. To pay rent and to be in a place, to have a location I know I’m going to stay in — I have to have this. My health, everything else, is dependent on being here.”