Below is what I posted to the general community of San Diego's Craigslist on Wednesday, May 18, 2011. I'm reposting it here (copying and pasting) in order to share it even longer and with a greater readership. I'm very concerned about Russell, and I'm not the only one. As my message says, please get in touch with me on Facebook if you know anything and/or have any questions...
My name is Ainsley Jo Phillips, and I'm from Anderson, Indiana.
I met a very special and beautiful person from your city online on January 15, 2007. His name is Russell T. Hartsaw. If you don't actually know him by name, you might still remember seeing him around. More times than not, black is his favorite color to wear, and he looks like a shorter version of Harrison Ford.
Shortly after moving to San Diego in 2003, he learned how big the problem of children, teens, and young adults being homeless is in your area and set out to do his part to help. After several years of reaching out to these young people on his own and with the help of various friends, he founded Invisible Youth Network.
Below, find something I wrote about him and his mission on his 70th Birthday (this past Saturday, May 14). It has been copied and pasted from my IYN blog called My Helping Hand Journal.
Sadly, things have been pretty much on-hold as far as any official business going on at headquarters, because I can't find out where Russell is. As you will read, I don't believe that this is something that Russell liked or planned. I'm guessing that he has been moved to a medical or assisted living facility, but I can't find out where due to the Hippa Act. He, likely, no longer has a computer at this time. What brought him to this place in his life might even be some kind of unsavory agenda of certain others. When you read what I wrote, you'll have more of an idea re: what I'm talking about.
If you know Russell and his whereabouts, please get in touch with me by sending me a message at Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/face.of.ainsleyjo
As I've written in my blog-entry, which I've copied and pasted below, I hope that you'll get involved in our mission.
Below are some links to IYN's website as Russell left it when he vanished (obviously, dated in places); my IYN blog; my personal blog-format website, AJville; and the blog-format website and Facebook group of one of our most active chapters, which is located in Fulton County, Ohio. Please help me to find Russell, and please read what I've written below to learn how you can help what he began...
http://invisibleyouthnetwork1.community.officelive.com/default.aspx
http://mhhj.blogspot.com/
http://ajville.blogspot.com/
http://www.fultoncountyiyn.com/
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_348348868466#!/home.php?sk=group_348348868466
About Russell On His 70th Birthday (posted on Saturday, May 14, 2011)
This is NOT how I had been planning on celebrating Russell's birthday. Hopefully, I'll soon be able to celebrate this very special milestone in his life (turning 70) the way I had planned to--with him online again.
If you live in the San Diego area and know something about Russell's whereabouts these days, please send me a message on Facebook. Here is a link to my profile page.
Let me explain. Russell was having some personal and health issues (as in being given some medicine that seemed to be having bad side-effects).
All at once, I began to hear the news that he had been taken somewhere else but nobody seemed to be at liberty to tell me just where.
I'm not going to go into a lot of details here, as I only have some limited information that Russell told me about such as getting the same medication that he had been taking for years through another (supposedly legitimate) source. He had also been prescribed some inappropriate medication (I believe, having to do with his blood-pressure) by the same place. He began to hear horror stories by other area seniors and got suspicious.
Anyway, I'm not going to say anymore here at this point, as having--and using--a small amount of information in a factual way can prove to do more harm than good.
There are people out there who have more experience and knowledge than I do, and, hopefully, at least some of the people reading this would fall under this category.
Please help if you know how!!! To anyone reading this, please keep Russell in your prayers!!!
Until he's able to get online once more (or is able to get in touch with somebody who can) and get things straightened out, the activities of IYN headquarters in San Diego have had to be put on hold.
However, any people who are part of various IYN chapters or those who want to get involved in our mission should keep on doing what you're doing or want to do.
In San Diego (and its surrounding area) alone, there are thousands of street youth, and they need to be helped!!!
First off, here's what they don't need:
1. They don't need to be rounded up and taken to juvenile hall (or something similar) and told that they will not be released until they give their real names and how to contact their parents and/or other responsible people in their hometowns. They have gone through a whole lot to get away from there, because they have reason to believe that what is back in their old lives is a bad environment. There are very few cases of kids just leaving home for the lark of it. They are generally leaving behind abusive situations, whether those situations are bullying at school that nobody seems to be able or willing to make stop or physical/verbal/emotional/sexual abuse going on right in their own homes.
2. They don't need the kind of boot-camp atmosphere that, unfortunately, seems to have become so common these days. Leave them right where they are before doing this kind of thing to them!
3. They don't need to be taken in by people with motives that are less than stellar (e.g. people wanting sexual playthings and/or slave labor at their ready).
What they do need is a growing number of people who are willing to go out to talk to them--and truly listen to what they have to say!
They also need things like food cards for places like McDonald's, phone cards (that will work with pay phones, as they rarely if ever have cell phones), personal care items (e.g. toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, sanitary napkins, shampoo, combs, brushes, nail clippers, etc.), clothing (outer wear, underwear, shoes, socks, etc.), knapsacks, wallets, notebooks, pens.
They need social interaction without strings (e.g. must go to a certain church on a regular basis; must come to live in a certain home or shelter whether ready to or not) such as cook-outs, trips to pizza parlors, holiday celebration gatherings, etc.
For those young people who are tired of living out in the elements, we need families who will take them in and treat them like visiting cousins. One church in particular has been organizing something like this with a lot of success.
As soon as we have the funding for it, one of our dreams is to create places like camps and ranches where our young people can live safely and with respect (We, obviously, have zero tolerance for the boot-camp kind of experience, even though we also have some rules such as ones concerning fighting and substance abuse) while taking whatever amount of time they need to get back into the mainstream.
Obviously, IYN is unable to pursue this kind of project at this time, but the other kinds of things mentioned above ARE things that we can do now.
Russell has invested both time and money into our kids for many years, but there is only one of him.
A couple of the most wonderful birthday presents that you could give to him at this time is to increase the number of those who are active in helping our kids and to, if you're able, help him to get back into a situation where he can, once more, direct the happenings of IYN and doing what he was planning on doing right before this situation happened: handpicking reliable and caring people to share various responsibilities that he was once doing on his own, because he realizes that he can't do it all--and that he also must be prepared for the unexpected such as what has happened to him now.
Please keep Russell in your prayers, love, and positive thoughts--and, if you have any information on him, please contact me!
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