February 2011

Well, he has been off to the boarding school and seemed to be doing better.

A blizzard has hit and has dumped over two feet of snow.  With the blowing of the roads, the driveway is buried.  Our son was brought back to town for a follow-up with the psychologist for when he was in the psych ward.  One kid took the opportunity to run and one of the staff members went after him.  Suddenly our son realized that there was only one staff member left and about 6 kids.  He knew that if he ran, the staff member would not leave the other students.  So he ran.  Our driveway was still buried when we got the phone call.  We finally got dug out and went around looking for him.  One parent called and said that he had called their son for a ride out of town but was told because of all the snow they could not drive.  He said that he has been getting that a lot.

That night, our daughter's friend called her cousin and found out that he was there.  We called the police and they said they had to come by the house to take a report first before going out to get him.  We informed them that the school already had a missing person report on him.  They said that had to come anyway.  An hour and half later, they finally showed up.  After filing the report with them, we went out looking for him and could not find him.

The next morning, a mother of a friend of his dropped by.  She had found our son's backpack in her son's van that had been left about a month ago.  I thought at first that he had left it there recently and was disappoint when I found out that it had been a while back. I explained that he had ran from the school and was on the run.  She said if she heard anything she would contact us.

Then we got a call from a police officer.  Since the schools were closed because of the storm, he (who was the intermediate school liaison officer) was being assigned to the case.  We met with him and gave him a list of numbers of friends.

When we got back, we got a call from the mother who stopped by before.  She just got a call from our son and had dropped off her son at a house to meet up with him.  We sent a message to the police officer and then got a call back from her that they all just showed up at her house.  We sent a message to the police officer and he went to the house.  They were in the process of using drugs when the officers showed up at the house.

We met with him at the police station.  He informed us that he wanted to prove to us that he could go without using but was upset because in less than 24 hours he was back to it.  He told us that he realized that he needed help.  We convinced him to go back to the school.  This time he wanted to go back willingly because the last time he saw us, he was punching walls at the psych ward because we would not take him out.  That thought had haunted him for the past couple of weeks.  So we headed back to the school with him.