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TREATMENT ADVOCACY CENTER
Visit our web site www.psychlaws.org
March 3, 2006

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1. NEW YORK OFFICE OF MENTAL HEALTH UNVEILS KENDRA’S LAW DATABANK

2. SILENT, NAKED AND ALONE - South Bend Tribune, February 22, 2006

3. POLICE SEEK BETTER WAYS TO HANDLE MENTALLY ILL - Bucyrus Telegraph Forum,
January 16, 2006

4. JUDGE: MENTALLY ILL MAY GET ALTERNATIVE TO PRISON - Miami Herald, January 15,
2006

5. MOM'S MISSION SPRINGS FROM TRAGEDY - Mercury News, February 27, 2006

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1. NEW YORK OFFICE OF MENTAL HEALTH UNVEILS KENDRA’S LAW DATABANK

Kendra’s Law is the nation’s best-known assisted outpatient treatment program.
That is in part because the New York State Office of Mental Health (NYS-OMH) has
collected and made public extensive data proving that Kendra’s Law is
dramatically helping some of the New Yorkers most incapacitated by severe
psychiatric disorders. These figures had previously been available to advocates
for the treatment mechanism in other states via two reports in which NYS-OMH
documented the undeniable success of Kendra’s Law for the New York Legislature.

This week, NYS-OMH christened an on-line databank of Kendra’s Law information
that will be invaluable for those seeking to implement or expand AOT in other
states. The databank includes a number of previously unreleased statistical
categories on New York’s AOT program. And NYS-OMH will be regularly updating
the figures, so the site will always offer a real time look at the effectiveness
of Kendra’s Law.

The Kendra’s Law database is at:

http://tacenews.c.topica.com/maaeyoLaboJ3ZbfGwZEb/

You can also link to it from NYS-OMH’s homepage, which is at www.omh.state.ny.us

We urge you to browse through this treasure trove of outcomes and appreciate the
power of AOT to bring treatment and improve lives to people who would otherwise
be lost to severe mental illness. After you do, you’ll appreciate why this is a
site to be book marked and widely shared.

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2. SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE (IN), February 22, 2006

[Editor’s Note: Two weeks ago, we featured a piece from Alicia Gallegos’
exceptional six-part series on the treatment of individuals with severe mental
illnesses in both inpatient and correctional facilities. As does the item
below, that article focused on Nicholas Rice. The previous piece described the
acuteness of Rice’s illness as well as his remarkable turnaround after receiving
care in a psychiatric hospital.

Below you will see how Rice fared in another “treatment” facility – the Elkhart
County Jail. You will note that the jail’s staff both readily acknowledge that
their facility was not appropriate for Rice and their substantial efforts to
transfer him to one that was suitable, only to have those efforts thwarted.]


SILENT, NAKED AND ALONE

Rice Appears Catatonic In Jail, Cuts Own Throat.

By Alicia Gallegos, Tribune Staff Writer

Fourth of six parts


Grainy video footage shows a scrawny man with a shaggy beard and greasy hair
surrounded by trash in his tiny, stark room.

The inmate is lying on his jail bunk, wrapped only in a beige blanket, and
unmoving when the guards rouse him. A jailer waves her hand in front of her
face, trying to fan away the odor as another guard approaches the man. "Come on,
Nick, time for a shower."

Jailers had resorted to filming Nicholas Rice in the spring of 2004.

A jail e-mail dated April 15 explained that recording the situation might
finally drive the point home.

"What I need from everyone is documentation relating to this subject no matter
how big or small it may be," wrote Lt. Fred Call. "I'm attempting to work with
the public (defender's) office to show this person (may) need help."

Jail Capt. Brad Rogers says now that Nicholas' mental state concerned the staff.

After repeated attempts to coax Nicholas out of his cell, jailers eventually
lift him naked from his bed, put him in a restraint chair and wheel him toward
the showers.

