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Not all heroes wear capes — this one carries Narcan.

Recently, an Albuquerque local, known by the superhero moniker Skyline, went viral online for his civic powers rather than his super ones.

Skyline sits in on City Council meetings, attends protests and helps out people experiencing homelessness — all while in blue and white tactical gear.

“Anybody can be a superhero,” he said. “I mean, I'm just a short little dude. I didn't have a whole lot of anything growing up and I'm still out here doing it.”

Skyline began patroling along Central eight months ago with a backpack and painted armor dug out of bins at military surplus stores and pawn shops.

Almost overnight, support for his mission exploded. Now, he rents a storage unit just to house all the donations people send him, including food, water, electrolyte beverages, beanies, socks and hygiene kits.

Skyline documents his superhero antics on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, where he has amassed a collective following of more than 1 million people.

In keeping with superhero tradition, Skyline asked the Journal not to disclose his identity.

Routinely, Skyline goes “on patrol,” handing out supplies along Central and in Downtown to people living on the street.

Skyline’s mission comes as homelessness is rising across the country. In Albuquerque, the number of people experiencing homelessness has doubled since the pandemic, according to counts. 

While out on patrol, Skyline carries a few must-haves. With him at all times is a first aid kit, stocked with the overdose-reversal drug Narcan, a pen and paper and a stun gun, which he said is precautionary as he’s never felt threatened while doing his outreach.

Though he’s yet to use Narcan while on patrol, he recommends that everyone, regardless of background or situation, carry it. Before he was Skyline, he worked a private security gig and used Narcan multiple times to bring people back from overdoses.

“There's a lot of overdose situations happening, not even just in New Mexico, but everywhere,” Skyline said. “So I didn't just add it to my arsenal. I made it (one of) my top three items that anybody who's going to go out and help their community should put in their arsenal.”

On patrol

In early March, Skyline unloaded a wagon full of supplies from his sky-blue car. Skyline keeps his identity anonymous as a part of his superhero shtick.

Quickly, as he towed the wagon behind him up Central, people began to notice this real-life comic book figure.

Folks leaned out from passing car windows and honked their horns. Others called his name and asked to take a photo with him. Even passersby from out of state recognized Skyline from his iconic bright blue getup.

By Fifth Street, he had nearly run out of supplies. Food and water were the first to go, then beanies, leaving him with socks, hygiene packs and emergency blankets.

“What it really means to be a superhero is doing what you can with what you have, because it's your responsibility to do so,” Skyline said. “If you have the power to help somebody, no matter how small it may be, then use it.”

But handing out snacks isn’t his only mission. Asking what someone needed often went beyond material items. Many were just as happy to chat with someone who had the time to listen.

Resting against the brick wall of the Sunshine Theater, Gregorio Dominguez, who lives on the streets, spoke about his childhood in Cuba, the time his wife nearly gave birth in the streets of Hollywood waiting for an ambulance and how he was a poet and writer of love songs with a near photographic memory for melody.

Dominguez bounced fluidly in and out of Spanish as he spoke. He told Skyline that no one had asked him his name or about himself in a long time. Everyone on the block calls him “Cuba,” he said, because no one had bothered to ask for his name.

Another man sat on the curb under a streetlight on Fourth and Central with a bulldog puppy in his lap. His name was David Ellis and he stopped Skyline, not just for supplies, but to thank him.

“I want to thank you for your spiritual duty,” Ellis said. “It’s a spiritual thing to want to do more for someone other than yourself. That’s more than man.”

Skyline scratched between the pup’s ears.

Though lighthearted, Skyline said the work he does is fundamentally political.

“I primarily believe in bringing a form of equity to all people, raising the lowest bar that we have,” he said. “I don't think that a country's success should be dictated by (gross domestic product), but a country’s success should be dictated by who is the most impoverished person in this country and how well of a life do they have? If they have a good life — that's success right there.”

His work is also deeply rooted in personal experience.

Though Skyline now spends his days helping people on the streets, there was a time when he didn’t have a roof over his own head.

An origin story

Though he tries to focus on the positive, Skyline has a real-life origin story.

As a young child his mother lost custody of him and he went to live with his grandparents in California. There, at 10 years old, a violent incident would change his life forever and spark his “entire fascination” with helping and protecting others.

“My grandparents took in more of the troubled family members and one of my uncles who lived with us had schizophrenia,” Skyline said. “And in 2009 he was in the process of swapping medication. The family was going through that. And anybody knows how schizophrenia can be, switching medication can be a very fickle time in terms of triggering an episode and he did have a really bad episode triggered and he ended up attacking both my grandparents with one of the kitchen knives.”

During the attack, another relative took Skyline to his bedroom where he hid. That relative then tackled the uncle to the ground, saving both Skyline and his grandfather's lives.

His grandmother, however, died of her injuries, while his grandfather needed extensive reconstructive surgeries after being stabbed repeatedly in the stomach.

From that point on, his home life was turbulent, as he was sent to live with his mother in New Mexico, where he cycled in and out of homelessness as a teenager.

Through it all, he went “all in” on practicing martial arts, which later developed into an interest in law enforcement. But after high school, when he applied to become a police service aide, he failed his background check.

“You need a good credit score to be a cop. Go figure,” Skyline said. “Obviously, at the time I was just barely getting off the street, so good credit score — no, that's not happening.”

He later joined the Marines, then went into private security — though he said neither ended up being a good fit.

As it turned out, his childhood dream of being a real-life superhero gave him the sense of purpose he always wanted.

“In hindsight, I wouldn’t have wanted my life to go any other way because my personal experiences have given me the kind of empathy that I need to do what I do now,” Skyline said.

Skyline hopes that his online popularity will have ripple effects, inspiring others to engage politically and civically in their communities.

“I think the most important thing that everybody needs to understand is we are all in this together, really,” Skyline said. “And the more we think that ‘I alone can't make change’ or ‘I alone will make change’ — both are equally bad. No, we together can be that change, even with tiny little steps, all of us together. That's what we need— unity. Unity is our superpower.”

 Gillian Barkhurst is the local government reporter for the Journal. She can be reached at gbarkhurst@abqjournal.com.