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Then his dreams and his demons collide. It's finals day at Pima Community College, and Richard Daniel is missing his astronomy and algebra tests. He sits in the Pima County jail, his dreams of a degree in American Sign Language, a career as an interpreter and a home slipping away.

The day before, he had gone to Pima's Downtown campus to work on an astronomy project. The police report says Daniel, 53, was "severely staggering and almost walked into fellow students as he passed by them."

When a campus police officer ordered him to leave campus, he refused and was arrested on a charge of disturbing the peace of an educational institution, a misdemeanor.

The day had started so well — a guy who owed him money had given him a full can of tobacco. That meant Daniel, who's been homeless on Tucson streets for a dozen years, wouldn't have to comb through ashtrays for the half-smoked butts he breaks apart to roll into his own cigarettes.

Then he ran into a friend who'd had a birthday a few days before and was still celebrating. The two swapped stories of the good times they had partying together, and before long Daniel was reveling in his own fun.

Now, sitting in the visiting room of the jail, Daniel assumes his usual position, legs crossed gently, arms folded over each other. Nothing's normal, though, about the orange jail jumpsuit or the ID bracelet bearing his mug shot. Most notably, he isn't clutching one of the paperbacks he carries with him constantly. He chews into hard-core science fiction or fantasy books so often that he even reads while walking down a crowded sidewalk.

The books earned him the street handle "Professor" from his peers. The name partly inspired him to return to college although he was still on the streets.

Without taking final exams, his hopes for a successful semester are gone. And without a successful semester, the Pell Grant that helps subsidize his education is in jeopardy. Academic probation is the best he can hope for if he is readmitted to the college.

"I'm pretty sure it's all over," he says. "I really learned a lot and I met a lot of nice people, but to lose all that . . . ."

A lifetime ago and half a country away, Daniel was born in Indianapolis. He says he grew up on a farm and went to private boarding school in Missouri. He remembers playing soccer, swimming and diving, listening to rock music, eating pizza, chasing girls. Later, he says, he took some classes at a university, then enlisted in the Army in 1975.

He talks of an honorable discharge, a failed marriage and another stint in school that fell short. Then trying to start a printing business in Miami with some friends. His partner was more interested in cocaine than business, he says.

Before long the money was gone and Daniel ended up on the street for the first time. He took his first hit of crack cocaine and spent a year and a half chasing that first high, never able to get it back. He's been lucky to stay away from it since, he says.

"Don't even try it," he says now. "I'm serious. If you hear about someone even thinking about it, glue their mouth and nostrils shut."

Other jobs followed: one as a caregiver and another as animal manager for a small-time family circus where, he says, he cared for an elephant, a couple of miniature donkeys, 18 toy poodles and a 13-foot python.

Sometime in the mid-'80s, the show rolled into Tucson. When it rolled out, Daniel stayed behind. He did construction out of the labor halls, planning to stay at one of the shelters until he got a good job and an apartment.

Instead, he fell into a deep dependency on alcohol. He jumped from homeless camp to camp, staying at the shelter when he wasn't drinking. A company would close and leave him out of work. The jobs would run dry. He was getting older and having a hard time getting the manual labor done fast enough. He got tired of it, he says.

He hasn't tried to work in the past year, making just enough collecting aluminum cans to meet his needs.

"You don't realize how fast time goes," he says.

It's late November and Pima Community College instructor David Iadevaia is showing his astronomy students how they can use the Internet to track stars.

As the other students stare blankly at the screen, Daniel furiously scribbles notes with his yellow No. 2 pencil. He hunches over his work, as if his intense focus helps the words stick to the page.

"Notice that the number of photons is increasing," the instructor says. One student types a text message into her cell phone. Another browses a fashion magazine. Bits of gossip are exchanged. Daniel's gaze stays fixed on the screen.

"What do we have? 13.6?" asks the instructor.

"Yeah," Daniel says, the only one in the room to answer.

Daniel had been looking forward to this class since he read a Smithsonian magazine about the 40th anniversary of the verification of the existence of pulsars. He was eager, too, to talk about it with the teacher.

As he finishes studying on the SunTran bus that takes him out to Pima's East campus, Daniel closes his notebook and puts it back in his bag.

"All right, Teach," he says aloud to himself. "Give me a quiz. I'm ready." Then he adds, "See if I can scrounge another 20 cents from somewhere. Otherwise I'm gonna end up walking."

He can buy a low-income bus fare for 40 cents. Sometimes he gets passes from homeless agencies. Without either, he's on foot.

"I think about what it takes for him to walk into that classroom," says Diana Robledo, operations supervisor for Primavera Foundation's Relief and Referral program. "How it must make him feel trying to stay focused around other students that have homes, that have access to showers and clean clothes when they need it."

Daniel receives his mail at Primavera and lists the address there as his own when he needs to provide one. Everywhere he goes he carries his giant trekking backpack, which he calls his condominium because besides a book bag that holds his notebooks and pencils, it holds everything he owns.

"He can't leave anything behind. For him to hold onto supplies, to safeguard belongings . . . when he's worrying about his next meal, let alone his next test, that's a lot of stress," Robledo says.

"College is difficult for a full-time student who has access to all of the normal resources, including housing," says PCC spokesman David Irwin, who once was a board member with the group providing case management for the homeless. He is not aware of other homeless people among the college's 60,000 students taking classes for credit.

"People don't realize the amount of time and energy that it takes to be homeless," Irwin adds.

