Remembering Ted Jack: A story of mental health, addiction and finding home

Ted Jack was a simple man. He lived a very complex and hard life.

Born on a boat off the Alaskan coast into a youth spent in orphanages, Ted ran away from a world he would rarely speak about. Only to say, “It wasn’t good.” Learning how to look after his needs at a very young age and not to rely on others, Ted lived a life few human beings could ever imagine.

Ted did what many young men and women have done throughout the years in Alaska when faced with surviving in the world without an education and a family safety net: He learned the life of a fisherman.

During his teenage years into his early-20s, Ted worked on fishing boats in the Bering Sea and in canneries along the Alaskan coast, two of the most grueling and dangerous jobs in the world.

“He would go out on the fishing boats during the season, make good money, stay in hotels and party really hard and then he’d be back staying in his tent for the rest of the off season,” says Mellani Calvin, a friend and one of Ted’s former social workers. “He would mostly work on smaller fishing boats that flew under the tax radar, not the big commercial operations.”

In his early 20s Ted started hearing voices in his head. Living with an undiagnosed mental illness Ted’s ability to maintain a job became harder and harder. He self-medicated with alcohol and found himself living under bridges, in tents and in doorways.

Over time Ted’s life became a living nightmare with hallucinations and hearing voices. He found himself traveling from town to town, hopping trains and taking solace again and again in the bottle. His life would become a cycle of violent fits of rage, fist fights, broken bones and binge drinking. He was even hit by a car. All of this resulted in countless trips to the emergency room and jail throughout his 20s. 

To look at Ted’s life through interviews with friends and social workers, and having my own relationship with Ted, much of his life would appear to be filled with one tragedy after another. It would be hard to argue anything different. There were also moments of triumph and eventually love.

Ted was hospitalized in several psychiatric units throughout Alaska and the Pacific Northwest for his mental health, roaming from one institution to the other while experiencing homelessness and alcoholism. Both his physical and mental health took a beating.

The lack of stable housing and ongoing mental healthcare treatment in America is one of the biggest causes homelessness in America. It’s estimated that one in five people experiencing homelessness have a serious mental illness, and a similar percentage have a chronic substance use disorder. It’s not uncommon for people like Ted to use drugs and alcohol to self-medicate. 

It seemed that Ted wanted the pain and the voices in his head to simply stop. He would light himself on fire, suffering second- and third-degree burns. He became obsessed with doing this again the following year. Ted was only 30 years old. The voices in Ted’s head, and the ability to maintain a normal life seemed out of reach. In his own words, the “hallucinations and headaches became intolerable after all of the head injuries over the years. I just wanted to die.”

Eventually, things went from bad to worse. Ted was attacked by several men and left to die homeless on the streets of Anchorage, Alaska. Doctors had to fuse his vertebrae together. The attack also aggravated his scores of traumatic brain injuries. He would spend the next three months in a rehabilitation center learning to walk again, and the rest of his life disabled from the attack. Given the circumstances It was a miracle Ted remained alive. 

During the next three years Ted’s life continued to spin out of control. Coping any way he could, mostly with the bottle, Ted was living in doorways and under bridges in Seattle, and around the Pacific Northwest. 

That’s when I met Ted. 

I was working as a writer and organizer for Real Change, an award-winning weekly street paper in Seattle, Washington. The publication is a part of a larger network of street papers around the world sold on the streets by people experiencing homelessness and poverty to earn an income. 

Ted tried selling the street paper on three different occasions, but the pain was simply too much and he couldn’t control his binge drinking in order to stay sober enough to maintain his composure while selling the paper. It just wasn’t working out. 

It was frustrating for both Ted, and myself, because behind all the trauma and violence was a gentle soul. Ted’s smile and generosity could light up a room. He cared very much about the people around him, and especially about others on the streets. Ted was always trying to find a way to help others even when he was struggling to take care of himself. 

