I did nothing

In the parking spot next to mine at Goodwill on Monday was an older white van.

From the items visible up against the windows, I surmised this was a person who's probably living in her van. Some cat food, a blanket, two pillows, some fast food wrappers, newspaper.

The passenger side of the front seat was heaped with more of the same, mixed in with some shoes and what looked like a computer monitor.

As the store doors opened, the person in the van got out.
From her appearance, I figured my first opinion was correct, living in the van.

She had some unknown pieces of stuff in the side and back of her matted  and greasy hair and was wearing a torn and rumpled shirt and dirty pants.
She was gigantic.
At least six feet tall, and very heavy.
She went into the store while I was still getting out of my car. By the time I got inside, she was halfway across the store, leaning on a cart and scrolling through stuff on her phone.

During the 40 minutes or so I was in the store, that's what she was doing. Leaning and scrolling. She'd wander one or two aisles over and stop and scroll some more.

So I'd gone through the whole store and found nothing I needed.

I wanted to see what movies were on DVD. I came around the corner into that area, and she was standing in the middle of that aisle, scrolling through her phone. I got about 10 feet from her and was hit by this horrible wall of smell.

You know the sour smell a forgotten-next-to-the-sink washcloth gets after a couple days? That. And old sweat. Feces. Rotting fruit. Dead meat. Under that, the smell of illness.

It was so bad. I think that getting any closer would have caused me to throw up.
It's always important, but when you're a large person, it's especially important to keep clean.

A person can have skin breakdown in certain spots due to being unclean. It's not healthy. When someone has been unwashed for a long time, they sometimes are no longer even aware of how they look or smell. Or they've reached complete apathy. All of those things are sad.
I didn't say anything or react, I just turned away.
Ended up not looking at movies. I left the store.

I'm writing about this 'cause I don't know what to think.
I would not offer my own shower to this person, I have no idea what's going on. Is she psycho? Violent? Just someone who's had a run of bad luck? I don't invite most friends into my home, so I'm not inclined to invite strangers. And really, walking up to someone and asking if they need a shower? Or saying, "You need a shower." Neither one of those seems appropriate.

I wouldn't walk up to someone and offer to buy lunch or something, either.
Some feel threatened by that. Or insulted. I don't have a ton of extra to be offering right now. She had money, or at least I think so, she had several items in her cart.

I ended up doing nothing at all.
I felt bad for her, though.

Which is still doing exactly nothing, I know.

I wondered if there was something I should have said or done.
I know, just strangers passing in a store.
I pass a lot of people in a lot of stores without a second thought.

But I felt sad for her. Sorry that she's in the situation she's in. Curious as to how she got there.

I wanted to do... something.