Missing
Julian
a MOTHER’S search for her son By Candace Hansen More than seven years have passed since my 19-year-old son Julian disappeared. He marched off after arguing with his dad and me down along the docks in Sausalito. He had just lost his job. He wanted money. He was angry that we wouldn’t give him any. He was wearing a thin blue T-shirt, jeans, and an old pair of tennis shoes. No socks. His worn-out backpack was empty. The last image I have of my blond-haired, blue-eyed son was the shadow of his lanky frame as he rounded the corner heading in the direction of Mollie Stone’s grocery store. And then he was gone. Even though Julian’s mental health had preoccupied us for two years, we thought he’d sulk a while, like he’d done before, and be back for dinner. In retrospect, however, a sense of foreboding consumed me as dusk gave way to the unimaginable dark days ahead. We reported Julian missing to the Sausalito Police Department three days after last seeing him. Back in 2002, the prevailing attitude was to wait 72 hours before filing a Missing Persons report. Our son had now joined the ranks of what the U.S. Justice Department calls the “silent disaster.” At the same time, his father and I, his older brother Yuri, his younger sister Coral, and his best friend, Brian also became victims of this disaster. So did his extended family and friends. “If you ask most Americans about a mass disaster, they’re likely to think of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina, or the Southeast Asian tsunami,” says Nancy Ritter, of the National Institute of Justice. “Very few people — including law 14
Photograph by Yoni Klein
Candace Hansen gazes toward the dock in Sausalito where she last saw her son Julian.
{ spring 2010