This past July, San Francisco mourned the death of Colden Kimber, who shielded kids, ages 8 and 14, from a mentally ill assailant at a Muni stop in Ingleside. Kimber was a 28-year-old, 6’4” avid cyclist, who was fatally stabbed in the neck with a six-inch blade by Sean Collins, a 29-year-old mentally ill man with multiple brushes with the law, including burglary at Java Cafe and vandalism. Below, a childhood friend wrote on Reddit that Collins had posted “GUESS WHO RAN OUT OF MEDS?” on his Instagram not long before the stabbing.
Shortly thereafter, the world was horrified and heartbroken over the video of Iryna Zarutska’s murder on a train in Charlotte, N.C. Twenty-three-year-old Zarutska survived bomb shelters in Ukraine, but lost her life in America when she was randomly knifed by Decarlos Brown Jr. Brown had been arrested 14 times, and his mother said he was suffering from schizophrenia. These tragedies resonated deeply for me because my kids take public transportation regularly, and I also had an uncle who suffered from schizophrenia.
As a teenager, my half-uncle fled Vietnam with my family on a sea fishing boat. The long years of war left few opportunities for play or academics. He had, at most, two years of high school education tucked under his belt. But he was given the chance of the American dream when U.C. Berkeley offered him a full ride because he scored perfectly on his Math SATs — twice! Why twice? Well, they made him retake it after the first time, because they thought he had cheated.
His studies were sadly interrupted when he began to develop bouts of psychotic delusions and hallucinations. He was forced to drop out of U.C. Berkeley, and my mother took him in to live with us in Portland, Ore. I always remembered my uncle to be kind and soft-spoken. He was put on antipsychotic medication for his schizophrenia diagnosis, but he still heard voices in his head and talked to himself often. Sometimes I would catch him mumbling to himself as he peeled the faux wood paneling off his bedroom wall. My parents were stretched thin by full-time jobs. My mother, who pulled graveyard shifts, couldn’t always ensure he was taking his meds. He acquired two habits at U.C. Berkeley — cigarettes and pot. The latter only heightened his drug-induced psychosis. Time and again, we retrieved him from aimless drifts or makeshift beds in public spaces. My uncle was not homeless, but his psychosis made him voluntarily homeless. We were fortunate that my uncle escaped assault or death during his wanderings on the streets. In today’s climate, where drug dealers peddle $3 cocktail pills of fentanyl, heroin, and meth, he could have easily succumbed to a far graver addiction and faced violent harm.
One day, my mother received a call from Portland police: My uncle had been arrested for attempting to break into a stranger’s garage to find a place to sleep. At his hearing, a compassionate judge presented two paths: prison for burglary or involuntary treatment. In an era before decarceration and restorative justice reshaped the system, the threat of substantial prison time was a potent lever, compelling those struggling with addiction and affiliated crimes to choose forced recovery. The threat of a long prison sentence drove my uncle toward treatment, a decision that became his salvation. He completed the drug recovery program and was placed in a specialized facility offering wrap-around services, where staff diligently oversaw his medication and mental health. Though he never relinquished his cigarette habit, the drug-free environment freed him from the grip of drug-induced psychosis. There, he thrived, not only earning his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from U.C. Berkeley but also completing a master’s in mathematics from San Jose State.
During my initial college years as a pre-med student, I worked as a psychiatric technician in the inpatient psychiatry unit at the university hospital, witnessing first-hand the effectiveness of structured intervention. I am convinced that my uncle’s involuntary commitment and placement in a drug-free specialized living facility not only saved his life but likely spared others from harm. His brief encounter with the law was the precise intervention he needed; it deterred his actions from spiraling into something much more catastrophic. Had his schizophrenia been intertwined with harsher drugs like heroin, LSD, methamphetamine, crack, or fentanyl, which are now rampant on our streets, his fate and others could have been far grimmer.
The American Civil Liberties Union’s relentless litigation against involuntary commitment, combined with judicial leanings toward restorative justice over incarceration or mandated treatment, has jeopardized public safety, leaving communities vulnerable to untreated mental illness and drug-fueled violence and psychosis. Each day, our streets bear witness to the failure of housing-first policies that sideline enforced recovery and drug-free facilities, driving a surge in homeless addiction, crime, and overdoses. In 2023, San Francisco’s emergency rooms saw 22,563 homeless patients grappling with mental breakdowns and drug-induced psychosis, with many repeat cases among the city’s estimated 8,323 homeless individuals.
The voices in my uncle’s mind never ceased. Some were particularly menacing and evil, even urging him to commit murder and violence against women. Yet, with consistent psychiatric medication and support, he never acted on any of those dark impulses. His well-lived life was a testament to the power of structured intervention, recovery, and self-agency.
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