SAN ANTONIO — With brutal cold blowing through the heart of the urban core this week, ambassadors from Centro San Antonio who can be seen on downtown streets all day every day are shifting their focus from helping answering questions to saving lives.

“When it comes to brutal temperatures like we saw when we were out there at 2 a.m. this morning, our crisis response team, our safety administrators become lifesaving personnel,” Centro President and CEO Trish DeBerry. “(They’re) much like police or fire or EMTs, because they’re constantly looking and they’re constantly identifying somebody who clearly could be frozen to death and needs to get into care immediately.”

DeBerry said the relatively new program is seeing important results.

“We are incredibly grateful for our safety administrators. These are former police officers that have a lot of training and experience when it comes to de-escalation or really just their instinct, their eyes, their ears on the ground,” she said. “They can identify problematic areas or someone who is in crisis and so that becomes critically important obviously when temperatures dip below freezing.”

DeBerry said unsheltered people who are prone to refusing help may be more likely to come in from the cold.

“The sidewalks become freezing and frigid and so our outreach efforts double and triple and we maximize those efforts.”

Enticements, DeBerry said, can make the difference.

“When they are frozen to the bone and they see someone who has a hot cup of coffee or a hot cup of hot chocolate, they’re really more willing to be able to accept the help and so a lot of this is multiple conversations and really telling people for your own safety, even if it’s only for a little while, we need to get you into a shelter,” DeBerry said.

With 130 ambassadors running a 24/7 operation, DeBerry said getting people who have no resources to the partner agencies which are helping is a key component of success.

“We offer transportation, which is critically important to be able to get people into care,” DeBerry said. “So when they get there, they get a warm blanket, they have a place to be able temporarily to be able to call a safe haven at home and really shelter from the cold.”

In addition to looking after people, the group is also taking care of more than 700 landscaping features, such as the planters and vegetation that make the downtown area beautiful.

“We have hundreds of thousands of visitors that come to downtown for Christmas and for New Year’s, and so you want downtown to look pretty,” DeBerry said. “So when a freeze hits, we have thousands of dollars of fauna and foliage that we have to take care of.”

DeBerry said their horticulture team springs into action every time there is a threat of prolonged freezing or near-freezing temperatures.

“When we see a front is going to come through, we immediately have to go drain the pots of extra water because we don’t want it to the water to expand and the pots to crack because that’s expensive. Then some of the baskets that are higher up are self-watering and so we have to turn those off,” DeBerry said. “We do what we can to save what we can because we want it to look beautiful for sure but we want to save as much as possible.”

Whether it’s people, plants or pets, DeBerry said when times are tough, every bit of compassion matters.

“I think it’s super easy really to look down upon the unsheltered or the homeless population as the dregs of society but they are human and so when it comes to brutal temperatures like we have for the following week, it is incumbent upon all of us to be human and offer dignity and offer compassion and offer help to somebody who yes may be out on the street,” DeBerry said. “But the next day the opportunity to be able to pull them off the streets may happen so that they don’t freeze to death should be basic.”

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