"Help us out, bud," a guard tells Nicholas during one filming. "Stand up and go
into the shower," another says. "Rice? Please? Can you do that please?"

But Nicholas doesn't respond. Guards covered by black plastic bags place him
under the water and wash him by hand, scrubbing his hair and soaping his back.

The skinny inmate says nothing and limply allows jailers to bathe him.

***

Despite a past diagnosis of schizophrenia, a judge found Nicholas competent to
stand trial in June 2004, setting his trial for December. The court order by
Elkhart Circuit Court Judge Terry C. Shewmaker cited two earlier evaluations
that found Nicholas competent and indicated that he was likely pretending.

Shewmaker declined to comment about the case.

Nicholas' public defender later explained it was these first evaluations that
distorted the view of his client and prevented him from getting help.

"Our system is one here that (the court) tends to rely on mental evaluations by
court-appointed psychiatrists," R. Brent Zook says. The assessments "present a
rather mixed image."

Nicholas was eventually moved to a lockdown area at the facility inmates called
"the hole." In the segregated area, inmates had to stay inside their cell for 23
hours a day with one voluntary hour spent in a jail dayroom.

The single cell was for his own safety, the jail captain later told Nicholas'
dad.

Other inmates disliked Nicholas, says former inmate Jeremy Miller, who was
housed next to Nicholas. In some videotaped scenes, inmates jeer and taunt the
silent inmate, yelling obscenities as guards open his cell door.

During Miller's hour out he would try to talk to his neighbor, offering him a
Halls lozenge through the bars of his cell. Halls were the closest thing to
candy for inmates. Sometimes Nicholas would take the "candy," but mostly he made
incoherent noises, Miller remembers.

On one occasion, Nicholas was standing in front of his toilet without any
clothes on when another inmate pushed a broom handle through the bars and jabbed
him. Officers discovered the man assaulting Nicholas, but not before he'd struck
him multiple times. Golfball-sized red welts covered Nicholas' body, video
footage shows.

Rick Rice was later told his son just stood there as the inmate attacked him.

***

Fellow inmates weren't sure why Nicholas was ever allowed the razor. Everyone
knew the naked inmate didn't shave.

But one day in early August, shortly after his 22nd birthday, he was handed a
blade as guards were passing them out.

The inmate sliced open his own neck.

Jail staff found Nicholas standing in his cell holding the right side of his
neck with a towel and covered in blood, according to a jail log. The wound was
over his carotid artery and about an inch long. After three stitches at the
hospital, Nicholas returned to the jail the same day. Eventually, he was put
back inside his single cell in Ward 1.

***

Near the end of August, Rick tried to visit his son, and for once, Nicholas came
out of his cell. But he wouldn't speak. The inmate walked out into the visiting
room and stood there for less than a minute, his father remembers, before
retreating back down the hall.

Rick watched as his son began to fall into a wall and a guard quickly grabbed
his arm to steady him.

***

After more than a year of rejecting food, Nicholas' ribs visibly protruded from
his sides, his lanky arms revealed no muscle mass, and his legs were thin and
bony.

Jail psychiatrist Bryce Rohrer wrote that Nicholas had lost almost 50 pounds
since he arrived at the Elkhart County Jail.

The skeletal inmate was taken to a hospital emergency room on Oct. 5, 2004,
after being court-issued a 72-hour commitment for medical and psychiatric
treatment in a secure facility.

"Patient is dying from malnourishment," jail psychiatrist Bryce Rohrer, wrote in
Nicholas' application for emergency detention. "Also has significant psychiatric
problem. Applicant believes that if the person named above is not restrained
immediately he will die."

In capital letters, the doctor added, "NEED COURT ORDER TO ADMINISTER FOOD AND
MEDICATION."

Rohrer declined to comment for this story.

When officers took Nicholas to Goshen General Hospital that afternoon, they
intended to drop him off and leave, according to nursing notes, but staff
informed them it was against hospital policy to have an incarcerated patient
there without jail supervision.

