What His Wife Said/Asks
I have asked Mike to allow me to write this cover letter. I am Mike’s wife of 28 years.
[written last fall as part of the preliminary information and evidence provided to prosecutors, medical boards, state agencies, etc.]
We all wear many hats. Mike is addressing you as the you that wears your professional hat. I am addressing all of the other parts of you. (neighbor, son/daughter, mother/father, citizen, etc)
First, I think you should know who Mike is. He is a 50 year old man. He is a father. We have a 26 year old daughter, married, and working on a PhD in counseling psychology at the university and a 20 year old daughter, also at the university, working on a major in Family Social Science. Mike has an MBA from the univeristy. Prior to what years ago we would have called a nervous breakdown, in 2003, when Mike ‘crashed’, he was in business. On June 5th earlier this year I would have told you that Mike was really getting better. He was starting to be more like his old self. At the same time that he was getting better, he was starting to realize, as with anyone that has experienced severe depression, that all of this had been very hard on the kids and me. On June 6th he had a bad ‘moment’ (what truly should have been just a ‘moment’), left ‘in a state’ and before long I got text messages that told me he was going to a movie. His first message said that he knew he wasn’t fair and that he didn’t know how to fix it. He ended up drinking before the movie and then while in the movie, sending me very scary messages [suicidal]. When he wouldn’t respond, I called local police. They found him, took him into protective custody, and brought him directly to riverside.The events that happened after that are what you are about to become aware of.
I think you will be shocked. First, the hospital personnel made choices, then hospital security made choices, then again it was the hospital E.R. making choices, then the 911 person, then large city police, then the staff and leadership at the County Jail, and in there the Jail nurses made more choices, and it appears those choices were followed up by choices to cover up those earlier choices. (FYI - I was calling riverside while Mike was BEING arrested, still in or barely out of the E.R., and again while he was in jail, and the people I talked to at riverside made choices to give me little information, quickly hanging up, and ultimately lying to me regarding my husband’s whereabouts,) After Mike got home more choices were made. Mike’s story was pretty unbelievable. He kept saying he was tortured in the jail. NO ONE believed him that I could see. I listened to him because I knew that no one else could imagine that what happened did. People did believe me, regarding my experiences. (I hadn’t been treated for a mental condition.) They believed what I explained I had experienced with riverside although they found what they DID was unbelievable. Even I sort of went in and out of believing Mike, BUT THEN I HEARD THE TAPES FROM THE JAIL. This is why I feel the need to write a cover letter. It is an unbelievable story, but it is true.
I have chosen to call what went on choices, because I really think that the people we are talking about that were involved in all this are probably people that have also made other choices – better choices. But on that day the choices were not good…some were literally dangerous…some happened because the system (its policies & procedures & protections) broke down. I have seen systems break-down before; we all have. Though I only taught in the public school system a short time, I was witness to parents complaining and school staff ‘covering for’ others, and administration ‘covering for’ higher ups, etc.
Here’s the story, for you to judge for yourself, for you, the people that Mike chose to tell this story to, to individually and collectively use the resources you have to investigate what went wrong, to identify what went wrong, to fix what went wrong, and most importantly, to fix the system where it didn’t hold up against what went wrong. I am thinking that if you address the situation from this point of view, you may be able to better do what is right.
Again, I am not talking per a bunch of legal mumble jumble……..I am talking per me, a wife and mother, and a teacher. What happened to my husband, and to me with the hospital, and as a result of what happened to Mike, is not right. Read, listen, study, think, and in the end I think you will make good choices on behalf of not just one man, one woman, or one family, but on behalf of those who may follow a too similar path were it not for the corrective actions you and others take.
Thank you in advance for whatever you can do to help everyone ‘make a message’ out of this mess.
