I first posted this as a Facebook Note on July 12 and was originally going to immediately post it here as well. However, a combination of trouble with my Internet connection and having to tend to other things when life began to march on made it so that I'm just now finishing posting it here. Please share it in hopes that Russell might be located. If you know anything, please send me a message via Facebook. Thanks!
If anybody knows the whereabouts of Russell T. Hartsaw, please let me know.
I've made some notes about him that I'm going to put down here.
I believe that the problem began when he decided to switch health care providers.
Details Of The Switch
Last year, he decided to switch health care providers. He really liked his doctor, but he didn't care for the hospital connected with him, so, when this company came out of nowhere promising better hospital care and a lot of other things, Russell made the decision to go with them. They weren't just basic medical care, but they would also provide dental care, eye care, psychiatric care (if needed), and had their own assisted living program should Russell get to the place where he couldn't live alone. They also had available free lunch throughout the week, social activities, and transportation to and from. A visiting nurse would come to his apartment at least a couple of times per week and would even help him with his shopping so that he could make the best choices for his diet.
However, Russell ended up having several health issues under their care. He thought that he was just getting older at first--until he was hearing the same thing from some of the others who had switched.
Could simply be circumstantial evidence, but he began wondering if, perhaps, this service might be part of a plan to decrease the population of older people living in debt-ridden California.
I don't want to lay out all of his life here, as Russell is a very private person about some things, but I know that he ended up (supposedly) having a nervous breakdown and spending some time in a hospital late last year, and he was telling me that he might have to go there again.
However, I haven't been able to find out anything for quite some time other than he was (initially) no longer at home and (sometime after that) no longer living at his apartment.
Incarcerated?
Originally, I posted that I was trying to find the whereabouts of Russell in a thread form, and one person made the comment that he might have gone back to prison.
My response was that he had stayed clean since getting out on parole back in May of 2003 and had been a model prisoner for many years before that.
Let me note here that Russell had never been sent to prison for any violent sort of crimes. He started out in his street youth days doing survival crimes such as hustling and petty theft. Later, he would rob banks--but never with a weapon. He would simply hand the teller a note saying to hand over all of the money.
There came a time when he became more comfortable with the prison routine than in living on the outside. When the outside got to be too bewildering to him, he would actually go through the motions of robbing a bank just to be caught and sent back.
However, during his last time in prison, he got to thinking of a better future for himself and decided that he wasn't going to go that route again. One thing that helped him was getting a college degree (Bachelor's in Criminal Justice) along with teaching adult education classes on the inside and becoming a very popular teacher, as his delivery was entertaining and engaging.
Reaching Out To Street Youth
For his parole, he was placed in the city of San Diego, and it was during that time that he noticed the growing population of street youth in the area. Looking at them, he saw a younger version of himself, and he didn't want these kids to have to go through what he'd gone through before having a possible chance of turning their lives around.
While saying on one hand that prison had been an enjoyable learning experience for him, Russell didn't want to think of these young people ending up going there.
Russell felt safe in prison--in fact, the outside life still bewilders him a lot even to this very day--but he has always realized that there had to be more than that in the future of these kids, and he was determined to get them there.
While he was able to find a handful of (at least, fairly) enthusiastic volunteers to help him in his mission of reaching out to the local street youth, he was disappointed, frustrated, and even angry that he was unable to gather up many more volunteers in this large city.
Thus, in time, he went online and Invisible Youth Network was born.
I met Russell online at a discussion site called Duno on January 15, 2007 when he was wanting people to visit his website. Upon seeing his website, I realized that he was a really amazing person and that we were on the same page re: a lot of issues, so I sent him a message asking him if he would like to e-mail back-and-forth.
One of my 2007 Resolutions was to put together a kind of online dream team of people who were interested in addressing the issue of various parts of our society falling through the cracks without a safety net, and I knew right off that Russell would be a major asset to have on such a dream team.
In a decision we made having nothing to do with romance, Russell and I have been "married" since February 19 of that same year. That is, we decided to have an online marriage of our dreams, and Russell even designed a marriage certificate to go with it.
Over time, we have even considered the possibility that our friendship might even end up including an actual marriage (romantic). However, as much as I love Russell as a person and always will (not to mention being very attracted to him both physically and emotionally), I've decided that going this route might ruin our friendship, because we would probably end up having frequent and serious arguments. He and I come from two very different worlds, and I've come to realize that this would, more likely than not, make a marriage to each other either end in divorce (likely, a messy one) or else end in two people feeling trapped in a major mistake. I think too much of both of us to put us through something like that.
Early in 2007, Russell shared his dream of an organization to help homeless and/or otherwise at-risk kids with me. He had just launched one a few years before but had to give it up after suffering a series of strokes.
Due to both these strokes and having Crohn's Disease at a serious enough level that complications from it almost killed him a few years before (though his flare-ups are now more rare and less serious), Russell has been on disability with his only other sources of income being donating blood plasma (which he had to give up after his strokes) and getting tipped for giving lectures about life in prison to criminal justice students from time to time.
Around half of his income goes for rent with most of the rest going for groceries, haircuts, and other necessities.
Once in awhile, Russell will be good to himself and buy something for his apartment, go out to eat, get a new clothing item, etc. He'll also occasionally buy one or more friends a gift.
However, most of what's left of Russell's monthly paycheck after making necessary payments from it has gone to helping the street kids. He'd pass out gift cards to fast-food restaurants and phone cards so that they could call for assistance or even call home, if there were somebody home who would like a phone call from them. He would also do things like order a pizza and sit around with them while they ate it and opened up to them about what had gotten them to where they were.
He knew that he could do only so much alone, which is why he saw the need for getting people organized to do street outreach on a greater scale.
Although Russell is frustrated that IYN couldn't have been even more widespread by now, he and I are both happy to report that there are some very enthusiastic chapters of it with the most active to date being the one in Fulton County, Ohio.
To find out more about IYN, please check out My Helping Hand Journal, which is the blog I've created to give my take on IYN and related matters:
http://mhhj.blogspot.com/
For right now, here are the most important issues to address:
- Even with Russell missing, our mission needs to go on. I hope that everybody reading this will think of a way to make life better for our invisible youth. They aren't all out on the streets (though too many of them are after getting to the place that they, sadly, felt safer and more in control living this kind of life than they did living at home). Some are still living at home in spite of the fact that they're having one or more of the following happening to them: getting bullied at school while those who are supposed to be in charge are nodding and winking); getting abused at home (physically, emotionally, and/or sexually); are loved at home and popular at school but are part of a family who is having trouble making ends meet. Some of them might even be homeless with their entire family living in with others, at a campground, at a shelter, or even in a vehicle). Please do what you can to help, even if it's only letting others (who might be able to help) know about things like this.
- Please help me to find Russell. A lot of the operations of IYN are now up in the air and needing Russell to help sort things out. He had been telling me that he was trying to pick out some people to carry on should he no longer be able to. He has been aware that he isn't getting any younger and that he has health issues. However, he didn't get this all finished before he disappeared. I believe he's alive, but is, likely, in some sort of institution. I can't seem to get any sort of information about him. If you live in the San Diego area and/or know somebody who does, anything you can share with me would be very helpful.
Thank you so much for reading this!
To Russell: There's a lighthouse in my heart, and its beaming out its searchlight in hopes of finding you soon......................................
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