Recent weeks have brought considerable coverage of the tragic case of "Sunshine," the homeless woman murdered in the courthouse area Downtown, where she had been a popular presence for many years.

Both print and broadcast media have touched on aspects of Lillian Ruth Wright's colorful life and horrible death at age 69. Friends and acquaintances have come forward to exchange anecdotes and to share grief. El Presidio Plaza has been deprived of its most well-liked citizen, and we all feel that loss.

Yet, sitting at the memorial service on the night of June 20 and observing much of the coverage, I couldn't help feeling there was something ironic and even self-congratulatory about our collective reaction in the wake of her murder.

Clearly there were a number of individuals who knew her well and loved her deeply. Their lives were intertwined and changed forever in the deepest, spiritual sense. Sunshine possessed an unquestionably special personality.

But to the public at large, her death and its coverage have represented something else. This has been an opportunity to sympathize with a general type of individual whom most people under most circumstances would label unsympathetic.

Sunshine was charming, intelligent, generous and articulate. This made it easy to focus our affection, sympathy and mourning on her. Having done so, we can now sit back and give ourselves mental pats on the back. I feel. I am a caring individual. I am a mensch. Good for me.

But thousands of homeless people still occupy our alleys, parks and Dumpsters. They are not all as charming, intelligent or articulate. It is not as easy to sympathize with them, but they need us just as badly, if not more.

A red-eyed man in his 40s staring out from behind a lice-infested beard is not viewed as cute or whimsical. He doesn't have a Chihuahua to attract conversation. He is, however, a human being, and he has a story.

We assume he has done something to end up homeless. We assume he must be lazy, alcoholic, a drug addict — there has to be an explanation.

We need to assume a lot, that society is fundamentally fair, because if it isn't, then we must confront the ugly fact that many of us are just a short hospital stay and a few paychecks away from joining him on his bench.

I am old enough to remember the very early days of the civil rights era. It was not uncommon then to hear a white person refer to a minority individual as "one of the good ones." This was an effort to express acceptance and deny prejudice. But the expression itself contained its own contradiction. It was tokenism, it was not acceptance, and it was certainly not sympathy.

We must not allow ourselves to think of Sunshine as "one of the good ones," unless we simply mean an all-around wonderful human being. She must not be the token with which we scratch our collective guilty back.

Sunshine was special, but she was also one of many. She is gone, but the others are still here. Take a moment now and then to know some of them. Be prepared for disappointments, but also great rewards.

A dollar is nice, but time is priceless. Share your time. Your new acquaintance will appreciate it, and so will Sunshine.