The problem circled into a lengthy conversation between medical staff and
jailers.

3:30 p.m. Goshen General Hospital notes: "The police officers called their
sergeant and they were told to bring patient back because they didn't have the
manpower to leave two officers in the hospital (with) the patient."

4 p.m. jail log entry: "All the Elkhart County Sheriff's Department wanted was
for inmate to be taken care of medically and in the event that he is combative
or dangerous (they) were to call immediately and an officer would be available."

4:30 p.m. jail log entry: "(Hospital legal counsel) called and had concerns
about her staff maybe becoming injured" if handcuffs are removed. "I informed
her that we did have another judge's order and I would fax it to her."

5 p.m. hospital nursing notes: "Police officer leaving. Security called for
patient to be watched when officer leaves."

5:15 p.m. nursing notes: "Patient pulled out IV, out of bed. Security officer
called for more assistance. Four extra people here to help."

6:55 p.m. jail log: "Called Capt. Rogers and they are leaving an officer with
inmate at least until tomorrow."

Although it was recorded in jail notes that Nicholas was to go to Oaklawn, a
psychiatric facility, after he was stabilized, a physician who called the
facility was told they wouldn't accept him.

He spoke to Salvador Ciniceros, according to hospital notes, a doctor who had
done a previous court-appointed evaluation. He told the caller the facility
would not take him because on a previous admission, Nicholas was found to be
malingering.

After less than 24 hours at the hospital, Nicholas was back inside his cell.

***

As Nicholas' trial edged closer, a gleam of hope finally broke through.

Zook and chief deputy prosecuting attorney Vicki Becker both agreed to have
Nicholas evaluated again. The prosecution came to the agreement after some
comments about Nicholas' behavior from witnesses involved in the bank robbery
attempt, Becker recalls. "We believed it deserved the necessary evaluation of
mental capacity."

On Dec. 6, 2004, Judge Shewmaker signed an order delaying his proceedings and
committing him to the State of Indiana Division of Mental Health.

The paperwork was on its way to Logansport State Hospital, and it was just a
matter of time until a bed became available.

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3. BUCYRUS TELEGRAPH FORUM (OH), January 16, 2006

[Editor’s Note: Critical to diverting people with severe mental illnesses from
jails to psychiatric facilities is training law enforcement officers to
recognize when they are in fact dealing with someone overcome by the symptoms of
an illness like schizophrenia. Perhaps equally important is teaching them to
diffuse such encounters and preempt actions that will rise to a level where a
criminal charge is the officer or deputy’s only option.]


POLICE SEEK BETTER WAYS TO HANDLE MENTALLY ILL

WASHINGTON -- In Miami, a man bolts, screaming, from a plane and is shot by air
marshals. In New Orleans, a camera captures police circling a man who is trying
to fend them off with a pocketknife. In Columbus, a young Somali immigrant
attacks the deputies who are trying to bring him in for psychiatric treatment.

All three men were mentally ill. All three died in confrontations with law
enforcement last month.

About 7 percent of all police contacts in large cities involve a person with a
mental illness, according to the Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus
Project.

Sometimes it's the officers who don't survive the confrontations.

Louisville, Ky., police Officer Peter Grignon was shot and killed last March by
a mentally ill 17-year-old who then committed suicide. The teen, Travis Ballard,
had just been released from an institution after two years of treatment for
schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

As many as 50 million Americans have experienced some form of diagnosable mental
illness. Most will never have an encounter with police. But for those who do,
the experience can be traumatic.

"I decided I needed to get arrested," said Risdon Slate, a professor of criminal
justice at Florida Southern University, recalling a dark episode in 1993 after a
doctor took him off the lithium that had helped him manage his bipolar disorder.

Seeing conspiracies all around him and fearing his own family, Slate decided the
only place he would be safe was in jail. So he went skinny-dipping.