Daniel says that's exactly how he feels. "People think that because you're homeless you must not have anything to do. But when you have to worry about staying alive, it can get to be a lot."

During algebra tests, the other students have calculators and textbooks. Daniel has only notes. Iadevaia gave him an astronomy textbook. He's left to use other textbooks and study at the Downtown campus library.

A four-night respite

At the Gospel Rescue Mission, where Daniel goes almost every night, about 100 people are seated in the plain room, chairs arranged in rows, facing a wooden cross. Like Daniel, they are here to stay dry, get clean, fill their bellies and maybe change clothes. There's chapel after dinner.

"You get a shower, a meal and a little bit of the Lord for dessert," he says.

Daniel gets a four-night stay each month, with more beds available during bad weather.

During these respites, he prefers to stay to himself. A lot of people at the mission have mental problems, he says. Better to keep a low profile. Better to find a nice corner to read in.

He's cautious.

"I'm not going to divulge the location of my camp, with all these ears around," he says. "You don't think they're listening, but trust me, they are."

He should know. He's been robbed twice in the past four weeks, losing what little he had.

"When I go to financial aid, they're going to ask me, 'How are your grades?' I'll say that they're pretty good, considering I got rained out, arrested, had all my stuff stolen. And the list goes on and on and on."

South Tucson is quiet by 9 p.m. on this November evening. After chapel each night, Daniel waits at the bus stop, not for the bus but for the traffic to slow enough that he feels safe to go to camp for the night. He's been staying in the same spot for months now, and it hasn't yet been discovered. His previous spot was found when someone left trash behind. That's why he always sticks to the rule of packing out what he packs in. It's one of many rules he has made to stay safe on the street.

"If I get lucky and have a bag of chips and a six-pack of beer and take it back to camp, there's gonna be an empty bag and six cans going with me until I get to the next trash can," he says.

He walks up to a tall, corrugated metal fence at the back of an empty lot. Other than a shallow depression where the fence meets the lot, it's out in the open.

"They cut down all the grass," he huffs. "There was a lot more cover here before."

Daniel drops to his knees, crouching low so no passing cars will notice him, another rule. He quickly unpacks his sleeping bag, stopping abruptly to lie flat, face down, each time a car's headlights come into view. He spreads out the bag on the bare dirt and takes off his shoes, placing them neatly beside each other to the side of his sleeping bag, just like slippers by the bedside.

Once in camp, there is no moving around, no poking your head up to see what's going on. Another rule.

Daniel has been living outside long enough to be comfortable with it. He can tell the air temperature without the aid of a thermometer, just as he can tell time at night by the constellations.

Orion's Belt rests vertically in the eastern sky, as if the hunter had also stretched out for the night.

"There he is," Daniel says. "I figure when he's straight overhead, it's about 3 a.m." He points to the east. "That's where Venus will be in the morning."

The final rule: When Venus signals it's 5 a.m., get moving.

Daniel isn't at church on the Sunday following his arrest. Because he never misses services at Living Miracles Church of God, held Downtown in the Hotel Arizona, others in the congregation are wondering if he's still in jail.

Just after the service starts he walks in. Daniel has a broad smile on his face and light in his eyes. He goes around the room and greets everyone individually. He gives a thumbs-up to the pastor.

During the time for testimony, Daniel stands: "Well, Captain Chaos paid me a visit this week and hit me with both barrels, but I told him to back off because he couldn't keep me away from my church, my family."

Throughout the service he writes notes as he always does. "I will persevere," says one. Another reminds him of something he said in testimony the week before: "I enjoy coming to church because it feels like it lifts a burden. But this morning God told me that he wasn't going to lift the burden anymore, that it's mine to learn how to carry it. So now, I know it's up to me to be strong and do it."

To succeed, Daniel will have to face his demons. His suspension from the college has been lifted but with conditions that will give him more structure and accountability. If he doesn't perform well academically this semester, he will lose the Pell Grant permanently.

"I'm not scared about that," he says. "I was getting A's and B's and sleeping in an alley."

There is a chance that he could join a Christian halfway house through the Gospel Rescue Mission, he says. With work-study at the college, he could pay the $275-per-month rent and utilities, and it's drug- and alcohol-free.

"I think that's a pretty good environment for me," he says, noting that drugs are not an issue with him.

"The alcohol," he says, "that's what got me into trouble in the first place."

For now, he says, he's looking forward to getting back to school, and he feels like he has a much better chance this semester based on the lessons he has learned.

"The enemy showed its face," he says. "Now I can see it coming and watch out for it."

"I'm not gonna quit," he says. "I've decided that I'm going to get at least an associate's degree in something. It's a goal. I've gone too long without one."

On any given day in America, about 750,000 people, like Richard Daniel, are homeless, the National Alliance to End Homelessness reports.

Pinning down the number is notoriously difficult . Activists can count how many shelter beds are full, but pinpointing the "hidden homeless" — the people living in their cars, in campgrounds, in boxcars — is harder. There's fluidity in the cycle as some escape the cycle of homelessness and others enter it.

Approximately 5 million people a year will experience at least one episode of homelessness, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty says.

Last January, activists canvassed the local streets, trying to find as many of the unsheltered homeless as they could. They found 1,099 people. Combined with those in shelters or transitional housing, about 5,000 homeless people live in Tucson.

— Rhonda Bodfield Bloom

To see more photos from Daniel's life in school and on the streets go to www. azstarnet.com /slideshows