Nancy McCradie was delivering newspapers to the old Santa Barbara Liquor store on Cota Street when she heard a man’s whistle.

She turned around.

There he was. Six feet tall. Dirty, with bare feet. He was scooping vanilla ice cream out of a half-gallon tub of Dreyer’s that he fetched from the trash can, using a celery stalk for a spoon.

The ice cream dripped down all over his face. The man walked toward her. Nancy squirmed.

He approached her and asked a question.

“Do you want to get married?”

That’s how Nancy McCradie met Bob Hansen.

The encounter illustrated the man. Messy. Gruff. Unkept. Lack of boundaries.

But always with a smile, purpose and full of love.

Hansen, known in the 1990s and 2000s as “Protest Bob,” died March 11 in Ventura after a heart attack. He was 76.

His death seals the final chapter of a complicated man, homeless activist, husband, and father. For nearly five decades, Hansen drove Santa Barbara City Hall crazy with an array of antics and activism.

He demanded more public bathrooms for the unhoused, sometimes wearing a toilet seat around his neck at public meetings. He pushed for warming centers to open at 40 degrees instead of 35. He criticized elected officials and law enforcement for hassling or arresting homeless who slept on the streets.

At times, he refused to stop talking at the lectern at City Hall, forcing authorities to arrest him.

Overall, he was arrested 20 times, McCradie said.

He was a thick man, often wearing tank tops, flip flops and shorts. Sometimes he carried signs, a megaphone, even a toilet plunger. He was a character, sometimes a clown, and often intimidating.

But he was more than that.

He was a track star in high school, setting records at Los Angeles Pierce College at the time, before tearing his Achilles tendon. He served in the military but became disabled after he fell through an ice patch in Alaska.

Behind the scenes, in his personal life, Hansen was even more enigmatic. He lived in an RV with McCradie in Santa Barbara, where they raised a daughter, Krystal Freedom. She had a brother, Sean, McCradie’s son from a different relationship. who lived with them from the ages of 7-13.

Freedom lived in the RV from birth to the time she was 18 years old.

“We didn’t always get along,” Freedom told Noozhawk. “My relationship with my dad was very loving. We spent a lot of time together. I was very close to him. He took very good care me of as a kid.”

But as Freedom got older, her perspective changed.

“For whatever reason, I started getting maybe a little too intelligent, and a little bit more judgmental, and feeling angry for putting me in that situation, that were not always good outcomes,” Freedom said.

She said she didn’t blame him but was frustrated with him “for not really making different choices.”

Freedom said her father would sometimes give away his money to other homeless individuals.

“Obviously, he is very generous, but there were times when I thought, ‘Maybe Mom and I need that.'”

They knew a Hansen that the people at City Hall did not.

He was a hard worker, but also a hoarder. He refused to throw anything away and collected things off the street. One time, they stopped on the highway to pick up toys that had spilled from a truck.

He was a handyman and mechanic. He could fix anything.

He did find money to treat the family to meals. Although they were poor, and lived in an RV, they ate out often.

“It was never, ‘Oh, you can only get chicken fingers,'” Freedom said. “It was, ‘Do you want to have steak tonight?'”

Since they lived in an RV, they paid no rent. So, they could travel, camp and go on road trips.

“He would take me to rivers and swim down the river together,” Freedom said, tears welling up her eyes from the memories. “He was a good dad, he really just couldn’t stop being himself. He was just a free spirit.”

In the public eye, Hansen emerged as a character — a sometimes lovable, sometimes loathsome presence at City Hall.

“I really appreciated Bob,” said former Santa Barbara Mayor Helene Schneider. “I may not have particularly liked all his tactics getting his message across about how best to assist people experiencing homelessness, but he made us work harder and better.

“Like the mythical character Cassandra, Bob told our community many truths that were hard to hear, frequently ignored, and 100% accurate.”

Bob took his advocacy seriously. He protested when the city removed many of the benches downtown, saying it was a callous act. When the city placed bars in the middle of the benches so people couldn’t lie down, he was furious.

He believed that some government leaders at times treated homeless people as second-class citizens. Hansen, quite possibly, might have also been ahead of his time.

He frequently called on the city to build micro units for the homeless and provide services to get them into jobs.

It’s an approach that is popular now.