When police hauled him from his apartment complex pool, Slate joined the
thousands of sick, frightened people who cycle through the prison system in a
nation that has closed most of its psychiatric hospitals.

"In 1960, there were over 600,000 residents in state hospitals in the United
States. Today there are less than 60,000," said Slate, who worked as a
corrections officer before he was diagnosed as manic-depressive. "Where has some
of this shift been going? Well, some of it has been going to jails and prisons."

One out of every six people imprisoned in the United States suffers from some
form of severe mental illness.

In prison, Slate was attacked by fellow inmates and beaten by guards. Today, he
volunteers with a program that trains police officers to deal with the mentally
ill.

"Oftentimes, these police officers have never seen a person who's mentally ill
who's not in crisis," he said. "I'm no longer ashamed of being mentally ill. I
tell them, 'Look, if this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone."'

Most police officers receive just a few hours of training on how to handle
someone who may be psychotic, paranoid or suicidal.

"These aren't always the most sympathetic people in the world. A lot of times
people have a hard time believing they're not acting this way on purpose," said
Ron Honberg, legal director for the National Alliance for Mental Illness, a
support network for the mentally ill and their families. "A lot of times, the
officers are just scared. They're human beings, too."

The video footage from New Orleans showed police closing in on 38-year-old
Anthony Hayes, barking orders and trying to compel him to drop the knife and
surrender. The officers were following established procedures for securing a
scene and bringing a suspect under control.

Unfortunately, it was the wrong thing to do to someone in a mental health
crisis.

"It's going to put the individual into even more fear and panic," Memphis police
Maj. Sam Cochran said.

Memphis was the first police department in the nation to offer specialized,
in-depth training for officers to handle mental health crises. Cochran estimates
as many as 500 communities have instituted programs modeled after Memphis'.

Prompted by a 1987 standoff that ended in the death of a mentally ill man, the
department created the Crisis Intervention Team. Its members learn how to
approach and talk to someone in crisis to defuse a situation before it escalates
into violence.

Among the tragic encounters between police and the mentally ill:

-- Rigoberto Alpizar, 44, was shot and killed Dec. 7 by federal air marshals
after he became agitated and bolted from a plane at Miami International Airport.
Alpizar said he had a bomb, marshals said, but Alpizar's wife was desperately
trying to tell the officers that her husband was mentally ill.

-- Nasir Abdi, 23, was shot and killed in Columbus on Dec. 28 by deputies trying
to bring him to a mental hospital for treatment. Deputies said Abdi brandished a
6-inch kitchen knife at them.

-- New Orleans police Officer LaToya Nicole Johnson, 24, was killed Aug. 9,
2004, by a mentally ill man she and her partner were trying to bring in for
psychiatric treatment.

In Memphis, the same training that protects mentally ill suspects also reduced
the police injury rate. The training changed the way Memphis police view people
with mental illnesses, and also the way the mental health community views
police.

Before, Cochran said, most mentally ill people and their families were terrified
to call police.

"They wouldn't even call if they were victims of crime," he said. "Now (they)
readily call."

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4. MIAMI HERALD, January 15, 2006

[Editor’s Note: Climatic tragedy is often the catalyst for improvements in law
enforcement training and programs concerning those with mental illness, but not
always. Sometimes improvements are the product of the compassionate vision of
one person who recognizes that mental illness cannot be cured by a prison
sentence.]


JUDGE: MENTALLY ILL MAY GET ALTERNATIVE TO PRISON

A Miami-Dade judge's experience in the courtroom prompted him to bring together
law enforcement officials and others to deal with mentally ill individuals
caught in the criminal justice system.

By Jay Weaver


About six years ago, a psychiatrist who lost his hospital job because he
suffered from schizophrenia appeared before Miami-Dade County Judge Steven
Leifman on a misdemeanor charge of trespassing.

The parents of the man, who was by then homeless, begged Leifman for help.

