The Last Place You'd Look (14 page)

Not giving up, Britton put a video about Adam on YouTube and created a Facebook page for him. She offered a reward, hired a private detective, and collected both his dental records and DNA evidence in case the news, when it comes, isn’t good.

And despite her efforts, Britton fears it won’t be. Her home backs up to a large stretch of wilderness and she wonders if Adam could have wandered into it. “There was no argument, no compelling reason for him to leave,” she says. “The police didn’t suspect foul play and neither did I, and we couldn’t get search and rescue to go into the woods.”

Officials, as a rule, resist mounting large search-and-rescue efforts when there’s no compelling evidence the individual might be in a particular area. It’s frustrating for the families of the missing but understandable from a cold, hard numbers point of view. Most jurisdictions don’t have the money to pursue theories.

But there are other issues at play when the missing person is mentally ill. Britton says she sees it all the time: mentally ill individuals are less valued as persons and many people fear them.

“There is an absolute prejudice against the mentally ill,” she says. “If he were a beautiful blond or a five-year-old, his case would get tons of publicity. A thirty-five-year-old (Adam’s age at the time of his disappearance), mentally ill man is not a sexy case; it just isn’t.”

Looking for Adam has occupied almost all of Britton’s spare time. She returned to Skid Row on the first anniversary of Adam’s disappearance with a fistful of flyers and saw the ones she posted the previous year, tattered, but still there. The experience has been an education.

“I had no idea how many missing people are out there,” Britton says.

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Of the thousands who go missing each year, many have been diagnosed with mental illness. Andrew Sperling, director of legislative advocacy for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), echoes Britton’s thoughts. “Sure,” he says while pecking away at his computer keyboard, “there’s a stigma associated with mental illness.” But Sperling adds that compelling the mentally ill to take medication is a complex issue with two distinct camps of thought and no clear-cut moral right or wrong.

One side believes the mentally ill should have the right to accept or decline medication, while the other says that without the medication the mentally ill cannot make informed or healthy choices. Both have merit, but what is not open for debate is that the presence of mental illness makes it much more likely that an individual will end up missing or on the streets. Mental illness also often leads to addiction of one sort or another. The drunk or the druggie who sleeps on the heat vent or crowds into the local shelter many times suffers mental illness of one sort or another. Treatment is an imprecise science, a slapdash thing, almost like throwing mud at a wall and seeing what sticks. Some drugs work, some don’t, and their effects vary from individual to individual. Sometimes, those drugs also have side effects that make patients feel strange, dull their cognitive abilities, pack on the pounds, or cause them to be unsteady and lumbering. Most psych drugs are prescribed in combinations known as cocktails, and they can have deadly, life-altering side effects, resulting in disorders like tardive dyskinesia, which manifests as involuntary movement (somewhat akin to Tourette syndrome), usually of the face, and is permanent and nonreversible.

Still, there are few viable alternatives to drugs. And when an individual who requires drug therapy to remain on an even keel goes off the drugs, tragedy can result, as in the case of Kendra Webdale and Andrew Goldstein.

Webdale, a thirty-two-year-old New York resident, stood on one of that city’s subway platforms on January 3, 1999, shivering against the cold, when a schizophrenic named Andrew Goldstein approached her and asked the time, then shoved her into the path of the oncoming train, killing her. Goldstein was off his medication and out of control when the incident took place. Following that incident, New York instituted Kendra’s Law, which allows individuals to seek court-ordered assistance in forcing the mentally ill to remain on their medications. But, even with some legislation in place (and not every state has this type of provision, and when they do, they are not always permanent codifications, but often temporary), some diagnosed with mental illnesses quit taking their meds.

