Part 46: Finding Missing Person Ramón Balderrama – A Silver Alert Thanksgiving Miracle in Los Angeles

November 22, 2023

Photo of Ramón Balderrama and his son courtesy of family from Facebook.

Please support my work with your subscription or for direct aid use Venmo

By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

The mid-November rainstorm broke for two days and then another atmospheric river band moved in and still Ramón Balderrama was missing. Pasadena Now noted the passage of time since his disappearance on November 6 from near the Gold Line Station in Chinatown after being assaulted over his recycling in Highland Park: “Local 74-Year-Old Man Still Missing After More Than 10 Days.” The searches being conducted by family, friends and this journalist had not brought home Ramón in addition to the California Highway Patrol Silver Alert. He was still gone!

The skies began to clear and on a partly sunny, still a little cloudy Saturday the good news finally came to the Balderrama family of Pasadena at 12:30 pm. Their patriarch Ramón had been found. At first they weren’t so sure, after the false tip, and with so many posters out with their number on it the call seemed suspicious at first. Was it really him? They discussed meeting at the police station in Pasadena where they had filed the missing person’s report that triggered the Silver Alert due to Ramón’s age, medical conditions and the likelihood that he could be in greater peril.

The man who had called at first had told them Sun Valley, in the north San Fernando Valley, and the prior unconfirmed sightings after he went missing had put him in Highland Park. Before they could make the trip though after gathering, “we see a cop car” one family member would write spotting the LAPD cruiser. “The office explained that Ramon had been treated at Good Samaritan hospital and because he had no identification on him, the staff sent him to a halfway house in Sun Valley.” According to the family member’s report, “the staff there felt that Ramon did not belong there, so they involved the police.” After further police investigation, it was determined that the man was in fact Ramón Balderrama of Pasadena from the CHP Silver Alert.

Good Samaritan Hospital is located in Westlake opposite of Downtown Los Angeles just over the I-110 freeway, it is part of the PIH Health Network, and is accredited by the Center for Improvement in Healthcare Quality with headquarters located in Whittier. It is a private, not-for-profit teaching hospital and it is affiliated with the Keck School of Medicine of USC. The hospital has 408 beds and it first opened in 1885. It’s still not clear why Ramón Balderrama was sent to a halfway-house instead of being identified as a missing person, contacted by telephone a spokeswoman declined to comment citing patient privacy laws, and repeated follow-up requests for comment went un-responded to by its marketing and communications department.

It is still also unknown whether Mr. Balderrama who sported abrasions from his assault on his arms while being interviewed by Univision journalist Norma Roque. The publication headlined the story as: “Hispanic father with dementia disappears in Pasadena and ends up in a home for ex-convicts.” His daughter told Ms. Roque that “He was taken to a hospital because he was beaten and they let him leave without calling the police.” Univision gave his age as 82 in the updated article. Had there been some kind of case of mistaken identity? Why hadn’t paramedics recognized him or police been involved? If Ramón had been allowed to leave the hospital in Westlake near DTLA, just how did he end up 17 miles away in the north San Fernando Valley.

Asked for comment, the Los Angeles Police Department public information officer declined to comment on the case referring questions to the Pasadena Police Department, although presented with the picture of Ramón and his son including an apparent Los Angeles Police Department Officer stating “The uniform in the back looks like ours, but I can not [sic] confirm it.” The Pasadena Police Department public information office did not respond to request for comment. Reached by telephone a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation public information office headquarters similarly did not return a request for comment, nor did the Southern California region spokeswoman nor for Los Angeles County.

In recent years, PIH Good Samaritan has faced repeated complaints about poor, unsafe work conditions for its unionized nursing staff, who are represented by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee with the hospital going as far as reportedly firing Chief Nurse Union Representative Alejandro Cuevas, a critical care nurse. PIH acquired Good Samaritan Hospital in 2019 and also operates two hospitals in Whittier and Downey, and according to the union, it “constitutes one of the largest health care [sic] employers in the Los Angeles Area.” In April 2022, Cuevas said in a union statement: “The hospital’s solution to the lack of nurse retention and recruitment has been to hire non-RNs to directly care for patients… Rather than truly attempt to hire direct-care RNs, the hospital is now deciding to put patients at risk and saving money in their pockets in the process.”

