Steve Sacre left home at 17. Since then, he has spent 32 of his 62 years in a prison cell, nearly six years in the military, and the rest of the time he has lived under bushes, on friends' couches and in homeless shelters.

That is until last Friday.

For the first time since leaving his parents' home in Salem to join the Army, Sacre has an apartment of his own.

It is a special thing, he said, to be secure knowing his belongings will not be stolen and he is safe from anyone who might sneak up to harm him.

Sacre will touch briefly on his life of crime, drug use and homelessness as guest speaker at the fifth Albany Community Summit on Homelessness on Wednesday at City Hall. He will say if it were not for Judith Hamilton with the InReach Clinic in Albany and Robin Schaeffer, he would still be on the streets.

Schaeffer is a program advisor for Senior Disabilities Services with the state Department of Human Services. Her agency tries to help everyone, especially those like Sacre, who have serious health issues.

"I don't know why they decided to help me," Sacre said, while sitting on a camp stool in his sparsely furnished apartment on Salem Avenue. The only other furnishings in the living room are a webbed lawn chair and an old analog television set.

Sacre is so excited about his new home that "I do not want to blow my opportunity to continue to live here. This is my first real home."

He will cover his $142-a-month rent with his Social Security Insurance checks.

Sacre receives no financial help from family members.

Looking back, he still is not sure how his life got derailed. He knows he never had a career goal and still doesn't.

He joined the Army in 1964 because a judge suggested he might want to try military service. He was in for 51/2 years, spending 12 months in Vietnam as a gunner on a jeep in a convoy escort.

In Vietnam, he used opium and pot "so I could climb up on that jeep every day because you knew someone was going to get blown up. Our jeep did get hit, throwing me out. I landed on my head and shoulder."

He returned to Salem after he left the military and burglarized drug stores for barbiturates and stimulants. In January 1974, he said, he was involved in a shoot-out with Salem police, for which he served 10 years.

Sacre says his need for drugs is gone and he no longer drinks. His days are spent dealing with problems associated with cirrhosis of the liver. His doctors told him he should have died months ago, so he has no idea how much time he has left.

Sacre is glad of two things: He finally has a home of his own and he has friends who come by to visit.