For those affected by diagnoses such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, the fallout from abandoning drug therapy as prescribed can be inestimable: crime sprees, substance abuse, and the disruption of a life that might have been under control. And it can get worse; for some, stopping the meds that keep them on an even keel can increase their vulnerability, lead them to wander off, or make them more susceptible to foul play. Some, like Tom Zinza and Adam Kellner, vanish like wisps of smoke, leaving behind few clues and a family who wonders what happened—did their loved one walk away or was it something more sinister that took them from the safe and familiar? Is he or she living on the streets or huddled in a homeless shelter somewhere, or was that person a victim of crime? These are recurring, always cycling questions for the families of the missing mentally ill, and often no real answer ever presents itself.

And these are the same questions Randa Jawhari’s large and loving family is forced to confront every day. They want to know whether the petite and vivacious Michigan woman entered the nameless, faceless sea of the displaced and homeless, and if not, what happened? They don’t believe the devoted mother would choose to walk away from her life. It wasn’t like her. The Jawharis, a large, close-knit group, search for Randa in every crowd and every face they see.

Naheda Jawhari, one of Randa’s seven siblings, says her sister disappeared from her Fenton, Michigan, apartment on February 11, 2009, and hasn’t been seen since. Randa, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, lived an independent life, but sometimes had difficulty understanding the importance of her medication.

“She was not good about taking her medications,” Naheda concedes. “She’d gotten off of them in the past and in trouble with her driving. It seems everybody can see something’s wrong except the person who is ill.”

Naheda’s point is one that is recognized as an ongoing problem with many who suffer from mental illness. It is probable Randa suffered from a condition known as anosognosia, which the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) defines as an “impaired awareness of illness.” The TAC also says anosognosia is “the single largest reason why individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder do not take their medications.”

In other words, the person who is sick does not recognize that he or she has an illness and doesn’t feel the need to take the medication. In many cases, he or she resents being medicated.

Although Randa strayed from her prescriptions now and then, the family had a routine structured for her and she was doing well following it. Naheda says she is sure Randa was taking her medication the way she was supposed to at the time she disappeared. “She was fine; she was fine. If I knew that she wasn’t medicated, part of me would think she did walk away,” Naheda says.

Randa’s mom, who has custody of her young daughter, visited Randa every day. Mrs. Jawhari set out Randa’s meds and clothes and looked after her. Randa, a tiny woman who stands five feet, one inch and weighs in at around one hundred pounds, thrived on her family’s attention and was addicted to telephone calls. Naheda says her sister stayed in constant phone contact with her and other family members.

“Her form of communication is the phone. She calls every day, several times a day; there is constant communication with her. She’s a family gal,” Naheda says.

And that is why her persistent silence is like a wound that won’t heal.

Randa was on disability but living on her own at the time of her disappearance. The day she vanished, Randa did not call her little girl—something Naheda says she did without fail every morning. When her mom went to Randa’s apartment to check on her daughter, she found the clothes she had set out for Randa the night before still there, untouched, unworn. The only item of clothing missing was Randa’s blue robe, which she had been wearing the night before. They canvassed family and friends, and no one had seen or talked to her since about 11:30 the previous night.

Randa, like Sherrill Britton’s missing son, Adam, is addicted to cigarettes. Naheda remembers Randa once panhandled at a McDonald’s for enough money to buy a pack. The local police called her mother, who picked her up and brought her home.

“Randa has no conception of money,” says Naheda, who says no one who knows Randa believes her sister abandoned her daughter and family. “We believe something serious happened to her, but we hope we’re wrong.”

She says the police theorize Randa’s illness prompted her to leave. Her apartment was not treated as a crime scene, nor was it processed, according to Naheda, who believes an opportunity was missed. Five days after Randa vanished, Naheda says officials searched the surrounding area using a helicopter, but still no sign of the effervescent, attractive young mother surfaced.

“It’s not being investigated as a crime—she’s a missing adult unless someone sees her or she comes home on her own,” Naheda says.