But the man wanted none of it: He told the judge his parents were impostors sent
by the CIA and that his real parents had died in the Holocaust.

Leifman eventually had to order his release from jail after he was found
incompetent to stand trial.
''I don't know if he's dead or alive today,'' Leifman said.

That haunting experience compelled Leifman to mobilize local police, county
officials and mental-health providers to confront Miami-Dade's prickly problem
of dealing with criminal offenders with mental illnesses.

Today, Leifman will be sharing tips on the county's pioneering ''jail
diversion'' program with 50 state supreme court chief justices at a conference
on Amelia Island, near Jacksonville.

''It was dysfunctional,'' Leifman said, recalling the county's once-broken
system of putting mentally-ill criminals behind bars over and over again without
much treatment or other social services.

'At some point you had to ask yourself a question, `who was sicker -- the person
with the mental illness or the system?' . . . We had to do something about it in
the courts because we were on the front lines. It's now part of a national
movement.''


Treatment, Not Prison

The idea of making jail a last resort for such criminal offenders has slowly
caught on in Miami-Dade and other major metropolitan areas.

Increasingly, police are bringing such offenders into custody and then referring
them to a mental-health treatment center rather than jail.

According to criminal justice experts, the system had to change because the
burden on jails in both human and financial terms was overwhelming.

''There was incredible frustration and concern among court administrators,
judges and corrections officials,'' said Michael Thompson, a crime-policy expert
with the Council of State Governments, a nonprofit group based in Kentucky.

''They were essentially crying for help,'' Thompson said.

In 2004, Congress responded.


Legislation Passed

Lawmakers unanimously passed legislation designed to deal with the problem,
which had been escalating since the 1960s when state hospitals started closing
down and releasing patients by the thousands.

Then last year, Congress appropriated $5 million for a Justice Department grant
program to help cities that are trying to develop alternatives to jailing people
with mental illnesses who commit nonviolent crimes.

Though it's not a lot of money, the appropriation signals Congress' commitment
to a new approach to an old problem.

Thompson said other areas are looking to Miami-Dade for guidance.

Miami-Dade County has the highest percentage of people (200,000) with mental
illnesses of any urban community in the United States -- three times higher than
the national average, according to the state Department of Children & Families.

The police department has ended up handling calls on the mentally ill more than
they do calls about drunken drivers, assaults and burglaries.

Leifman spent several years urging the county police department to get officers
more training.

A year ago, the Miami-Dade grand jury released a report that helped persuade
Mayor Carlos Alvarez, former police director, to change the system.

The report noted how the county's mentally disabled go from confrontations with
police to barren jail cells, then through multiple court hearings and
psychological reviews that ultimately leave them in custody eight times longer
than other county defendants.

The cost of incarceration of the mentally ill runs millions of dollars higher
than it does for other inmates.

The report concluded that local and state agencies don't adequately identify and
assist the mentally ill before or after they spend time in jail.

Now county officials are aggressively incorporating mental-health programs into
the criminal justice system. Among the highlights: About 1,000 police officers
in 20 law enforcement agencies have been specially trained to handle people with
mental illnesses.


A New Facility

County officials are also creating a facility to treat the mentally ill after
they are arrested, using $22 million in voter-approved bond money.

Expected to open in 2008, it will be the first facility of its kind in the
nation, with a goal of returning the mentally ill to a life of recovery.

Said Leifman: ``We can help other communities do what we're doing in
Miami-Dade.''

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5. MERCURY NEWS (San Jose, CA), February 27, 2006

[Editor’s Note: Nothing fuels crusaders for change more than personal
experiences, especially those that are unsettling or even devastating. Few
have more such fuel than Margaret Margo, and it shows.]


MOM'S MISSION SPRINGS FROM TRAGEDY

Santa Cruz Woman Shines Light On Mentally Ill

By Patrick May, Mercury News


As the afternoon was dying, the sunset over the ocean filled the living room.
The nightly news shimmered on the TV screen. And something clicked inside Steven
Margo's head.