“Sometimes his schtick was funny or over the top, but it gave rhetorical room to those of us on council that yearned to make progress on a path to stability and housing,” said Das Williams, who was on the Santa Barbara City Council in the mid-2000s.

“Strangely, his idea of a village is now one of the commonly accepted solutions for reducing homelessness, though our villages have rules and accountability measures that he may not have been thrilled about.”

Assemblyman Gregg Hart, D-Santa Barbara, who also served on the City Council, said Hansen was “larger than life.”

“When he spoke at Council meetings, he was vexing, hilarious, annoying and profound, often at the same time,” Hart said. “Bob genuinely and deeply cared about people who needed help.

“He wasn’t particularly effective when he refused to leave the podium and demanded to be arrested, but it was always memorable, and I’m sure that was his point.”

At home, what the public did not see, McCradie said, was Hansen’s personal challenges. He drank a lot. He cared deeply about the problems in the world, and would become frustrated about the things he could not control.

He would sometimes disappear with his street buddies.

One time, on Earth Day, she lost him and went looking for him at Alameda Park.

“All of a sudden I saw him in a circle with about 20 cops around him,” McCradie said. “He was so drunk. He didn’t know where he was walking or anything.”

McCradie entered the circle and told police she would take him home. As they were walking, however, he ran away and ended up at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse, with his pants falling down. The cops arrested him and took him to jail.

Sometimes Hansen took his activism a step further. He ran for City Council and mayor several times. He was never a serious candidate, but he made an impact.

“I think Bob ran for office not to win,” Freedom said. “He did it because it was a stage, a stage that he could speak to his passions and to have everyone listen.”

And he did have success.

His aggressive approach forced City Hall to build bathrooms downtown. The public restrooms next to Marshalls downtown are largely a result of Hansen’s advocacy.

“He would go out there carrying a toilet plunger on his campaigns, showing there was a need for public restrooms because the homeless were getting tickets for peeing in the streets,” McCradie said.

“They didn’t have any options. Where you gonna go, you can’t hold it forever?”

Hansen had a daughter from a previous marriage. He has four grandchildren. He and McCradie received inheritances from their parents, and along with Hansen’s military disability payments and McCradie’s social security, they eventually were able to get out of the RV and buy a home in Santa Paula.

That day in 1982, when Hansen approached McCradie with a messy face and a marriage offer, she turned him down.

But he was persistent. McCradie said she eventually fell in love because he was always there. In 2015, they finally made it official and were married.

“I said, ‘Bob, we’re not going to live very much longer; let’s do something about connecting legally, so if I go — I had an inheritance, and he had an inheritance — so let’s combine us,'” McCradie said.

Despite all of his complications and internal strife, Hansen’s greatest legacy just might be his daughter. She, herself, is a bit of a paradox.

She was homeless the first 18 years of her life. Now, at 39, she owns seven homes, and has a bachelor’s and master’s degree. She is a real estate agent.

She bought her first home at the age of 25.

Hansen was the one who told her to go to business school. A year after high school, he handed her a magazine with an advertisement for Santa Barbara Business College and told her try it out. She did. And it paid off.

Unlike in her childhood, she’s now fully in control of her life.

Even her name says so. Hansen wanted to name her “Freedom,” but her brother wanted Krystal, so they combined the names.

“I do think that both of my parents put a strong work ethic in me,” Freedom said. “There were no limitations on what I could be, and there were no pressures either.”

She misses her father and accepts her childhood circumstances, the good and the bad.

“It is a miracle, and I feel grateful every day, and I don’t think I would be me without it. I praise it every day. I am grateful for it. I am humbler than I would have been, had I been raised by rich parents. I had to work for everything I got.”

Freedom is also carrying out Hansen’s activism. She and McCradie lead the Committee for Social Justice, a group created to advocate for homeless and poor people.

McCradie, although less visible than Hansen, has had her own career of activism. She too called for winter shelters, warming centers and safe parking programs for people who live in their vehicles.

She walked across the country to promote the rights of homeless individuals. She was Hansen’s steady backbone through all his ups and downs.

McCradie, too, has fond memories of Hansen.

“I was in love with him,” McCradie said. “He would walk into a room, and he was the only man in there. I don’t know what it was. It was some kind of connection we had.”

A memorial will be held from noon to 3 p.m. at the Veteran’s Memorial Building on Cabrillo Boulevard, on April 1, Hansen’s birthday.