The Jawhari family raised a reward, distributed posters throughout the area with a concentration on homeless shelters and missions, and sought news coverage. They’ve also pestered local law enforcement to revisit Randa’s disappearance. The Jawharis drive cars decorated with posters bearing Randa’s image. They’ve sent Randa’s information as far south as Florida, hoping that if someone has seen her, they’ll contact the police or the Jawharis. They’ve tried to get their congressman involved, contacted the state attorney general’s office, written letters, and made calls to anyone and everyone who will listen, but thus far their sister and daughter stays missing, and they remain frustrated.

“We know it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, but it just takes one person,” Naheda says, her voice colored by her ever-present but dwindling hope.

Does she believe Randa’s case has warranted different treatment due to her mental illness? Without a doubt. “They’re not listening,” says Naheda, with a palpable bitterness. “If my sister was a politician’s daughter or the daughter of a police chief, it would be a whole different thing, but she’s not important to them.”

Law enforcement does look at the mentally ill in a different context than other individuals since their illness can lead them to vanish without warning. But because in many cases there is no evidence to support the premise that the individual left for any reason other than mental problems, they are also perfect victims. Randa Jawhari could disappear, and due to her mental illness, no one in the world of officialdom would find it compelling enough to engage in a full-court press to find her.

Says her sister, “Nobody cares. Nobody. It’s like screaming and screaming at the top of your lungs with no voice coming out. If my sister is not living, I still want her soul to rest. I want to know what she went through.”

As for law enforcement’s response to her troubled sister’s vanishing, Naheda believes that overall, they’re not trained to deal with cases like Randa’s.

“If they were better trained, then maybe we could have found Randa and not be where we are today: wondering where she is, wondering what happened to her. Always, always wondering,” says Naheda.

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Libba Phillips, founder of Outpost for Hope (www.outpostforhope.org), sympathizes with the Jawharis and their frustration. Phillips has undergone her own odyssey through the maze of missing persons while trying to bring home her sister, Ashley, who suffers from both bipolar disorder and drug addiction.

Ashley’s story began in 1999, when the young woman first disappeared from Tampa, Florida. According to Libba, police told the Phillips family Ashley was not missing because, under Florida law, she was considered an adult who left of her own will. Tracing Ashley to Georgia, where they found she had served time in jail on a drug offense, the family hoped Ashley would be arrested and jailed so they could get her back into treatment. Instead, Libba believes, Ashley was dismissed out of hand as a prostitute.

“My experience with [filing a report as a missing person] boils down to stigma,” says Libba. “Ashley was described as a drug-addicted, mentally ill prostitute. When a person hears that term, they put her in the category of subhuman.”

Ashley has never been arrested and charged with prostitution as far as the Phillips family knows, but Libba believes that her status on the street marred any chance the family had of getting their daughter and sister back and that police, as well as society in general, were predisposed to dismiss Ashley as someone not worth bothering about. Libba and Ashley’s mom, Michelle, tried on many occasions to file a missing persons report, but they were always denied that right. In the meantime, what the Phillips family learned of Ashley’s life left them bruised and shaken. Ashley had been hit by a car, beaten, and locked up—and her family remained one step behind her.

The family also applied to have Ashley committed under Florida’s Baker Act. The Baker Act provides for voluntary or involuntary commitment to a psychiatric facility for observation, diagnosis, and, if warranted, treatment. It is often invoked when the individual is engaging in behavior that could lead to serious harm. Libba says the judge agreed their case had merit, but in order to proceed under Baker, they needed Ashley’s location, which the family could not provide. Like all of the streets the Phillips family traveled in its quest to help Ashley, this was one more dead end.

Libba decided that if she could not save Ashley, at least she could draw attention to the thousands of individuals she terms the “missing missing,” or the unreported missing. Among those she includes are persons who are estranged from family and friends and thus no one realizes they are missing; individuals who disappear and do not qualify for one reason or another for official missing persons reports, like Ashley Phillips; undocumented or illegal aliens; and unknown dependent children of unreported missing persons—like babies born to street people or prostitutes.