California: 55 homeless people died on the streets of Santa Clara County this year

They were single and married, young and old, from San Jose and parts unknown.

What tied them together is how they died: cold and alone on the streets of Silicon Valley, their lives now statistics, their stories never told.

There were 55 of them, men and women as young as 18, as old as 76, all homeless people who died this year — more than ever before in Santa Clara County, according to the coroner's office. Forty-one people died on streets — in a park, on a bench or tucked beneath a freeway overpass — last year.

"It's an amazing fact," San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed said. "Here where there's so much wealth, we have people dying on the street. We need to rededicate ourselves to ending homelessness."

Officials are hoping the cold snap won't add to this year's list of homeless deaths. With freezing temperatures predicted for the week, the shelters and the armories in Sunnyvale and Gilroy are full with 125 people at each one. At the shelter at the Boccardo Reception Center, there were 257 people Tuesday night.

It's so cold the county extended hours at the Sunnyvale and Gilroy armories, opening them an hour earlier at 5 p.m. and closing them 90 minutes later at 9 a.m.

Remember, last month California's Hummer-driving "Eco-hero" Governor welcomed hundreds to the luxurious Beverly Hilton Hotel in attempt to make the world a tiny fraction of a degree colder

BEVERLY HILLS—More than 800 attendees from over 50 states, provinces, and countries, attended the Governors’ Global Climate Summit, hosted by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on November 18 and 19, 2008, to address regional and global climate change.