Unfortunately, without any real stability it was difficult for Ted to maintain day-to-day. The binge drinking and fits of rage were simply too much. There would be times when I thought Ted was going to make it, and other times when I honestly didn’t think Ted was going to make it through the month. 

For months, I lost contact with Ted. That’s when I would found out Ted attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge in Seattle. Miraculously, like many times before, Ted survived. He would spend several weeks in the Harborview Medical Center Psychiatric Unit before being released back to the streets. The man had nine lives. 

Upon his release, Ted was given two weeks worth of psychotropic medications and tried selling Real Change one more time. He remained clean and sober for nearly two weeks before he relapsed after running out of medication and spending the rest of of the year drinking and panhandling on the streets of Seattle. It was a sad and mostly infuriating reflection on America's underfunded and resourced housing and mental healthcare system. 

At the time I had recently taken the executive director’s position at Street Roots, the street paper in Portland, Oregon. Ted had found his way to Portland. It had been months since we had last seen each other. We were happy to see one another. I was happy to see that Ted was still alive. That day, we took a long walk through the city. 

Ted told me at the time he simply had no place left to go and didn’t really care if he lived or died, but that he was willing to give Street Roots a try if we would be willing to have him. Ted wanted so badly to get sober and get treatment for his mental health. 

That same month, Ted went to a local detox center and was discharged to a nonprofit called Central City Concern, a healthcare and housing organization that offered transitional housing and treatment. He was assigned a case manager and began a relationship with the Old Town Clinic, a healthcare clinic serving homeless and low-income folks in Portland. 

With the help of social workers and Street Roots, Ted began to take his medications on a regular basis. Slowly, but surely, Ted was coming back to life. He had a fire about him. “I can do this,” he would say. 

Unfortunately, after years of running so hard, Ted had a lot of catching up to do. Like many people who have spent time on the streets, Ted had no proof that he was even a citizen of the United States. He had no I.D. or Social Security Card. Unable to cope with simply obtaining these basic documents — even with mountains of medical and police records — Ted left for Seattle in March. 

Ted had hoped that in Seattle he could replace his Social Security card and get re-established. Within two weeks, and without medication, Ted once again picked up by the Seattle Police Department for talking to himself on a street corner. He was returned to Harborview Medical Center. 

This time, after leaving the hospital, something was different. According to friends in Seattle, he decided to turn himself in for outstanding warrants and spent a month in the King County jail. After his release from jail, Ted found himself once again without medication on the streets of Seattle. The unstoppable voices returned and he relapsed. Ted found himself back in the county jail, like the time before that and the time before that. 

One of the biggest travesties about our lack of healthcare in America is that county jails have been warehouses for people experiencing mental health and homelessness for decades, a damning reflection of the need for universal mental health care for millions of people living with a mental health diagnosis in America. 

Eventually though, Ted would find his way back to Portland from Seattle and enter detox one more time. Shortly after that, Ted returned to the same transitional housing and on-site case management services he had left months before. Ted was now 36 years old and had experienced homelessness for more than 16-years of his life. 

Ted would try selling Street Roots one more time. He was stationed next to a coffee shop near City Hall in downtown Portland. Ted was determined to make it work this time. 

One of the most powerful things about street papers is the community created between people on the streets selling the street paper and the readers purchasing the paper. These new found relationships had a powerful impact on Ted. “People treat me with kindness,” Ted would say. “It’s not something I’m really accustomed to.” 

Those working with Ted began to witness a massive shift in Ted’s life. He was regularly attending Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and Narcotics Anonymous (N.A.) meetings, and continued to build new relationships. 

Ted was receiving acupuncture therapy and began to work with social worker Mellani Calvin and others at Central City Concern to try to obtain Social Security disability assistance — a long, complicated and complex process.

It was an amazing transformation to witness. Ted was coming out of his shell and making friends with a range of new people, including a woman named Heather, whom he had met in recovery. Ted was finding love and stability for the first time in his life. 

“We were two lost souls,” Heather says. “We had been to hell and back. We were right for each other.” 