Registered nurses at PIH Health Good Samaritan recently ratified a new tentative agreement last May that is set to run through November 2025 after threatening a one-day strike. This came after PIH Health initially refused to bargain in 2019 before a federal judge in 2022 ordered the hospital to do so after ruling they had “bargained in bad faith” with the nearly 600 registered nurses at the hospital according to a union press release. “This was a very hard-fought battle against a very greedy employer,” said one RN according to the unions press release announcing the ratification. Had Ramón Balderrama, who speaks only in Spanish been simply failed by the hospitals staff due to the contentious workplace and inadequate staffing? I’ll be asking more questions including to corporate, but Good Samaritan has the same Univision report that I do.

“There’s something shady going on there,” his niece told me after giving me the good news of Ramón’s return, but neither of us absent further investigation could come to a definite conclusion. Ramón had been taken the hospital again, it’s unclear which one at this time after being brought home and being checked out. A picture taken by his daughter shows him in a neck brace next to hear wearing his missing person T-shirt, she smiles through her facemask, Ramón looks at the camera with fatigue from his ordeal in the streets of Los Angeles and from being incarcerated in a halfway-home where he evidently didn’t ever belong for any reason.

Describing the experience his daughter writes: “There’s so many loops in our system that could have made this nightmare less. But, thanks to the gut feeling of a gentleman that was reminded of his father, lead him to see that the information given by Ramon (my father) was true. This gentleman listened to my father and was able to verify information and contact me.  Truly a MIRACLE!!!” So it was that the Balderrama family got their Thanksgiving miracle, they got Ramón back but the uncertainty that remains is jarring, with the system having apparently failed at least for a time in Ramón’s case, what else had occurred? She wasn’t sure what else she could say, and it’s unknown at this time if the Balderrama family has secured legal representation or has any plans to pursue further accountability in regards to this traumatizing matter.

Similarly, it’s unclear still what exactly happened in taking Mr. Balderrama to Good Samaritan, treating him, and then discharging him to a place for ex-convicts. It is unknown if Mr. Balderrama had any outstanding criminal charges. It is also unclear if there is a further criminal investigation proceeding into the assault which disoriented him. Even the family despite getting their loved one back has not received the full Metro footage, only a single image used to search with thankful success for Ramón Balderrama in the towering landscape of urban Los Angeles from Chinatown to Skid Row and to South Los Angeles and back to Highland Park before

Mr. Balderrama is a family man, and according to his family he had never failed to return home before in his travels in search of recyclables. They had tried to track him view his cellphone, and even gotten a tracking device, but he would lose his phone, and the tracking device as well before the fateful incident at the recyclers around the corner from the Southwest Museum Station in the Superior supermarket parking lot. The timeline is still a bit fuzzy, but the basic facts of this case are hard to dispute. A major hospital in Los Angeles seems to have failed to identify a missing person and in turn appears to have sent him to a facility to which he never belonged.

The family gathered to celebrate the return of Ramon Balderrama taking a group picture with 30 family members on the sidewalk in Pasadena in front of the family home with his son holding the camera while the others some still sporting their search t-shirts gathered. In an extended live interview on Facebook with Univision journalist Norma Roque, Mr. Balderrama who hails from Chihuahua, Mexico summarized the events in this way: “Ramón Valderrama went out for his daily recycling day, but after disorienting and getting off at the wrong Metro stop, he ended up beaten and hospitalized. For 13 days his family searched for him without results, but an almost miraculous action of a police officer allowed him to be identified and reunited with his family.”

It's still unclear exactly what transpired, but as this investigation unfolds it is this journalists hope that I will secure additional records and information to firm up the timeline on this case, lock-in the details, and ask the hard questions about how the system failed to work here without a miracle action. As I spoke with his niece, we agreed, “the search worked.” Absent the efforts of the family and friends going above and beyond to put-up posters, secure media coverage, all while cooperating with law enforcement, Ramón Balderrama might still be in the Sun Valley halfway-house as the desperate search for him continued with unwavering faith and desire.

