Olivia Reibev had knocked on three doors at Lakewood’s Biltmore Motel before someone answered. Reibev, a student at the University of Washington, introduced herself and said she was a volunteer with Pierce County’s homeless survey. She asked the woman who answered if she considered herself homeless.

“Well,” the 55-year-old woman said, “I wouldn’t be living here if I wasn’t.”

The Lakewood volunteers were counting a portion of Pierce County’s residents who often go unseen – people who are living for extended periods of times in motels because they don’t have anywhere else to go.

The volunteers, toting clipboards with a stack of golden survey sheets, interviewed people at 12 motels Friday. A police officer remained off-site with cell phones at the ready if needed. And the volunteers – who were split into two teams – had mixed results: Some didn’t want to talk, others rambled about their life stories, and many weren’t in their rooms or didn’t open their door.

Volunteers handed out business cards to help put them in contact with someone who can connect them with social services, and a resource guide of available services was left in the office of each motel the teams visited.

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If someone has lived at a motel room for longer than two weeks, they’re generally not considered homeless, said Kim Dodds, a human services program specialist with the City of Lakewood. But many will receive a regular check – like a disability payment – that pays for lodging for a week or two. After that, many return to the streets.

Teams all over the county traveled to camps and other places where homeless populations live. The state requires such surveys for planning and funding, said Rae Anne Giron, a community services planner with the county. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development also required bi-yearly surveys.

“We know we can’t find everyone in the county,” Giron said, “but we do the best we can with the resources we have.”

Sixty-five volunteers signed up for the count and three organizations – Hospitality Kitchen, Tacoma Rescue Mission and the Metropolitan Development Council – provided their own volunteers. The count focused on permanent locations, like shelters and the feed at the Puyallup Armory, on Thursday.

The count is done in January because it’s a colder month, and that means the homeless are more likely to reside in more concentrated areas.

It’ll take about a week to process the data, Giron said. The surveys ask for initials, a month and year of birth, race and questions about where the person will sleep that night, what were some contributing factors to homelessness, and whether they were in foster care or the armed forces.

For many, the stories are complicated. T.C.M., a 53-year-old man, has been homeless since 2000 and said marital and medical problems led to his situation. He suffers from panic attacks and also has severe sleep apnea. The latter requires him to sleep while hooked up to a CPAP machine, and he said he couldn’t find a shelter that would allow him to sleep comfortably. He has been staying at the Biltmore for about a week.

J.L., a woman who recently turned 30, can’t find an apartment because of a felony conviction. She had been staying with friends until about three weeks ago. Now she’s staying at the Fort Lewis Motel.

And for the 55-year-old woman staying at the Biltmore, a combination of disabling osteoporosis and her son’s felony conviction prevents her from finding a place to stay. She has been homeless for more than a year and once spent two months sleeping in her car.

She is sharing the room with two other people.

“It’s tough,” she said, “but I have nowhere else to go.”