For years, even as he tried to silence the voices with medication and street
drugs, bouncing from park bench to group home to psych ward, they had told him
what to do, who to trust, who was trying to kill him.

This time, something made Steven pick up the knife.

Margaret Margo saw her son come out of the kitchen and walk up behind her
husband. The good-natured fisherman shone like a lighthouse in his son's
darkness. Sal Margo had stood by Steven for 35 years -- holding the little boy
awakened by nightmares; bailing out the teenager messing up on drugs; lobbying
for the young man diagnosed as paranoid-schizophrenic and discharged from the
Navy.

It was 6 p.m. on June 29, 2001. Two lives would end in a bloody blur as Steven
Margo stabbed his father to death and then turned the knife on himself. But for
the other person in the room, the horror of that day led to a new beginning.

Each year, mental illness savages millions of families, leaving many forever
hobbled by the pain and shame that come from the stigma. But Margo's tragedy
instead inspired her to bring hope to others.

``It could have been three of us who died that night,'' said Margo, now 67 and
living alone in the family's oceanside home in Santa Cruz. ``I was left alive
for a reason -- maybe to shine a little light for others struggling with mental
illness.''

Margo is infectiously upbeat, hard-charging. Her sorrow is not buried so much as
woven into an almost evangelistic sense of purpose. She has published her
journal excerpts and insights in a book, its title inspired by the voices that
tormented her son: ``The Uninvited Guest -- A Mother's Story about Mental
Illness.''

``I've never really worked through what happened that night,'' she said. ``I
talk about it. But I don't sit here alone and visualize it. And I think that's a
gift from God; God wants me to be there for other people. And I can't help
people if I'm always breaking down crying.''

In the void left by the unspeakable tragedy, Margo found meaning: She would
honor her husband's devotion to their son by forgiving Steven for what he had
done, the first and only violent act of his life as far as anyone knew. And she
would devote herself to helping others cope, by peeling back the shroud covering
mental illness and letting in the light.

``How many people will say, `My son is schizophrenic'? They're ashamed, and they
feel it means there's something wrong with them, too, that they're somehow
responsible,'' Margo said. ``But mental illness is nobody's fault.''

So she does all she can to get people talking, to help families explore the
causes and accept their loved ones, just as her husband did. ``He'd always say,
`Steven, I'm proud of you.' He'd try to make him feel like he was a real person,
not weird. I can still see Sal lying in bed in the middle of the night, hands
behind his head. `I have Steven on my mind,' he'd say. `What can he do? He can't
hold down a job. He has nothing and no one in his life.'

``And I'd say, `He has us.' ''


Personal Stories

• Mental illness, homelessness

It's Tuesday night. A crowd gathers in the hall at St. Joseph's in Capitola,
where Steven Margo once served as an altar boy. It's another in a series of
talks about mental illness, coordinated by his mother and inspired by a lifetime
of love between father and son.

Tonight's subject is mental illness among the homeless. Pam Rogers-Wyman of the
Homeless Persons Health Project steps forward with the big picture: 2,700
homeless on the streets of Santa Cruz County on any given night, more than 7,000
different people out there over the past year, 20 percent of them suffering from
a major mental illness such as bi-polar or post-traumatic stress disorder, or
schizophrenia -- about double the general population.

It gets worse. Of those homeless for five years or more, as many as 60 percent
are mentally ill. Bay Area counties are trying to link computer systems to get
an accurate regional count.

But a 2004 survey in Santa Clara County found 20,000 unduplicated homeless
people on the streets or in shelters over the course of a year, and more than a
third reported experiencing some form of mental illness.

Next came Joy McCorkle. She was a teacher who fell apart. A psychotic break, she
called it, describing the day the clouds turned chartreuse and engulfed her
school. She quit her job and soon lost everything, ending up in a tent city,
destitute, sexually exploited, washing her hair in toilets.