Ramón in his follow-up interview with Univision sports a handlebar mustache and his typical ballcap sitting next to his daughter safe at home on the couch. California with its new Feather Alert system for indigenous people, and a soon to come Ebony Alert for endangered African-American youth, clearly can and should do more to effectively coordinate searches with its Spanish speaking Latino population. Some scoffed last time at the idea of a La Raza alert, but clearly more could be done in this area to help bring the missing back to their loved ones no matter the color of their skin and the language that they speak. Should the hospital and authorities continue to stall on response to inquiries about how this apparent mix-up they will simply be doing a disservice to the people they represent by failing to make key improvements.

In a state that is just over 40% Hispanic and Latino, it’s hard to imagine that such an idea would be unwelcome, or that were national legislation to be proposed to bring the Silver Alert system up to the level of the Amber Alert system operationally and/or in adding text messaging and electronic freeway signage that the language diversity of America could be ignored. Ramón Balderrama may be home, but what about the next missing person. Upon sharing the good news, a fellow journalist quickly brought up the case of a missing friend, an African-American woman appearing in middle age fearing she had met a similar fate as Ramón had getting lost in the system.

According to the National Crime Information Center, from 1990 to 2022 police received 24,937,503 reports of missing people place on file. As of December 31, 2022, NCIC contained 97,127 active missing persons records, 31% are under the age of 18, 41% are under the age of 21. Only 48% of these cases are categorized in NCIC as the “Missing Person Circumstances” field, and of those 95% percent were coded as “Runaway” with the remainder being categorized as Abduction by a Noncustodial parent (0.9%, abducted by a stranger (0.1%) and 4% nebulously as “Adult – Federally required entry.” The overall numbers have declined every year since 1997 until now with a slight increase. It’s unclear what percentage of these cases would have met the criterion for issuing a Silver Alert, or similarly constructed notification system, in the plurality of states in which it is present. There is no national legislation for the program like there is for the Amber Alert system, nor has any been proposed in over a decade.

People would tell me as this has gone on that to search for a missing person is a noble thing to do and especially for a non-family member. Canvassing the city one sunny weekend afternoon my car stopped in the parking lot of the McDonalds at Figueroa Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard next to the I-100 freeway. An older White woman approached me sunbaked, asking for money for a frappé, and so as I handed her a flyer and explained the missing person situation which she gracefully accepted, she couldn’t help but ask me, a privileged looking White male.

“What’s he to you?” she asked me with skepticism. I gave her $5 and explained the story in more detail. Her pink Dodgers hat and glistened in the California sunshine as she promised to search for Ramón with the care and grace of so many who have walked the streets unknown to their families. In Los Angeles, missing people aren’t unusual, finding Ramón though who reportedly didn’t even get rained on was truly a Thanksgiving miracle for which to be thankful for this holiday. We can only hope that more of the nearly 100,000 reported missing persons in the United States of America will still find their way home yet in calendar year 2023.

Please support my work with your subscription or for direct aid use Venmo

Zachary Ellison is an Independent Journalist and Whistleblower in the Los Angeles area. Zach was most recently employed by the University of Southern California, Office of the Provost from October 2015 to August 2022 as an Executive Secretary and Administrative Assistant supporting the Vice Provost for Academic Operations and the Vice Provost and Senior Advisor to the Provost among others. Zach holds a Master’s in Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Policy and Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. While a student at USC, he worked for the USC Good Neighbors Campaign including on their newsletter distributed university-wide. Zach completed his B.A. in History at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon and was a writer, editor, and photographer for the Pasadena High School Chronicle. He was Barack Obama’s one-millionth online campaign contributor in 2008. Zach is a former AmeriCorps intern for Hawaii State Parks and worked for the City of Manhattan Beach Parks and Recreation. He is a trained civil process server, and enjoys weekends in the great outdoors.