Ted would continue to sell Street Roots a few hours a day, and was able to make enough money to pay for basic hygiene items along with a fishing pole and some gear.

Ted continued to go to meetings and began to go fishing with a friend he met in Alcohol Anonymous. They would go on fishing trips on the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington, and Ted began to fish on the banks of the Willamette River in downtown Portland. 

Catching a fair share of sturgeon and salmon, Ted would proudly text photos of his catches to friends. “There’s nothing better in life than fishing,” Ted would tell his friends. “It’s where I feel most at home.” 

Both Ted and Heather also began to give back to the community by volunteering for local homeless organizations. They would also make stacks of bologna and cheese and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to give to people he encountered on the streets. After more than two decades of homelessness, Ted had found his calling— helping other people on the streets and in recovery. 

“Ted did what he felt was right and managed to show compassion to others no matter how tough the situation seemed to be,” says Becky Mullins, a social worker that worked with Ted. “Ted would donate things like socks, razors, shaving cream, and deodorant. He was always working to give himself back to the family who helped him in his hardest times.”

Ted did not have a formal education. He had learned to read, but could barely write legibly. Many of his written characters were reversed as if looking in a mirror, a strong sign that Ted had dyslexia — something I was also diagnosed with at age 9. Ted and I often joked that between the two of us, no one would ever be able to read a thing we wrote. We laughed it off.

My relationship with Ted would teach me a great deal about endurance and perseverance in the face of hardship. There are always people in the back of your mind that you think are going to make it off the streets, and those that you’re not so sure. The one thing Ted taught me to never give up on anyone, regardless of the circumstances. Ted would always tell me smiling, “Never stop trying. No matter what the odds are. Never give up on people.” 

“Teddy had an incredible will to live and a need to be kind to others when the world had been so harsh to him,” says Calvin. “It was a beautiful thing to witness.” 

For years, Ted had talked about his dreams of going back to Alaska and to live in the wilderness he had once called home. The move was something Ted believed would offer him the ability to feel grounded, and to be able to heal after a long and tortured life of living on the streets. 

With the help of Central City Concern, and the work of Calvin, Ted would eventually receive a sum of back pay and a monthly check for his lifelong disability. Ted had now been off the streets for nearly three-years. Possibly, it was time to go back home to Alaska.  

Both Ted and Heather worked for nearly a year planning the move and purchasing a plot of land, an RV and a dog to join them on their adventures. Ted’s dream has become a reality. Both Ted and Heather packed up what little they owned and moved to the Alaska wilderness. 

“He always had a dream of owning his own mailbox,” says Heather. “He had never had a mailbox before. When he received his first piece of mail, his face just lit up. Ted was so happy.”

For a short time, Ted and Heather found comfort in their new found home. They had traveled back to a place Ted had imagined as a youth — a vast terrain full of lush forests and rivers full of wild fish. In reality though, Ted traveled to a plot of land in the harsh Alaska wilderness to live out his last days. 

A little more than a year after making the move, a lifetime of hardship and trauma would catch up to him. After nearly two decades of living on the streets, sadly Ted would die of health complications at the age young age of only 41. 

Although Ted lived a life most of us will never know, he also lived a life that far too many people do know. Ted had lived most of his unforgiving life without a safe place to call home, nor adequate healthcare, things that could have prevented him from dying at such a young age. 

“Ted was a wonderful man,” says Heather. “He was a caring human being who had a very hard life. I wouldn’t trade the short time I had with him for anything. We got each other. It was a deep love, and I don’t regret a thing.”

Before Ted passed away and was in hospice, I had a chance to talk to him on the phone in Alaska. “It has been a very hard life, but I’m a happy man. I found love,” Ted said. “I found my home. Thank you for never giving up on me.” 

In my mind, Ted’s life was neither a fairy tale, nor a disappointment. Ted died a young man in an old man’s body. He also died with love in his heart, clean and sober, with a clear mind. In the end, he died a peaceful man, out of the cold, something any one of us might ask for. 

A version of this story was published in Street Roots in December of 2012.