In this December 2022 file photo, Shellie Macvane, 38, shivers in her tent on NE Hunnell Road in Bend, where temperatures hovered at 6 degrees.

Hand in hand, Bill and Judy Hess walked past the tents and trailers that line Hunnell Road in north Bend, snow and ice crunching beneath their shoes Thursday as the temperature hovered at 6 degrees.

It was so cold, they grimaced. But the retirees were on a mission of mercy and carried bags with hand warmers, gloves, hats, socks and fruit bars to hand out.

“We have a heart for people on the street,” Judy Hess said.

Nothing underscores the hazards of being homeless more than a frigid cold snap like the one gripping much of Central Oregon this week. A surge of cold arctic air has pushed its way into the region, placing its more than 1,100 unhoused residents at risk.

One of them was Shellie Macvane, who was hunkered in her tent on Hunnell Road, shivering, when Bill and Judy Hess arrived. Earlier, someone had stolen Macvane’s heater, she said. She had no car, no transportation, no money and wore a few sweat shirts and thin gloves.

Where would she wait out the cold?

“In here for now,” she said from inside her tent, where a few sleeping bags were her protection from the brutal conditions, and multi-colored feathers hung overhead near a stuffed sloth, markers and a container of peanut butter.

Only a few minutes before, Macvane was verging on tears. Now Judy Hess was pulling a beanie over the 38-year-old woman’s head.

“Can I have an extra pair of socks?” Macvane asked the couple.

“I’m out of socks, kiddo,” said Bill Hess, who had spent his life running a shelter for people experiencing homelessness. But he assured Macvane that he would return with more blankets soon.

The single digit temperatures had prompted some people to seek shelter across town, but some remained on Hunnell Road on Thursday.

Among them was Wiley Davidson, who faces the freezing conditions from the trailer he insulated himself, keeping it warm with his Little Buddy propane heater. He knows he’s lucky to have his trailer, motioning to the tents surrounding him, where only a few people stirred.

Earlier on Thursday, he stepped outside his trailer and saw a woman walking around in a T-shirt, so he loaned her a jacket, gloves and a hat.

“It’s nuts out here, on the streets,” Davidson said, pulling a leather jacket over his shoulders.

Across town, dozens of people filed through the doors of the Lighthouse Navigation Center, a low-barrier shelter on 275 NE Second St. It has an array of bunk beds and a lounge area with hot coffee and food.

Two signs welcome those who seek its services. They say “Don’t Give Up” and “You Matter.”

Those who use this shelter know how critical it is for unhoused people to stay safe during extreme weather events like the cold snap.

Craig Coyner, 75, who served as the mayor of Bend in the 1980s and has been staying at the shelter for a few months, said: “People are going to die without a place like this.”

Samuel M. Johnson, 68, of Redmond, a veteran who has no legs, said: “These people saved my life … This shelter is full of people with no place to go.”

Kristina Auston, 57, who once owned her own business as a mechanic, said: “Without this place, I’d probably be dead out there this year.”

Tammy Carter, 36, came to the shelter last Friday after she said Bend Police impounded her motor home because it lacked proper insurance and wasn’t fully off the road when she parked it. The situation has left her incapable of returning to her camp near La Pine. Carter is pregnant, and her baby is due next month. She knows the warmth of the shelter kept her child safe.

“If we hadn’t been able to get a place here, I would have lost this baby,” she said.

Life at the shelter brings with it a certain camaraderie. Over bagels, donuts and sandwiches, its residents joked Thursday about their lives and their many run-ins with authorities.

“We look out for each other,” said Michelle Fee, who worked as a caregiver for 18 years in Bend.

Fee was initially reluctant to move into the shelter, but after police moved her time and time again, she realized she and her two dogs needed a place to stay, especially as winter brought colder temperatures.

“My options were freeze to death out there or come in here and get warm,” she said.

On Thursday, she made peanut butter fudge for her friends at the shelter.

Lunchtime brought warm soup to shelter-goers, but a different, grim reality was playing out on Hunnell Road. Bill and Judy Hess kept passing out hand warmers through cracked open doors to trailers and parted flaps to tents.

They gave Macvane fruit bars.

“Is this all you got to eat?” Bill Hess asked Macvane.

She nodded.

They told Macvane to hang in there, that the worst of the freezing conditions would be over by the weekend. Macvane was glad to hear it. “I hate when it gets this cold,” she said before hugging the couple.

But more challenges lay ahead. As of Thursday afternoon, forecasters with the National Weather Service in Pendleton predicted snow and freezing rain would move into Central Oregon overnight.