Part 45: Searching for a Missing Person on Silver Alert – The Case of Ramón Balderrama of Pasadena
Published November 15, 2023
Photo: CHP Silver Alert for Ramón Balderrama from X, formerly known as Twitter.
Please support my work with your subscription or for direct aid use Venmo
By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist
The process of searching for a missing person is agonizing, and especially when they are not found swiftly. I’ve had people bring missing persons, accidental deaths, and even allegations of professional fraud to my attention for investigation, but it’s different when you know the family. For the last week plus I’ve been searching for Ramón Balderrama of Pasadena, California, aged 74 and the uncle of a high school friend. Don Ramón as his family calls him liked to collect recyclables to make a buck, and would give second life to found objects. An eminently likable and honest man.
Los Angeles can be a scary place, as so many have noted it’s a place of noir and even apocalyptic visions, chaos and despair, misery and suffering, a City of Angels that in its people find meaning and redemption across its sprawling landscape of asphalt streets and concrete buildings. The dark glass towers of Downtown Los Angeles are perhaps most startling, they simply rise out of the center like a beacon that can be seen for many miles around. As one Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy assured me, people don’t get lost in Los Angeles, simply find a freeway and start working your way back to where you started at home safely. The idea seemed just a little too simplistic.
I was pretty sure I could find my way back. Sadly though, on November 6, Ramón Balderrama did not make his way back to his home in Pasadena from his usual trip to the recycling station along the Gold Line from Fillmore Station to Southwest Museum Station in Highland Park. The parking lot of the Superior is just around the corner, a quick walk, but that morning around 10:30 am he was assaulted according to multiple witnesses over his recycling proceeds just as he was returning to the train station by two individuals believed to be among the unhoused community. The worst nightmare for any family with a senior in their home.
Ramón had never failed to return home before according to his family. The entire encounter allegedly was captured by Metro security cameras before a shaken and distressed Ramón Balderrama was seen heading home again before turning around traveling all the way down the Blue Line on the new “Line A” and exiting the Chinatown Gold Line Station with culturally themed architecture. He was spotted one block south of the station by a parking attendant at Alpine Street and North Spring Street. Several sightings of Ramón have reportedly been made since principally in the Highland Park corridor along York Boulevard, but to date the Silver Alert issued by the California Highway Patrol has yet to bring Mr. Balderrama back to his family. The search continues for Ramón Balderrama!
The “Silver Alert” system operated by the statewide law enforcement agency is not unique to California. 37 states operate this program targeting missing seniors, and of those 28 formally brand this program as the “Silver Alert.” The LASD Deputy stated with confidence, the Silver Alert is a “nationwide BOLO,” or be-on-the-lookout-notification and they did a grid search of all areas within their jurisdiction. 10 more states have programs with more broadly defined missing persons programs. Legislation to last create nationwide standards though for the program was last proposed in 2013 by Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who recently announced he would leave the U.S. Senate. In 2008, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost of a nationwide Silver Alert program at $59 million dollars over a 5-year-period.
In California, the first criteria for having a Silver Alert issued on behalf of your missing loved one are that the person must be 65 years of age or older and “developmentally disabled or cognitively impaired.” Secondly, the “investigating law enforcement agency” has to have “utilized all available local resources.” Thirdly, the disappearance must be “under unexplained or suspicious circumstances.” Fourth, law enforcement must believe that the person must be at-risk due to these core factors of age, developmental and cognitive impairment, because the environmental and weather conditions are unfavorable, or that the person is in the presence of someone else dangerous or otherwise at peril. Finally, and most importantly, there must be “information available that, if disseminated to the public, could assist in the safe recovery of the missing person.”
The separate but related AMBER Alert System stands for America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response and is similarly present nationwide and targets missing youth believed to be at-risk. After being adopted by 26 states, the AMBER Alert System was established as an act of Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush in April 2003. Silver Alert would follow first in Colorado in 2006 before similarly expanding across states. California recently lead the way creating the “Ebony Alert” system signed into law in October 2023 by California Governor Gavin Newsom to find missing Black youth and women between the ages of 12 and 25 and will go into effect January 1, 2024.
The Silver Alert program was first started in California in 2013. Unlike Amber Alerts, Silver Alerts don’t show up on electronic highway signs or go out in text messages. The Amber Alert system in California has been highly successful. According to Sacramento Bee journalist Dante Motley writing in July 2022, the 20-year-old Amber Alert system has a 97% success rate. In that time, Amber Alert has been used 323 times to help find 376 children and nationally it’s helped recover 1,114 children. California also operates a Feather Alert System for missing indigenous people that began in 2023.
