Keeping Hope and Goat Soap Alive and Well in Walnut Creek

Passersby at the intersection of N. Main St. and Mt. Diablo Blvd. (and there are many) will hear, from the hours of 11 a.m. to early evening, a barely audible voice asking if you they want to consider buying some soap.

In the land of Pottery Barn, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and Williams Sonoma, a wheelchair-bound street vendor selling soap and other goods seems, well, startling. 

But Bill McGeehan has been sitting at the same corner for five years, and he's quite at home here, thank you very much. His soaps, made from goat milk by various family members, gets rave reviews. And McGeehan, who was born with cerebral palsy, gets to operate his own cottage industry, without the overhead of a cottage. 

Hope Made Soap now has its own website, from which believers and the curious can order his soaps and other items, which he says are made by family and friends from around the country. 

So if you're looking to clean up your act, so to speak, take a walk down N. Main St. and go see McGeehan. His $5 bars of soap will take care of that.