Saintly no longer. (In real life: first-person America).

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA--"Parents, stay behind me and watch for panhandlers!" instructed the petite middle school teacher. She knew the steep, half-mile route from San Francisco's Orpheum Theatre to our dinner spot could get dicey. Darkness had arrived and she didn't want to lose any of her 30 students along the way.

The parent chaperones and children divided into small groups and trekked uphill, past flashing red lights that invited us to come in and see the "Nudes! Live!" I gathered my charges closer, pulling my turtleneck sweater up over my mouth and nose to block the urine stench. A soiled hand reached out from the shadows; its fingernails embedded with black gunk. "Just a dollar ... c'mon" I urged my group along. They hesitated. They don't encounter dirt-encrusted, strung-out souls in their neighborhoods, and they were nervous, but some wanted to give the beggar their dinner money.

I picked up the pace, wishing San Francisco resident and Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi could tag along to explain what her allies have done to this city over the past couple of decades. But I knew what she would say. "Children, the homeless need to exchange their blood-tainted heroin needles for fresh ones. I have provided them with that."

My daughter, sensing my mood as I cleared my throat, shot me a look that said: "If you start in with that political stuff I will never speak to you again." Sadness swept over me for these adolescents who never knew the city before it became a symbol of leftist policies run amok.

My husband, Don, grew up on the San Francisco Peninsula; his family history is rooted in buildings that still stand in the once-vital financial district. Twenty-five years ago we spent part of our honeymoon at the Clift Hotel downtown. We walked for hours, past streams of businessmen and women in dark suits and hats, and corner vendors selling flowers. Aromas pulled us toward Fisherman's Wharf and a lunch of crab plucked out of the Pacific. The streets did not smell of urine then.

Some years later, Don's dad began to warn that "The city's getting crazy." He would jab at his San Francisco Chronicle over morning coffee and ask "Why do you want to take the kids to visit there?" We ...