There are no national statistics for the Silver Alert system. Nor does California appear to release Silver Alert statistics like it does for “Missing Adults” more broadly, but information from other states suggests that the program is similarly successful to Amber Alert. That’s not to say that adults going missing reportedly is uncommon. According to the California Department of Justice, there were 42,013 missing person reports received of which 36,949 fell into the “Voluntary Missing” category defined as “Any missing adult who has left on his/her own free well.” For the remainder, “Unknown Circumstances” was the next largest category at 2,433 followed by “Dependent Adult” defined as “Any adult who has physical or mental limitation that restricts his or her ability to carry out normal activities. (e.g., Alzheimer” and then those who are “Lost,” who undergo “Catastrophe” followed by “Stranger Abduction” and a larger chunk of who are said to have disappeared under “Suspicious Circumstances” including “stranger abduction.”
Missing adults in California are not uncommon, nor are missing dependent adults. The search for the missing is almost ubiquitous, so as I joined the search for Ramón Balderrama, the question of how exactly these seemingly troubling case of an old man with dementia who got attacked before going missing was all the more troubling. We searched the city seeking Ramón as many others have done before looking for lost loved ones in Los Angeles, speaking with the taqueros in Highland Park, the recyclers in South Los Angeles where Ramón would transit before going to Long Beach or El Segundo to pick over these valuable objects of the street redeemable for some pocket cash. No one had seen Ramón recently. The Don of Recyclables had disappeared, seemingly vanished into thin air in Chinatown.
Some in Highland Park believed they had spotted him wandering, one evidently false tip lead me to Skid Row in search of Ramón straight to the lobby of the Los Angeles Police Department Central Division Station where lost souls gathered in front and even in the lobby of the station themselves. The desk clerk was surprised to see someone like me in such a place, and as I explained who we were seeking amidst so much so sorrow on the eve of the first major storm of this November as uniformed LAPD officers swept away tents from across the street next to the showering station with signs across the street offering Narcan for the many overdose cases.
Ramón wasn’t one of the homeless though yet as so many worried, he was simply missing. Believed to have been possibly confused by new signage at the train stations from the new Metro connector project through Downtown, his family assured me of his street survival skills, his ability to forage for calories, water, and to find shelter with any luck. Ramón had been featured on Univision and his daughter would plaster his picture with posters on the streets of Highland Park even as unknown individuals removed them just as fast. In Los Angeles, the missing are many and the memory and urgency of search efforts start to fade fast in the public mind.
In a city where the continuing state of emergency still is a homelessness crisis with an ongoing Inside Safe operation led by Mayor Karen Bass, the search for Ramón Balderrama after more than week started to seem more desperate. Ramón wasn’t known to have friends he could be sheltering with, nor had he turned up in any hospital or at a homeless shelter even as his niece canvassed them by telephone. So where was Ramón and why if the Silver Alert search couldn’t bring him home had law enforcement progress seemed to stall? The yet to be released Metro videos, did they show the faces of suspects? We stopped LAPD officers on the street in the area just to check, they had seen the Silver Alert and sadly they too had no clues to check on either.
Families who lose their loved ones face a deep sense of loss and grief, whether intention or not. In a world of GPS, how could someone simply vanish after being a victim of a crime and not be quickly found? The CHP didn’t have a public information office email address or phone number listed even as my searching turned up management plans for these Alert systems including the related Blue Alerts for when a law enforcement officer is down and Yellow Alert for when a suspect vehicle is wanted after a hit-and-run. Ramón hadn’t been hit by a car, yet despite the best efforts of the CHP, Pasadena Police Department, Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department he was still missing. Los Angeles is a big place, some critics have suggested that broadcasting adult information for those missing would compromise the person’s privacy or in some cases make the person even at greater risk.
With Ramón’s face so widely broadcast, his family remained hopeful that he would be found. That the Silver Alert would turn him up. There is not La Raza Alert, but perhaps there should be along with the Feather and the Ebony, doing so would certainly help find people even faster within the community. The rate of missing people in California has been steady for years, what more could be done to find the missing in Los Angeles? The LAPD website at present for the Missing Persons Unit for the “Greater Los Angeles Area” features the pictures, details and circumstances of 62 missing people at present. The Pasadena Police Department re-shared Ramon’s alert on its Facebook account with more pictures. Just where had Ramón gone in the city?
The debate over homelessness continues along with the associate crimes. It’s unclear how many people among this population have also been reported as missing. Law enforcement attempts to identify those it comes in contact with just as hospitals attempt to identify those they admit and the same for homeless shelters. We can only hope that the robbery of an elderly man just doing his routine won’t result in his death or further victimization. It is not uncommon for those with dementia to wander, and as rain fell on Los Angeles he still had not turned up. Ramón had no history of living on the streets even as he roamed them in search of income and treasure items.
Ramón Balderrama is believed to be on foot and wearing a beige baseball hat, gray t-shirt with white lettering over a black long-sleeved shirt, black pants, and gray tennis shoes. If you spot him or believe you may have please attempt to safely gather information including photos using your phone and then call 911 immediately. The number of look-alike photos had already began to accumulate, but all tips, leads and prayers are welcome. A reward in an undisclosed amount is available for information that leads to the safe return of Ramón to his home in Pasadena and his familia.
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.