For years she wandered the streets of America. Eventually diagnosed as bi-polar,
McCorkle, now 65, said, ``I'm finally getting the right medication, 23 years
after first seeing a psychiatrist. Back then, all they'd do was put me on
tranquilizers.

``Now I'm a voice for the homeless,'' she said, beaming with pride. ``I'm
stabilized, and I want to tell you that a diagnosis of mental illness is not a
death sentence.''

Then Margo introduced Joe Bahl, 40, a tattoo-covered tough guy suddenly struck
with stage fright because he had never spoken before a group. ``My addiction
started when I was 6,'' he said. ``Diagnosed hyperactive, they put me on
Ritalin. I'd see a psychiatrist every month, and all we'd do is play cards. My
parents divorced, and I got into drugs and crime, in and out of jail since I was
13.

``I've been in denial about having mental-health issues,'' Bahl said of the
stigma he felt being thought of as ``crazy.'' ``I'd rather be a convict or a
drug addict than admit I had a mental illness.''

But he was sick. And like Steven Margo, most of his life had been a whirl of
drug binges and jail time, hospitalization and suicide attempts, and the chronic
fear of telling doctors how badly you really feel because they'll only increase
your dose of soul-smothering psychotropics.

In his most recent visit to jail in 2004, doctors gave Bahl two new medications:
Wellbutrin and Seroquel. Finally, after a lifetime on the streets, ``things
quickly became clear to me. I realized the only person I really have is myself,
and if I can't help myself, then why go on living?''

As Bahl paused to compose himself, Margo stepped forward.

``I identify with your story, because I had a son, the youngest of our six
kids,'' she said, pausing a moment, ``. . . and being mentally ill doesn't mean
you have to be abused by the world.''

Bahl looked at the well-dressed woman and nodded: ``It's sad,'' he said, ``that
a stigma can keep someone out in the bushes for 20 years.''

Margo spoke again of her son, how everyone had thought he was normal as a kid,
that he was doing drugs because of peer pressure and not self-medication. When
she said ``Steven was the love of our lives,'' a young woman in the audience
interrupted.

``Why do you keep saying `was'?''

``Because,'' Margo said, stunning the audience with her story, ``he's
deceased.''


A Love Story

• Father and son had close bond

Like the lectures, Margo's book confronts mental illness head-on. In family
photos and remembrances, father and son come alive. ``This is a true story,'' it
begins, ``about a father and son.''

It is also a love story -- of Steven Margo following his dad like a shadow; of
the father guiding his son through a strained mental-health system, in and out
of therapy, bounding between over-medicated, under-medicated and the fragile
reality in between.

``Sal always felt Steven deserved respect,'' Margo said, adding he'd make sure
his hair was cut, that he had rides to get around, that he was included in
family get-togethers.

``It was like Sal was continually holding his arm around Steven, guiding him
down a path, like he was still a little boy,'' Margo said. ``Steven would act as
if he were making his own decisions in life. But it was really his dad looking
over him.''


New Day Begins

• A window into the past

Mornings are the hardest. Most days, Margo walks into the living room and opens
the blinds.

``I think about Sal a lot and how empty our lives are without him. I think of
Steven, especially at Christmas, and I'm sad he had to live this way and leave
this world the way he did. But I'm even sadder that people who really didn't
know him may judge him by his act, not that he had a severe challenge.''

She often scans the sea across the street. She looks toward Pleasure Point,
where she used to watch her goofy-footed teenage son try to surf. She thinks
about her husband out there in his fishing boat, the Margaret Mary, headed off
toward Soquel Point.

``We've got so many homeless on the streets, sleeping on benches, and most of
them, I'm afraid, have nobody in their lives.''

But on this day, as Margo sets out to publicize her book and prepare her next
lecture and organize emergency shelter at St. Joseph's for homeless women, the
sky across East Cliff Drive is endless and the ocean is empty.

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