'My Lamar could have laid there forever and they'd have never known who he was'
Lamar Randle, a 48-year-old diabetic with mental disabilities, lived at a South Side nursing home during the week.
But come weekends, he stayed at his mother's Gresham home, and that's where he was July 28 when he went for a late-night walk.
(Rich Hein/Sun-Times)
PHOTO GALLERY
Have you seen them?
2000: 1,091
2001: 978
2002: 947
2003: 1,214
2004: 1,335
2005: 1,383
2006: 1,413
Note: These numbers cover people who are alive but aren't identified, as well as unidentified remains.
Sources: National Crime Information Center, FBI, U.S. Justice Department
By the next day he still hadn't returned. His family, fearing the worst, filed a missing persons report.
What Lamar's relatives didn't know was that he indeed was alive, but not well. He had become ill on the street and was picked up by Chicago Police.
Unable to speak or otherwise identify himself, he was driven by cops to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was admitted as John Doe.
His hospital visit turned out to be serendipitous: Tests turned up a brain tumor that was cancerous, and previously undiagnosed.
Doctors operated successfully -- meaning that going missing may have saved Lamar's life.
But he was not reunited with his family, not yet.
The family searched. Police searched. Mount Sinai, which sees some 25 John Doe cases yearly, searched.
"It was horrible. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat," his mother said. "The doctors thought he was homeless. But he's got . . . a whole lot of family."
In the end, luck helped reconnect Lamar with relatives after nearly two weeks.
Detectives had provided the media with a bulletin about Lamar, hoping publicity would bring in leads. Separately, the hospital provided information to the Sun-Times about an unidentified person in its care.
A reporter saw both dispatches, noticed similarities and made the connection.
Soon, Lamar was missing no more.
"I don't even know how this one got missed, because we had called missing persons several times and made a report, and so had the family," said Mount Sinai's Cara Pascione. "There must have been a slip-up in the system."
Police didn't return calls seeking comment.
But if Lamar's case illustrated how easy mistakes can be in missing persons investigations, it also highlighted a nagging problem for hospitals and police: identifying "found" people who, for reasons of physical or mental ailments, can't say who they are. Coroners and medical examiners face the same growing challenge with unidentified bodies.
Last year, the federal government counted more than 1,400 new cases of unidentified people. More than 1,000 involved the dead.
"It was such a joy when we got that call," Betty Randle, 70, said. "My Lamar could have laid there forever and they'd have never known who he was.
"The funny thing is . . . God used his going missing to save his life."